The Magical Mystical Disintegrating Wand From Planet Poofrah
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1978
Summertime
Between High School & College I just couldn't wait to get out there & do some more filming. That was the way it was for me - I just always wanted to be out there filming - Anything. So during the summer of 1978 I got together with my buds Terry & Bill & down in the comfort of our favorite hangout, The Basement, we set forth & knocked our heads together & came up with a wacky little premise that we could head out & film one weekend.
Actually I think it only took us about an hour to work the whole film out. It was quite simple. A nerdy kid would find this magic wand that would make things disappear & run through the neighborhood making things, well, disappear. Along the way he is noticed by the bully of the neighborhood & is followed unto the two of them eventually meet & try to gain control of the wand for themselves.
Very simple - Yeah I know.
But hey, we just wanted to get out there & put something on celluloid - Even if it was only on Super 8mm. Something we can then watch & enjoy whenever we wanted sitting back & saying to ourselves, man, we made this & it's great.
The next question in our minds was what were we going to use for a magic wand. We looked around the Basement for something when suddenly it hit me. On one of my shelves was a certain model kit (one of many) that was constantly giving me problems. The problem was that the damn thing kept coming apart. A slight problem in the manufacturing I'm sure & not really at the fault of yours truly the builder. This was the model kit of non other than the Klingon ship from the Star Trek series.
Terry said, 'We can't use that'. I picked the damn thing up, pulled off the front end of it. 'Now we could' I answered. What I did was painted it gold, glued red glitter around the bottom front & silver glitter over the top. Those familiar with the Klingon ship - That small dome at the top was the button that activated the wand. There it was, we had our wand.
W
Since this was going to be an all out wacky comedy, Terry in his highly imaginatively creative mind gave birth to the title.
The title - "The Magical Mystical Disintegrating Wand From Planet Poofra"
As I mentioned it was going to filmed in Super 8mm. Since it was a comedy we decided to film it at a slower film speed so the action would look sped up. Kind of the way the Benny Hill chases & comic snippets were done.
The disappearing effects? Effects would also be simple. The basic George Melies way. You film, stop the camera, move the object out of frame, then film again. It's been used over & over again in countless movies & TV shows. If they could do it so could we. And hey, it didn't cost a thing.
The film was going to be shot all in one day. At least we figured it would be a relatively easy shoot, & it was.
There was no script - Just our imagination & ideas right out there on the spot. True we had a general idea of what was going to happen, but basically it was all done on the right on the spot.
Our cast was simple - It was us.
Billy was going to play our nerd. He rushed home to get some nerdy clothes & came back with a pair of old ripped blue jean shorts, a dress shirt, black rimed glasses without lens's, pocket protector & pens, black socks & brown hush puppy shoes. At the time he also wore braces so once dressed up he looked like your basic picked on nerd.
Terry was going to be our villain, a character we called Big Bad Bob. He dressed in a sweat jacket, & put a towel around his neck like the muscle guys did when they worked out. Only he didn't look that bad yet, Terry being a skinny guy. So what we did was stuffed a pillow under his jacket for a chest & rolled up tee shirts by his arms for muscles. That was better. Oh, he also wore shorts & gym shoes - But up top he looked very muscular. He was now Big Bad Bob.
So now that we had our magic wand & our actors we were set. We then piled into the car, stopped off at our local photography shop (Marquette Photo) to buy a few rolls of film & we were off to our neighborhood Marquette Park where the first shots would commence.
Copyright ©2001 Roger B. Domian