Lancaster resident and local history buff John Schumacher-Hardy waited in the sunshine in the meadow. He was at the site of the old Rowlandson garrison, where the Reverend and Mrs. Joseph and Mary Rowlandson lived more than 350 years ago. He adjusted his mike and, as directed, counted backward from five as filmmaker Aaron Cadieux adjusted his shot.

“This is weird,” Schumacher-Hardy admitted. “I should have brought friends and pretended I was giving a tour.”

“It’s hard to script documentaries,” Cadieux said. “You’re doing fine.”

And despite his nervousness, when the camera was rolling, Schumacher-Hardy ad-libbed a nearly flawless description of the attack on the garrison by a band of Nashaway Indians.

“It’s serene today but if we had been here on Feb. 10, 1676, we would have an entirely tragic and opposite view,” he said.

By the time the attack was over, 13 had been killed and 24 were captured, including Mrs. Rowlandson and her three children, one of whom was fatally wounded.

The Rowlandson story is one part of King Philip’s War, the subject of “The First Patriots,” a documentary currently being filmed by Cadieux. King Philip, also known as Metacomet, was the son of Massasoit, the Wampanoag Indian who helped the Pilgrims through their first winter in the new world, and his life and the war waged under in his name has long been an interest of Cadieux’s.

Cadieux’s Web site, bigoperations.com, calls the film “a tribute to the brave Native Americans who rose up against the English in 1675 and 1676.” The film will offer a detailed chronology of the war and the relationship between the colonists and the Indians, beginning in 1620 and ending with King Philip’s death Aug. 12, 1676, when he was betrayed and shot by one of his own war party.

Cadieux hoped to have the film completed in the fall of 2008 and to then offer screenings across New England, including one in Central Mass.

Cadieux has been making movies since he was kid, and said his company’s name has been around since he was in the sixth grade.

“I did films with friends and the company was B.O.,” he said. “Then, to be more respectable, it changed to Big Operations.”

Cadieux is a graduate of Fitchburg State College, where he majored in communications with a concentration in video production. It was there he began making documentaries. His “A Time to Reflect: A History of Whalom Park” won the LaCoy Documentary Award (co-winner) and was featured at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.

“Most film students think they’re going to be the next Spielberg,” he said. “Some of them are delusional. You have to have realistic goals and expectations for yourself. I picked Whalom Park because of the accessibility and the tactile experience — and I could actually go on the grounds.”

“Part of the reason I want to make this film is that it’s a local, accessible topic, and along the way I’ve met a lot of people who have the same passion for what I’m doing,” he said.

Still, Cadieux comes by his interest honestly — he grew up in Dartmouth, which was destroyed during the war.

“My father is a history teacher, so I was familiar with King Philip at a young age,” Cadieux said. “It is the probably the most neglected subject matter in the New England School system. … This conflict, per capita, is the bloodiest in U.S. history, and students say, “Who’s that, a British King?”

Cadieux’s interest is certainly shared by Schumacher-Hardy, and also by Ken Richardson, a friend of Cadieux’s who has been volunteering his assistance during filming.

Richardson has been so helpful, Cadieux said, he might end up with an assistant director credit.

“I was reading about King Philip about a year before I met Aaron and I was taking my kids to the various King Philip sites,” Richardson said. “We went to a couple of places in Central Falls [R.I.] and in the Blackstone Valley. … We went to King Philip’s seat in Rhode Island. In the middle of the woods, there are cliffs, and about eight feet up there’s an indent. That’s where he lived at the end of the war. This history is still all there.”

One of Cadieux’s goals is to examine the political climate and cultural differences which led up to King Philip’s War.

“The whole concept of land sale was misunderstood,” he said. “From the native perspective, they thought of it as a leasing, but didn’t understand it meant they didn’t have rights. They would sign contracts and then the colonists would change them.”

Schumacher-Hardy believed the effects on the war are felt even today.

“People are amazed to find out… [the settlers and Indians] lived next to each other,” Schumacher-Hardy said. “They were very intimately acquainted and dependant upon each other in many ways. King Philip’s war changed the face of Native American relations. It festered into a boil over and we never really recovered from it.”

For more information on the movie, including the trailer, visit www.bigoperations.com. Christine Quirk can be reached at mothertown@cnc.com.