Like many fans, we're constantly fascinated here by actual production materials from Bert I Gordon's 1965 film. This page will chronicle the items that we are able to find, dealing with the rigors of the production process of this film.

CASTING AND CHARACTER INFORMATION

In December of 2014, I managed to win an amazing collection of production materials from "Village of the Giants," on eBay!

Along with an actual copy of the script, the package also included some 25 pages of casting material, which leads me to believe that the items were owned by talent coordinator, Marvin Paige. The collection does include information on acquiring dancers, and some of the musical talent for the film.

As well, there's 14 pages of casting notes that show the numerous young talents who came out to try and be part of Bert I Gordon's film, along with little scribbles here and there. There's also a letter from the William Morris Agency, and pages giving summaries of what each character is like.

Each of these pages has been set up to be displayed in a new window, so that you the viewer, can compare/contrast the different pieces of production materials.

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LOCATION/SHOOTING SCHEDULE

Along with the pages and pages of casting notes that were provided, I was eager to see one piece of material that was also intriguing: The Shooting Schedule!

Unlike some of the more casual pieces of paper that had been handled like in the pieces above, much of the shoot schedule seemed pretty untouched. In checking the stapled pages, it looked like they had hardly ever been bent. Maybe they were just given to the crew member since everyone got them, but he didn't utilize them the way other members of the departments would.

As well, there was one fun little error, in that whoever was putting the pages together, added an extra Page 8 to the ream of papers.

Each of these pages has been set up to be displayed in a new window, so you can get a chance to read over the information provided. As well, I'll be adding some notations regarding certain descriptions. And, if you have a copy of the shooting script with you, you can match up the scene numbers in the schedule, with those in its pages.

EFFECTS STORYBOARDS

In 2020, we were surprised when a copy of the final draft of the Village of the Giants script was listed by a bookstore in Maryland, that included photocopied storyboard images detailing how certain special effects scenes were to be accomplished. A highlight was seeing mention of some scenes that did not make it into the final cut of the film.

The identity as to whose copy of the script this was remains a mystery, but the images on the pages below give an interesting peek into how certain scenes were achieved. Simply click on an image, and a new window will open, showing the full page, along with our notations about the scenes being mentioned.

CAMERA AND LIGHTING NOTES

Along with images of storyboards for special effects scenes, the copy of the script we obtained in 2020 also contained some additional production note pages we hadn't seen before, with the majority of them being hand-written notes.

While we have no knowledge as to whom owned this copy of the script, handwritten notes mention not only camera moves, but also lighting information for some scenes. This makes us wonder if the script belonged to the films process photographer, or camera operator.

Clicking on an image below, will open a new window showing more information on these rare pages.

WARDROBE INFORMATION AND PICTURES

Around the late 2000's, I was surprised to find an interesting production item from Village of the Giants, while browsing on eBay. The listing showed costume information for Toni Basil's character Red, along with a black-and-white reference picture. I attempted to bid on the item, but lost out to someone with more money.

I kept hoping additional costume information would appear, and got my wish. Information for Charla Doherty (Nancy Barry) appeared in December of 2012, and information for Joy Harmon (Merrie) appeared in July of 2017.

Surprisingly, there's no mention of the film's title on the wardrobe sheets, but director Bert I Gordon and assistant director Jim Rosenberger's names appear at the top of 3 of the 4 sheets.

Each of the wardrobe pictures includes a stamped date:

- Joy's first picture is dated May 4, 1965. Her second picture is dated May 11, 1965, and her third picture is dated May 21, 1965.

- Charla's second picture is dated May 11, 1965, and her first and third pictures are dated May 12, 1965.

It's worth noting that each of actres' information is missing a wardrobe picture. Joy's information is missing the outfit she wore in the opening dance scene in the mud and the rain. For Charla, the picture showing the outfit she wore while the townspeople turned in their weapons is missing.

Clicking on each of the pages below will bring up a larger one to peruse. You can also compare the scene numbers on the sheets, to the script information by downloading it in the links further down the page.

PRODUCTION CALL SHEET AND REQUIREMENTS INFORMATION

When we interviewed Hank Jones in 2009, he was kind enough to provide us with several pieces of material from his collection of items. One of them was a copied portion of a Production Call Sheet from May 11, 1965. Even with this little portion, we often hoped to see what the full sheet was like.

Upon purchasing the late Johnny Crawford's copy of the film script, we were surprised to find that it contained two full Call Sheet pages, and they were for the days following the date of Hank's page.

These full pages Johnny had also included something we didn't know about. On the back of each one, was a Production Requirements list.

By clicking on the images below, you can get further information on what each page entails.

SHOOTING SCRIPT

No production is complete without a shooting script (yes, even the flimsiest of beach movies!), and we've got quite a story to tell about them.

We first perused Frank Cafferty's copy in February 2007, in the permanent collection at the Margaret Herrick Library, in Beverly Hills, CA. However, due to strict rules by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (who own the script), we were unable to copy it.

An amazing opportunity came in 2009, when after interviewing actor Hank Jones, he kindly sent us his personal copy of the script! This allowed us to make our first full transcription, which went up on the site shortly afterwards for all to view and download!

In December of 2014, we finally obtained our own copy in an eBay auction from Marvin Paige's estate, which also contained a number of other items found on this page. But that wasn't the end of our quest.

In the Spring of 2020, an east coast bookstore put up another copy of the script on eBay, which contained actual storyboard images showing numerous special effects sequences from the film! And then in Spring of 2023, we obtained the late Johnny Crawford's copy, putting three production copies of film's script in our possession (do you think we have a problem?). Plus, Johnny's script copy had an additional page revision missing from the other copies of the script we had seen!

And then we discovered something...unexpected. In a talk with another fan by the name of Taedis, we learned he had purchased Hank Jones' copy of the script we had seen years before. But, the eBay auction also contained the non-revised pages that were included in the final draft of the script. These pages were usually thrown away given the revisions made, but Hank had kept them, and Taedis kindly sent us scans of them!

This then led to us deciding to do something really incredible for this page. Below, you can download and read the Final Draft of the script as it was originally distributed. Or, you can download and read the Final Draft with page revisions (including the latest page we found from Johnny's script copy!).

We hope you enjoy what we have prepared. This entire endeavor has taken over two months, and we are glad to be able to release it to the public, and our many fans of Village of the Giants.

*IMPORTANT: the scripts are saved in PDF format, and you may need Adobe Acrobat in order to read them*

ORIGINAL AND REVISED SCRIPT PAGES

No film script is perfect. Normally, one will find myriad pages having rewritten dialogue, added/deleted characters, or added story and plot points to make the film more entertaining.

Of the myriad copies of the scripts we've reviewed, almost all of the revised pages were the same, with the follwing exceptions:

-Page 25 in Johnny Crawford's copy of the script was revised on 5-2-65, and printed on yellow paper.

-Page 92 in Hank Jones' copy of the script is the only one we've seen that had a revision made on 4-27-65.

Thanks greatly to Taedis' generous contributions, one can now compare and contrast many of the original pages alongside the rewritten ones, and see just what changed over the course of most of the pre-production finessing.

Clicking into each of the pages below will give you the ability to see the original and re-written pages side-by-side. This is an exciting chance to see what might have been had Bert I Gordon chosen to stick with the original script he and Alan Caillou wrote.