The Alien Arrives

On a cold winter morning in February Perry & I set out to our local Prairie (56th & St. Louis) & started the first famous frames of ' Our Invaded Earth'. The ship would land on the flat hill behind the park playground and out our visitor would venture.

In no more than 20 minutes we had our opening. His exploring walk down the hill (shot very stylishly through the playground fence by yours truly) to where he stops to collect some specimens.

Of coarse now that it was winter the only thing he collected was snow. The plants were dead & the rocks were snow-covered. So we had him pick up snow. Hey, maybe he was a dumb alien. I know, A dumb setback in storytelling but we didn't worry about that at the time - We were making another movie!

Between shots Perry would take off the mask to basically breathe. According to him it was an inferno in there and felt so good to cool off. After these shots were completed we quickly headed back to my Basement for a rest & a quick lunch. This is when I noticed just how much Perry was sweating! Sure the sauna suit kept him warm in the outdoor frost - but a little too warm. No matter, his shots were done for the day. A quick call to our drunk Joe to tell him that we were ready to shoot & we were back on the set - The local corner bar (55th & Homan)

Joe was a trooper, a natural born actor. He staggered out of the bar and slipped his way to his car like a pro. Once his shots were done (no pun intended) a vomit shot was thought of where our drunk would spew, and we planned to shoot this insert at another time (which unfortunately never happened). Another insert shot that never developed was the P.O.V. (point of view) of Joe's drunk while driving. The camera that I was using didn't have a manual focus & I wanted those shots blurred. I always figured I'd go back near the end of filming and fog up the lens somehow & get those shots later. Sadly I never did & they are absent from the print.

Once Joe's work was done (for that day) we all basically hung out talking about how the rest of the film over some pizza & some cool drinks. Our Saturday filmwork had ended on a high note. On Sunday we would film the scenes where the alien would kill our drunk. We could hardly wait.

Unfortunately we HAD to wait. A full month!! Seems our alien actor had developed a phenomena from the sweating & the constant hot & cold. Perry was extremely sick for about a week. That following week he was just too scared to continue on the thought that he might just get sick again. Between other engagements we had on the weekends, our next day of filming didn't continue until about a month later.

There was some good news about this & some bad news. The good news was that after seeing the processed film that we had shot it really looked like we had a great movie here. No more of those shaky or static boring shots that plagued 'Jason'. This film now had a look, a mood. It needed to be completed. With those high hopes in mind I decided to ask my neighbor if he'd play the cop. Fortunately he agreed but said that we unfortunately couldn't use his squad car (damn!). But after some talk with him he did say that if he was coming home from work, he wouldn't be driving the squad at all (Ahh...true realism to my film). Also we still had no Laser gun for the creature to this time. This extra month helped Bill along in creating a pretty cool looking one. So there was some good things that came from the delay.

The bad news about this delay.....Most of the snow had melted - Winter was coming to an end.

I didn't think this would be that much of a problem until I seen the finished film put together. During the opening you can clearly see a complete snow-covered park. But in the final 'chase through the park' scene, there is no snow at all!

Ah well, this is just a small film. Maybe no one will notice. Besides we're going to have exciting special effects that the audience will be looking at. They'll never notice.

The main thing is that we have to finish this film. It's going to be great!

We decided to plan the whole thing out & shoot the rest of the film the next weekend. We contacted all that needed to be there. We would shoot the alien killing the the drunk & the man working on the car in the morning, & finish up the cop stuff & the end chase in the afternoon. All was set. We were going to get this all done this weekend and if Perry got sick again, so be it - Because filming would be finally complete.

Yeah.....Right.

On to...

The Deaths, The Chase, & The Onlookers

Copyright ©2000 Roger B. Domian