Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, BBC radio film critic Mark Kermode remarked that the general plot of the film was so similar to the Harry Potter series that it may as well have been called Benjamin Sniddlegrass and the Cauldron of Penguins. His co-host Simon Mayo declared that he wanted to see that film. In Australia, music video director Jeremy Dylan created a mock poster for the film and uploaded it to a blog at benjaminsniddlegrass.com, which was discovered by fans of the show, who sent it in, along with Dylan's subsequent mock press releases about the film, into the show. Mayo read some of Dylan's work out on 26 February and he and Kermode encouraged Dylan to make the film. Assembling a cast made up of performers from amateur musical theater societies around Sydney and penning the screenplay himself, Dylan and his production team started shooting on 6 June 2010 and shot the film over seven days between June and mid-October. Locations included The Exchange Hotel, Epping Boys High School and a motel which was used for the school dormitories. Stephen Fry is a known listener to the Mayo and Kermode show and when he travelled to Sydney in August 2010, Jeremy Dylan approached him about narrating the film by passing a copy of the screenplay to him at the end of his one-man show at the Sydney Opera House. The show was filmed by the ABC and Dylan can be seen doing so in the television special made of the show. Two days later, Fry emailed Dylan and invited him to come to his hotel with his recording equipment. The narration was recorded that afternoon. The film's score was provided by Mike Carr, a Golden Guitar winning singer-songwriter active in the country music industry. Carr also wrote one of the original songs featured in the film, 'Famous'. Along with 'Bad Man', the main title theme, and 'Judgement Day', another skiffle song, the original songs were recorded in a studio in Riverwood, produced by Dylan and the engineer, Jeff Cripps. The songs were performed live by the actors who portray Johnny Leroy and the Impulsives in the film, in an attempt to emulate the early Elvis Presley Sun Studio recordings. The cinematographer, Yavor Dimitrov, was studying at UTS when the film was in production, and owned the camera the film was shot on. He became a