BIG invites the Brookline Community to Star in a Remake of a Classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Scene

If you have ever watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, there is a good chance that the famous scene in which he sings “Twist and Shout” on top of a parade float to the delight of hundreds of spectators made you want to dance…and perhaps even wish that you could be a part of that big impromptu dance party. Brookline Interactive Group (BIG) is excited to give the entire Brookline community the chance to do just that in late August by inviting residents to be part of a remake of this scene.

BIG is recreating this scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as part of a larger project, Crowdsourced Boston, in which several media centers and local filmmaking teams collaboratively recreate a classic film by diving up the film into about 40 scenes, assigning each scene to a team or media center to creatively interpret in their own manner, with the only requirement to use the same dialogue and activity. BIG then edits all the new versions of the scenes together in sequence to create a fully crowdsourced version of the film.

Crowdsourced Boston is an offshoot of Crowdsourced Cinema, a public art project created by Northampton Community Television (NCTV), a sister organization to local Brookline Interactive Group (BIG), a community media arts center in Brookline, in 2015. Each year, Crowdsourced Cinema recruits about 40 filmmaking teams in their community to collaboratively remake a famous film. Their inaugural remake was of the classic Raiders of the Lost Ark, followed by The Princess Bride in 2016, and Back to the Future in 2017. BIG proudly recreated scenes for the first two Crowdsourced Cinema films, yet last year, with Northampton’s encouragement and help from several community media centers and teams from the greater Boston area, they launched their own offshoot project, called Crowdsourced Boston, and created a separate, full-length crowdsourced version of Back to the Future.

But Back to Ferris Bueller…

The parade scene is a detailed scene with many components, and thus there are several opportunities for Brookline community members to be a part of BIG’s remake of it, including appearing as an extra who is watching the parade, starring in the coordinated dance portion of the scene, or even helping BIG to track down some key props and costumes!

“The parade scene is one of the most fun scenes in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, so we’re incredibly excited to collaborate with the Brookline community to remake this classic scene.” says Erin Kinney, Manager of Engagement and Education at Brookline Interactive Group. “Not only is this a great opportunity to learn about the process of shooting a film and be a part of a community project, it’s going to be a great time!”

BIG will be closing the portion of Tappan Street in front of their location in the Unified Arts Building at 46 Tappan Street for the morning of Wednesday, August 22nd to film the majority of the scene, and thus needs plenty of extras to come out and dance and cheer as parade spectators.

For those who want to be a part of coordinated dance portion of the scene, BIG will be hosting a dance lesson to review and practice the choreography for the dance at on Thursday, August 23rd at 6:00pm on the steps in front of the Unified Arts Building. They will then be filming the dance on the morning of Friday, August 24th on the steps of the Brookline Village branch of the Public Library.

BIG also welcomes production crew volunteers and actors for their scenes. To learn more or sign up to be a part of these scene, please visit www.brooklineinteractive.org or contact Erin at erin@brooklineinteractive.org.

The full Crowdsourced Boston remake of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off will premiere at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on December 5th, and will then be distributed on the web.

To learn more about Crowdsourced Boston visit www.crowdsourcedboston.com.