‘Victor’
**Award-Winning VIDEO**
Chad Thompson
Yeah Haus
“For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Victor is a short film about imagination, solitude and the sometimes blindfolded quest for happiness.
This whimsical journey follows Victor, a peculiar man who has some interesting ideas about how to make friends. With an optimistic plan and a few technological tricks, Victor shows that sometimes all you need is a little help to notice what’s been right in front of you all along.
Victor is my first proper short film, and Yeah Haus’ first live action production. We shot it over a couple summer days.
It’s hard to express how blissful and lucky I felt shooting this —I’m not totally sure why it was such a big deal, but life gets busy and somewhere along the line I hadn’t done anything in awhile for artistic purposes.
I myself am prone to needing a really good reason to put so much energy into something.
Of course with most things that don’t have a clear reason, things become clear throughout the process. I just had no idea it would be as gratifying as making this film with friends and family.
It was done without a budget. I kept the tradition of casting my brother Keith (as Mr. Angry). My wife Michelle is in the band and helped with pre- and post production doing everything. My friend played Victor. Along with storyboarding, filming and editing, I wrote the music score.
There are many stories – Don’t have a dolly? Well how about an electric golf cart with a makeshift pedestal on the back. The neighbor of the lakehouse we shot at freely offered his pontoon boat to shoot the tugboat scenes on.
30 friends from all facets of my life just showed up on short notice for our dinner scene with their costumes already on. An old high school marching band friend dug into one of the back storage rooms of our high school to find some 1970s era band hats and uniforms to use. My wife, brother and I figured out how to make props out of Styrofoam and wood.
Our locations even worked out – we found the lakehouse via Airbnb. Then the homeowner, Tim– who was cast as the Gnome– mentioned he also owned a Home & Garden business, so we went over there and found so many great locations that jived with the script!
In some ways my role in making the film paralleled the underlying themes of Victor.
In my mind, Victor had a whole life before this day. He finally chose to follow his instinctual need to create because it made him and others happy.
Funny how life is like that. It just works out.
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