Warrior Wars: My First Movie

Folks, I want to take a moment to take you back to a time when I was a freshman in high school. During a time in which I wanted to make movies and it was my passion. My ex-friend Josh Good (That’s a story for another time) and I would watch spirit videos, which were 15-minute movies that were made for the school to boost school spirit. They were made by the Dirty Dog Production Team who were a group of Juniors at the time. Josh and I wanted to make a spirit video and we were partially inspired by Jib-Jab animations since we used to watch them over and over. When we finally became freshman Josh invested in a cheap camera we gathered our friends and we shot what would be known as Warrior Wars; the first non Dirty Dog Production spirit video.

The script was simple and I wrote it despite Josh’s name attached to the credits. It was simple to write because we thought of everything that we could parody in Star Wars on such a small budget. I consulted my Mad Magazines for some influence since they released an issue that was mocking Star Wars Episode III at the time. We also gathered help from some of our favorite teachers from the school to help out, most notably Dr. Keller who was in all the Dirty Dog videos. He gave us unlimited access to anywhere we wanted in the school after hours. He also starred as the main character in the movie. He even gave us a fake ID to use for the antagonist.

I made the ‘lightsabers’ with PVC piping and paint. I bought the Darth Vader helmet and I bought and designed the Ken doll. Keep in mind, we made this for fun and when it debuted around our school… everybody loved it. It was more over the top than the Dirty Dogs and for a brief week or so Josh and I knew what it felt like to be on top of the world.

Things to look out for:
- Erbach is used for all the fake studio names. Miss Jen Erbach was our history teacher and she was one of the nicest people we ever met. That’s our tribute to her.
- In the opening scene when Darth Wildcat is running down the field, you can see in the background my head peaking out from one of the pillars. You’ll then see me again in a long brown coat grabbing the camera equipment.
- Also, when the actor takes off the helmet to breath, that wasn’t scripted… he really couldn’t breath but we decided to leave it in for comedy.
- You’ll also see our equipment all over the place.
- When the teacher is running down the hallway, the actor who played Darth Wildcat was waiting for our call to tell him to start running.
- The ‘BOOYA’ was Keller’s catchphrase that he would always say in all the spirit videos, which is why it’s followed by ‘Go Warriors.’
- The assembly at the end was our impersonation assembly.
- When the three teachers pretending to be the Three Stooges come on, the guy in the middle (Curly) is Mr. Leduc… one of our Exec. Producers.



With all that being said, I hope you enjoy my first movie. Stay tuned and I might talk about the sequel that we made called Warrior Wars II: What New Hope? Bigger budget, more people, more madness.