About Scape Films

In the Beginning

Scape Films started as a group of 5 high school students making films together. That group at the time consisted of Mike Tesh, Stephen Parpart, Jamie McGuire, Dan Chisnell and Tom O’Leary.

(1997 the original 5 from left, Jamie McGuire, Tom O’leary, Mike Tesh, Dan Chisnell, Stephen Parpart)

What’s in the name?

Mike Tesh had been making films since 1992. As had Stephen Parpart who was working under the banner Party Posse Productions.
Mike never put a name to his work until around 1994 when he got together with Steve and his gang. Mike started calling his work Steller Studios. But no one else seemed to like it. After much debate in 1995 Mike realized the name didn’t make much sense (after all they weren’t a studio), but Party Posse was equally as bad. So everyone got toether to rename the group. Steve and Dan backed the name Blackjack Entertainment while Mike and Jamie backed the name Scape Films. After a while everyone stopped caring and Scape Films just became the name.

The name Scape Films comes from the definition of the word Scape which means: “a scene or a view”.

In 2001 Mike registered the name as an actual comapny.

1997 - 2002

In many ways this is the period of time where Scape Films actually started. Before 1997 is was really all play and the first film actually tagged with the Scape Films name was One Strange Night. During this period Steve went off to college at Michigan State university and Mike attented a film class at the Detroit Film Center (called the Detroit Film Coalition then) where One Strange Night was an assignment.

It was also during this time that Josh McAllister joined Scape Films, scoring one Strange Night and the three Withers films that followed. Mike, Steve, Josh, Dan Chisnell and a cast of others would make the three Withers films during this period whne Steve came back from college on break over three consecutive years. Also during this time Mike teamed up with Justin Rekasi and Phil Baron for the feature film Night School and the short film Maintain. Edd Sidebottom was also involved in these projects and would later return for a role in Falling Apart

2003 - 2006 - Getting our act together

While all the previous years had been a great learning experience and a lot of fun we ended up with a lot of films that didn’t have much potential. Fun to watch among friends but not much beyond that. 2003-2006 is where we really started to get productive. It began with Mike and Steve shooting the experimental test film QuickGuns and was soon followed by our biggest production to date, Falling Apart where Joe Cwik joined the team as producer and cinemagrapher, Dan helped concieve the inital story and Josh scored and developed original music. From there we experimented with What Could have Been and Forget the Train and ultimately found Steve and Mike together shooting Crash as a two man crew, our last major production.

2007 - Today - WireTripper and beyond

Now the core group of Scape Films is in their late twenties. Steve is teaching in Maryland and Mike is married with two kids working at a web development company, as is Josh. Dan is on the brink of uptaining his associates degree in advertising and working for the Detroit Tigers and Joe just bought a house and continues to work as a programmer for a local company.

However even with everything changing beneath them, Mike is pushing forward with WireTripper this fall and Dan has joined him as producer. Although it’s been two years between Crash (the last production) and Wiretripper, alot has been learned in that time. Scape Films is going forward with a better grasp of technique and technology with more experience overall.