Spongebob Squarepants Revisited
In 2024 I shot the dress rehearsal of the Spongebob Squarepants musical for Clark State at the Kuss Theater. That was the full musical event that had 2 acts. It was the first time I had seen the musical in person and it did not disappoint. Of course before the shoot I did my normal due diligence of watching a few performances on Youtube so that I had a good working knowledge of the production.
Recently I was approached by the John Legend Theater (JLT) to shoot the dress rehearsal of Spongebob Squarepants - Youth Edition. This took place on Friday July 18th. In addition to the rehearsal, JLT was looking for some performance shots and some BTS work. So I was also going to shoot it on the last performance on Saturday, July 19th. This was the first time for me shooting a DR and a performance, along with BTS shots. I broke it down into two tasks - 1. To ensure I got everything I needed from a performance standpoint during the DR, because there was no getting in front of paying audience members the next night and 2. Get shots of the performance with the audience in the foreground, to make it appear as full as possible, while also getting some BTS shots of the sound/light crew.
Since I’ve already shot it before, I just looked for and found a recording of a Youth Edition performance on Youtube and watched it a week before to get the feeling for what was cut to make it shorter and also if there were any major changes to the plot.
The dress rehearsal went off without a hitch. The kids were amazing and so were the lighting and sound. Below are a few of my favorites. Click on the first image to expand and scroll through.
For the night of the performance, I was a little surprised at just how dark it was shooting from in the audience. Trying to get shots of the performance while also getting some audience in the foreground meant bracketing my shots. Below is an example of one of the peformance images - this is the last scene. This was three images shot at -1 stop, 0, and +1 stop. I then blended the three exposures together in Photoshop to get the full dynamic range, and then ran DeNoise to clean it up, and then sharpen. I’m quite pleased at how it turned out. Yes, it really was that blue!
For the BTS shots, I took a variety of shots including the lighting and sound crews doing their thing, and the kids in the back being kids. Here are a few of my favorites. Click on the first image to expand and scroll through.
So a second time around for me with Spongebob was both enjoyable, and a success. I’m at the point now in my theater/musical photography that I am shooting many shows for a second time around and it certainly does make things easier. That said, I think every cast and crew brings something different to a performance and that’s what makes them all unique and enjoyable.
Please feel free to drop me a line or comment if you have any questions about my theater photography or just want to chat!
Thanks as always for reading!
Jeremy