A Busy Day Of Filming

Note: Each photo has a small saying. Be sure to hold your mouse cursor over them to see the messages.

It was a hot day. Mucho hot, & there we were getting ready to shoot the first famous frames of our little film.

The setup was easy. We found a park bench & had Billy sit alone & read a dictionary. Why a dictionary you ask? We didn't know but it seemed something that a nerd would be doing at the park on a hot day.

Once the tripod was in place, film was unwrapped & ready to be exposed, and our actor ready, we pressed the button.

We slowly pan the park & came to our little Willie. We quickly zoom in & cut to a close up. As Willie reads his book from out of the sky falls the Magic Wand hitting our hero on the head. He falls to the ground grabbing his noggin looking around curiously as to what just happened. He spots the Magical Wand & picks it up. He looks it over.

This is where the DAMN THING fell apart again! Not only did the DAMN THING fall apart as it sat on my shelf, but now the damn top popped off during filming. The DAMN THING must have been cursed not to exist! No real problem though. Bill being a pro just quickly put the thing back together & continued to act. If you look closely during the film you can see this. Blooper #1!

Oh yeah, on a side note about my filming. I did all the shots in order & basically edited 'In Camera'. I was good at this & it also helped out immensely once we got the film back from the developers. Nothing to actually cut or edit.

So Willie looks around and notices the button on the top of it. As he aims it towards his dictionary, then the park bench as we see them both disappear through the magic of multi million dollar special effects! (not really)

Blooper #2 is seen when Willie starts his way through the park. Behind him we can clearly see the park bench is still there. Hey, we weren't noticing things like that - We were having fun!

With his new found power our Willie heads through the park looking for & making things disappear. His first victim - A jogger!

Ah but as Willie moves on to terrorize the town, a mysterious person is following close buy watching his every move.

As we wrapped up this area we drove through the park to look for something else Bill can make disappear. We soon came across a couple of kids playing Tennis. I quickly went over to them, told them we were making a little film & if they wanted to be in it. This was back then. Now if you go to that park & ask a couple of strangers if they want to be in a film they'd kill you & take all your stuff. Ah, but these were the days. Soon a situation was created & we went on shooting.

Willie comes across a couple of kids playing tennis & makes the ball disappear.

Blooper #3 - Bill forgets to put on his glasses for the last shot. Oh well, maybe next time I'll have someone for continuity.

Willie is the King Of The World now! Ready & able to take on any obstacle!

Except maybe for tripping over his own feet..

We quickly wrapped up the park filming & moved now closer to a more urban environment.

I  decide to make a cameo in this little epic, mainly because we didn't want to go on asking every stranger we met if they wanted to be in a film.

We stopped at a corner store & I was filmed as 'The man who goes to his car & then it disappears' guy. Cool, a wacky stunt from yours truly.

So as Willie spies the man going to his car I do my stunt.

But watching from a hidden spot within the bushes is our dastardly villain Big Bad Bob!

Next stop Terry came up with the idea to put his sister Maureen into the film. She would be home by this time & wouldn't mind doing a favor for him (like that happened a lot). So with that we filmed the 'Willie makes the girl disappear as she jumps into the pool' scene.

Willie then moves on after giving himself a good knee slap.

Ah, but not far behind is our notorious villain, Big Bad Bob!

The time is now right, and before you can say 'What else can I make disappear', our little Willie is suddenly confronted by the evil one himself!

Big Bad Bob!

Yeah!

What do you want?

That!

No...

What? Grrrr...

And the battle begins.

But our faithful Willie gets hold of the wand just in time & takes a desperate push of it's button!

As Big 'naked' Bob runs away defeated (for now), our Willie makes his way for home.

The above scene was really fin to film, and it's the most entertaining piece in the film (apart from one of the prologues - I'll get to that in a moment). But again, it was all done in camera. Ter & Bill worked out the fight in about 5 minutes & we were ready to film. Terry had no problem about getting down to his underwear. In fact later in the day we had some pretty wacky fun with the another roll of film that ended up in our out-take reel. Again, more of that later.

By this time it was already approaching 5:30pm. The day was long & we were all pretty tired. But we still didn't have an ending for the film. We didn't really want to end it here. So over a few cola's were talked some more things through.

We wanted to bring Big Bad Bob back some way. We decided to have him run into Willie again one last time, but this time we wanted Willie to screw up. We thought of having Willie bump into a woman & her baby. The baby would have a spoon that resembled the wand, and as Willie leaves the baby he mistakenly grab the wrong thing, leaving the baby with the wand. Then when he'd meet up with Bob again he 'd just get beat up & not have the wand to defend himself.

This was all cool, but where the hell were we going to find a lady & her baby. Also it was getting late & we all soon had to depart for home & dinner. We decided then to all get together tomorrow & film the ending with the lady & baby. My cousin Donna could fill in for the lady & her son David would be the baby.

But the rest of this day was spent filming the end of the film with Willie & Big Bad Bob.

Here's how it follows in sequence...

Willie meets up with the woman & her baby. Willie drops the wand into the carriage & makes gu gu noises.

Suddenly the baby starts to cry - Frightened by this big weird looking guy groping it no doubt.

As he takes off, he remembers the wand. He heads back & without looking grabs the silver spoon instead of the wand.

So after the switch is made with the wand Big Bad Bob confronts Willie again.

But poor Willie realizes that he doesn't have the wand.

Big Bad (naked) Bob walks towards the camera & we cut to black. Thus our little epic is complete.

Ah but wait. That very next day after we shot the baby stuff with Donna, Terry & I came up with some ideas to open the film. A series of short prologues - Small parodies of some of our favorite films.

Hey, it wasn't like we had anything else to do that day.

On to...

The Prologue, The Parodies, & The Out-Takes

Copyright ©2001 Roger B. Domian