My name is Max Normandin, and I've ALWAYS wanted to be a filmmaker. The problem is, I suffer from panick attacks and a pretty severe case of social phobia. I don't get out of my house often, and I certainly don't surround myself with people. Which makes it pretty darn hard to make movies...
This is the story of how I went ahead a shot a 25min short film all by myself, with no crew, using family members as actors. I don't know if this is unusual or not, but I think the quality of the final product, given the very limited ressources I had, might be uncommon.
When my father passed away last year, he left me a little bit of money. My dad was always very adamant of my filmmaking/screenwriting, and no matter what stupid decisions I made to pursue my dreams (quit college, quit my job, etc) he never lost faith in me and did everything he could to help me reach my goals.
So with the money my dad left me, I purchased a Blackmagic Camera, a couple of lenses and a microphone, and went ahead and started shooting my first short film.
I was so excited by the idea of making this film that I began without a script, which made things a little difficult. Since I have virtually no friends and very little contact with the outside world, I cast my girlfriend in the lead role and my niece as the secondary. My mom and sister also played roles in my film, as well as myself.
Making a movie all by yourself is silly hard, but not impossible. I often had to operate the camera, pull focus and boom at the same time. Often times I would just abandon sound and do everything in post. It certainly involves a lot of foley, ADR and post production.
I shot basically all my ''alone'' scenes by myself, when my grilfriend was at work. I would place a mirror behind the camera to arrange my frame and focus. I even tied a rope to a DIY dolley to pull some camera movements since I had no camera operator. I was filming theses ''alone'' scenes, well, all by myself...
I shot for 5 months, on weekends, mostly at night. A friend of my girlfriend did come out to help on two or three occasions, and I credited him in the movie because he's a great guy. But it's safe to say that 99,99% of the film was made by a single dude.
Basically, the message I want to send out with this film is that if you're really passionate about cinema, just go out there and make a film. You don't need a budget and you don't need a crew lol. I know that sounds ridiculous, but all you need is a little inspiration, alot of determination ?and a WHOLE LOT of patience.
Here's the link to my film:?
Thanks for watching, and I'm hoping you can help my movie garner a little bit of attention.
