Our Junior High Feature Film Debut and Retrospect!

Before they knew anything about using microphones, proper lighting, camera filters, a tripod, editing software or practical effects, a group of 13-14 year olds decided one summer evening they'd create a horror film... without a script or plot.

These friends just shot scenes in order and made up the dialogue and character rationale as they went. Of course there was no budget, no sets and everyone did their own stunts while neighbors - curious no doubt - shook their heads as a cameraman chased around a handful of kids wielding weapons and shouting profanity.

Obviously, I'm talking about my friends and me.

I don't recall who's idea any of this was, but I was the kid with the camera and my awkward, impromptu exposition moved along any resemblance of 'plot'.

This horror project with no title featured 21 minutes of driving, over-explaining, running and no-choreography-needed action. It was filmed over two days in August 2000 in South Sioux City, Nebraska and on-location (wow!) in Dakota City, Nebraska.

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Over the course of the next year and in between games of driveway basketball, shooting pool, burning CD-R mixes, school sports trips and getting booted from Subway restaurants, we filmed MTV parodies, fake commercials, game show skits, bad impersonation dubs, school news features, stupid pranks and our own take on a Rocky sequel.

Then everyone [but me] grew up.

Slowly but surely we all got driver's licenses, secured our part-time first jobs and begun to explore life's distractions/vices. Naturally, this once tight-knit group drifted apart. Not two years earlier, we all formed a Rap group - that never recorded a single song or owned anything more than a keyboard and computer mic. (I did have 15+ songs written with parts for all the main players though.)

It's highly likely I'm the only one who possesses a copy of any of these 'productions' (a phrase to be used extremely loosely with these tapes), but I want to share them in order to rekindle the days of imaginative and innocently mischievous suburban kids who thought they were hilarious...and owned a camera.