What Is Britethorn?
I sort of stumbled into the world of internet video back in the sumer of 2006 as the mid-term elections were starting to really heat up. I was struck by the idea of doing a political parody of the popular Mac/PC commercials from Apple. My friend Aaron loved the idea and agreed to play the part of the Democrat in the videos. We scrambled around for a few weeks getting a small cast and crew together, lead by our first director, Jeff Hadick, while I wrote 10 scripts for the series. We wound up shooting 6 of them (they took a LOT longer to shoot and edit than I had anticipated) and managed to get them onto YouTube in mid-October.
The Democrat/Republican Series did very well on YouTube, and managed to get featured on the Homepage of DailyKos one Sunday afternoon where it received an overwhelmingly positive reception. Many of the bloggers urged the DNC to use the spots in a commercial campaign. I was also contacted by David Carr of the New York Times who interviewed me for a column the paper published a few days before the election. A Producer from the ABCNews show, Good Morning America, also contacted me and had planned to air one of the videos the morning after the election, but had to cancel because of the tsunami like wave of election news which followed the Republican loss of both the House and the Senate.
Somewhere along the way, I decided that it was time to launch Britethorn.com--which is where my nephew, Sean Gransee joining our team as our webmaster. Running the site takes a LOT more time and effort than I have to spare, so Sean turned out to be a real Life Saver!
We continued to post six more episodes in the Democrat/Republican Series, until Aaron Sjoholm and Shawn Girvan both decided to bow out of their rolls. Aaron, in particular, urged that we expand into other projects, which directly lead to my wiring the script for "Hit Men," our award winning film. After assembling the cast and crew for the "Hit Men" shoot, Aaron was forced to bow out of the Directing job because of pressures from his job at the Second City Training Center. Our friend, Johnny Bruder, saved the day for me by jumping into the Directing job at the last minute. I can't thank him enough!
I moved on to doing films with Action Figures (like The American Ranger) mostly because I have a LOT to say about politics and the use of the Action Figures allowed me to produce films at a MUCH faster pace than I would have been able to do shooting with live actors or animation.
Oh, and in case you were wondering (most people do) the name Britethorn comes from the knight who is the main character in a Political Fantasy Novel I've been working on for quite a while. One day, hopefully, I'll finish it. In the meantime, Britethorn has turned into my alter ego where I post my films (usually political in nature, but with an occasional jaunt into some other areas) and my views on the state of our political word.
Cheers,
John T. Kramer