FILM BY MSU GRAD HITS FESTIVAL CIRCUIT

Alumnus Chad Thompson works at Yeah Haus Productions, an animation and design firm, in Ferndale, Mich. 

Last summer, Chad followed his muse and with the help of his family and friends wrote and directed a short film called Victor. It's making the festival rounds now. He wrote about his creative process, described below, on his website:

“Victor is my first proper short film, and Yeah Haus’ first live-action production. We shot it over a couple summer days and did all of the post, FX, music, sound, and color over the following year. 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 purely artistic purposes. 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 and finally chose to follow his instinctual need to create because it made him and others happy. I myself am prone to needing a really good reason to put so much energy into something.

"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 offered his pontoon boat to shoot the tugboat scenes on. Thirty friends 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. My wife, brother and I figured out how to make props out of styrofoam and wood. Our locations even-- we found the lakehouse via Airbnb, and then the homeowner Tim (who was cast as the Gnome) mentioned he also owned a home and garden business, so we went over there and found so many great locations that jived with the script!"

Catch Victor online.