College for me was short and sweet. During the first year I took up creative writing and filmmaking. I really didn't need Creative writing class considering I've been doing fine without it all these years, but it did fine tune my talent.
It was the film class that I really wanted, to learn the art as well as technique of filmmaking. It taught me the basics of working with 16mm which was much easier than Super 8. For our final project in class I went for the most challenging idea I could think of. While the other students decided to film they're exploits on the streets of Chicago. I decided to shoot my film in an old broken down farmhouse. The story I had written in writing class. "The Legend of Plainfield farm".
To read the original story go to
To see how the filming went go to
Soon I once again made a name for myself in class, not by making the best film, but for the attempt in taking the challenge. By my second year I soon found some newfound classmates who wanted in on my next venture. A film that came close to getting all who worked on it blackballed from college. It was a silly little film called "Invasion Of The People Canners"(Click on 'The Film Works' to see about that little epic)
It was this time that I had dropped the writing class to move into another direction. Acting. After all, I was acting through my whole life anyway. Ever since I was a youngin I was interested in being someone I wasn't. One of the first ventures in this art happened when I was taking guitar lessons at this music school. They were going to have a parade and needed some 'Little Dwarfs' to dance around an accordion playing Snow White. Yeah I know, accordion? Believe me, it was a pretty popular instrument back then. Anyway they needed dwarfs and I volunteered.
The only problem was that they could
only find one other kid to be with me. So there we were, the accordion playing Snow White
and the Two Dwarfs. And to top it all off it rained throughout the day. I didn't care, I
was acting my little heart out as I danced around the chic with the squeeze box.
But the acting class I was taking wasn't going in the direction I wanted to go. All they were teaching was how to act like a tree on a windy day or, how to walk like an elephant. So what did I do? I dropped out.
I looked at it this way. The teachers in film class were saying that you really didn't need a diploma to make it in the film world, you just needed the talent and what they were looking for at the time. Once I got the bug to act I started performing in some community shows, and acting like I wanted to, not trees or animals, but characters. So dropping out of college seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
As I kept up the film work of my own, I really started to advance in the world of community theater. From 1980 through 1991 I performed in countless shows. Musicals, comedies, dramas, and eventually wrote and directed my own show. A parody of horror films called "The Things That Went Bump In The Night".
Livin' through most of the eighties were probably the most enjoyable time in my life. It was when I made my movies, had a great trip to Florida with my friends, acted in the theater, and finally got down with the opposite sex.
On to...
Copyright 1998 Roger B. Domian