When I was coming up with an idea for my APFF film this year I thought that my friend Adam’s white van lent itself hilariously to a kidnapping. It was from this that I developed the idea of the benevolent kidnapping around which the film was based.
In order to shoot scene we needed a quiet street with enough room at the edge of the road so we could get the camera far enough back so as to get the whole van in frame. I walk into frame, the van pulls up behind me, Richie leaps out, grabs me, throws me in the van and it then drives away. We’d chosen a corner on the edge of a delightful tree lined park in a suburb called Elwood, just south of St. Kilda.
We were aware that there was a bunch of school kids on some sort of outing in the park but were not concerned as they were being largely quiet and were blocked from view by some trees. We set out about filming out little scene and after the third take a woman came flying out of the trees wanting to know what the hell we were doing and why in the hell were we trying to terrify her young charges. It seems that some of the children had seen one of the takes, and thought that I was actually being abducted. This worked the kids into frothy lather of terror and screams. Which of course we couldn’t because we were all in the van (the camera was unattended on a tripod).
We apologised profusely to the teacher, and asked her to extend that apology to the children and to explain that we were just making a movie. She accepted this rather quickly and was on her way. We thought little more of the event until later that day when we watched some of the footage. As the camera was running on the tripod you can hear the kids becoming increasingly excited by the event, and for your enjoyment I have included an mp3 below.
You can hear the van pull up, and a brief struggle as I am ‘abducted’ and then the van pull away. Then you can hear children freaking out.
Enjoy.
