Christmas 2003 (final update):

Well, it is a couple days before Christmas '03 and the "Shakespeare's Dilemma" experience is wrapping up (I think).  About a year and a half after Bill and Carla presented me with the idea and it's been a fun ride.  Over 200 copies of the film are out and about from one side of the States to the other, and even in Ireland, France, and Poland!  My first movie had a distribution of about 50, and I was thrilled about that, so this was a big success!  We are right now sitting at about $50 in the hole, and I will take that as a success.

I have had some really great experiences with this movie and learned a bunch too.  For one, it is really hard to get total strangers to watch your film.  Making it into a film festival helped though, and since it made it into the Pittsburgh one that opened a few local doors for us.  We sent it out to various Shakespeare groups that were interested, but only heard back from a few.  Oh well, maybe someday after I forget all about it I will get a nice surprise email!  We entered it into 3 festivals and it made 1.  Slamdance would have been huge and it would have been nice to make our own local Erie film festival, but let's just say the Erie group really dropped the ball on that one.

I make VHS, CD, and DVD copies right here from my PC.  So all the legwork is done by the same people you see in the movie.  Keeping with it and kindly sending reminders to the people you sent the movie to every month is an interesting experience.   Some people like getting something for free but then don't want to help you out with their comments.  Which, come on, is the only way I can learn anything really.  Big thanks to those who replied with their comments, good or bad!  The most memorable was a woman in a Shakespeare program in NYC that wanted a copy of the movie for review and was very excited, but when I didn't hear back from her in a few months I emailed if she found the time to watch it and she got all bent out of shape and said (paraphrasing of course) "The tone of your email really pisses me off and I was just going to watch your movie but now I'm not".  Oh well, luckily there were only a couple people out of the 200+ that had issues with watching a movie they requested.

Bill and I did a radio interview for the college that we both work at that was a bit chaotic but very fun.  My voice cracked once.  I never thought I would have issues with talking for an hour, but there ya go, puberty can be hell!  The TV interview which will air on Erie Cablevision this Winter/Spring was also a blast!  My voice also cracked on that one.  He he.  Maybe it will become my trademark?  I made contact with a local actor that is interested in working with me and that made the whole thing worthwhile.  Showing the film to a class of Advanced Television students with Bill and Carla at Edinboro University was also a fun time and capped the whole thing off.  Thanks to Dr. Rybicki for showing the film as part of his final (wow)! 

So now to the initial write up...

Original thoughts...

In high school I made movies every chance I could get instead of writing a paper.  Love of movies, the fun of the process with my friends, and getting out of boring schoolwork were my reasons for it then.  In 2001 I decided I wanted to make a movie again, which became "25 Years [on earth]".  One of the perks of working in the technology department at a university is that I get to work with some pretty cool equipment.   Once I started practicing with the Canon XL-1 (I did end up making a mockumentary about the place I work titled "Ross Hall: the People Under Your Desks") I had to do more.  When you live in a small college town word spreads that you made a movie.  When I went to Poland with my wife I met people who saw my movie (thanks to Eva and Agata)!  That was a pretty bizarre feeling.  So then Mr. Vitanyi and Mrs. Behr approached me with an idea for a Shakespearean movie in a modern office environment.

A weird idea in and of itself, I wasn't really ready to jump right back into another film, but after I read Bill's outlines for the story I became more interested.  The screenplay process took a long time, well, much longer than the stuff I have done in the past, but in the end we had a fine-tuned and witty script.  In September of 2002, Kirk, Dorota, and I started researching the costumes and looking at fabrics.  We wanted to keep the cost down and it looked like the costumes were going to take some time and work.  But then a big opportunity dropped in our laps thanks to the amazing Ro Blair.  Ro supplied the majority of the cast with some great costumes.  This saved a TON of cash and really jump-started the project!  It may not have been possible in the way we wanted to do it without Ro. 

Next came the casting.  For some reason the roles of Othello and Baptista were tough to fill.  Because of schedules (the biggest problem when you try and make a film with people who have families and jobs) the actors in these roles shuffled quite a bit right up until the first weeks of filming.  I would like to say that everything went smoothly from there, but it hardly ever did.  The man with the original story concept: William R. Vitanyi, Jr. became a published author!  His book Palm Sunday came out and of course he had to send time publicizing that.  Then Dorota and I decided to run off to Las Vegas in December and get hitched!  And as anyone who marries an international will know, the hard work comes after the wedding with all the paperwork and trips to the INS office.  Whew!

In the end, though, we all made it through.  Production started in October '02 and ended in May '03.  This time I was a lot more picky with my shots.  And with a few of the scenes we even did several re-shoots.  We really took our time with this one and the story grew more and more from the original script to something which I feel has a lot more meaning.  I am proud of "Shakespeare's Dilemma" and of course, as before, none of it would be possible without the great people in my life that support this hobby of mine and help in all the ways good friends can.  If nothing else I hope that the film entertains for its 37 minutes.

Shakespeare's Dilemma in the words of director John C. Lyons