As the theater department’s production of “The Grapes of Wrath” concludes Sunday, a documentary-of-sorts on the play is blooming online.

“Behind the Curtain,” a documentary by 18 students in an advanced media class, is available for download at www.comm.niu.edu/curtain/. The Web site features interviews and episodes with several of the production’s crew members, actors, and theater professor Christopher Markle, who directed the play.

Communication professor Laura Vazquez and students had to figure out how to package the site and content so it could be opened in most operating systems and Web browsers.

“We realized there are drawbacks,” Vazquez said. “We went around that by putting up shorts online.”

By compressing the files, clips are available for faster download and more accessible to audiences.

“The hard part is you want to make something people could access,” said Brian Ekdale, director and graduate student. “It breaks your heart to take something you’ve edited and make it worse.”

The site recently added a counter to track the number of visitors to the site and the locations from which they are accessing the film. Ekdale said there have been 2,000 visitors to the site and about 9,000 hits total. Vazquez said there have been hits from overseas, such as London.

“People from all over are seeing what we’ve done,” Vazquez said.

This semester, the class was originally supposed to shoot the class based on “The Apprentice” offered by the marketing department. However, the class was canceled in late December and Vazquez was able to secure access to the theater department’s production.

Vazquez said she didn’t know what to expect when she formed an agreement with the theater department to shoot the “Grapes” practice and production. “Behind the Curtain” originally was supposed to be similar to a reality television format. However, reality television is shot for several weeks with thousands of hours of footage, while “Behind the Curtain” had time constraints.

“Since we had to have the media up immediately, we didn’t have that luxury,” Vazquez said.

Instead of a story crafted from hours of material, “Behind the Curtain” has a story that develops as each episode is broadcasted online.

“The real strength in the episodes is the narrative,” Vazquez said.

The class is working on making the documentary and performances into a promotional piece for the NIU School of Theater and Dance, possibly as a DVD sent to prospective students.

“There’s a good partnership between the two departments,” Ekdale said. “Video goes well with theater.”

Vazquez and Ekdale note the pioneering quality in the production and its constraints as well.

“We’re ahead of the curve trying to put everything on the net, but we’re limited by technology,” Vazquez said.

“I think we’re the only school whose doing something like this,” Ekdale said.