By Bradley Towle
MIDDLEBURGH — When Johanna Putnam and her partner Brennan Brooks decided it was time to make a feature film in 2020, they began the long and challenging task of creating “Shudderbugs.” The pair had fled their Brooklyn apartment for her childhood home in Warnerville as the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown began. The road toward creating the film started in the safety of her parents’ home. The creators looked for ways to make the most of the unusual limitations brought about by the pandemic. “As our locations, crew, on-screen talent, and other key elements of traditional filmmaking were stifled, we replaced those pieces with what we did have available: the natural beauty of our isolated environment, time, excessive planning, the three of us, youtube tutorials, cinephilia, and bugs. Lots of bugs.” There were scripts and rewrites; Brennan taught himself to operate a cinema camera, and they soon recruited their friend Jamie Enruh, an award-winning television and film editor, to help work on the picture. Then came the editing process and the addition of Eric Elterman’s impressive sound design and score. Putnam and her crew made the most of their surroundings, incorporating the impressive Schoharie County vistas and the summer fields teeming with life provided the setting for a film only starring Putnam and Brooks, a cat, and plenty of insects. The result is a visually stunning, nuanced drama about grief, paranoia, and isolation that not only captures the picturesque Schoharie County from Warner Hill but also will exist as a document of the strange days of 2020, offering a glimpse into an era that future generations will undoubtedly examine.
“Shudderbugs” was finally ready for screening in late 2022, and the filmmakers spent much of 2023 traveling to film festivals around the country, where they won awards and received high praise in many reviews. On Sunday, April 21st, the long road led back to Schoharie County for the film’s hometown premiere at The Green Wolf Brewing Co. in Middleburgh. Johanna Putnam and Brennan Brooks attended to introduce and discuss their labor of love to a crowd of roughly forty people, many from Putnam’s family, excited to see the final product on a big screen (Putnam’s proud father Doug supplied more than enough pizza for the celebration).
Early in the film, it became clear that the locally filmed “Shudderbugs” might land differently with an audience as intimately familiar with the area as those in attendance Sunday night. As Sam Cole (the film’s main character played by Putnam) drives past the abandoned Grand Union, there was a laugh from the knowing audience—a unique response to this screening of the film. Land surveyor Jim Snyder of Snyder Surveying in Middleburgh commented he knew the sites included in the film through his work, having surveyed the property in the past. It was a rare opportunity to screen a feature-length film shot in Schoharie County in its place of origin with the filmmakers present. Most of the feature-length movies shot locally are decades old, with few, if any, participants left to discuss them.
With the stunning visuals of Schoharie County depicted on the big screen, it is a bit of a wonder that the area has not become more of a destination for film productions (2020’s “The World to Come,” for example, takes place in 1850s Schoharie, yet was filmed in Romania). In introducing “Shudderbugs” on Sunday night, Johanna Putnam announced that they were close to finalizing the details of the film arriving on streaming services through their distributor and expect it to be available later this year. For more information about “Shudderbugs,” visit shudderbugsmovie.com/.
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