Drinking Problems: The Making of a Silent Short-Film

I'm so proud of this movie. Words can barely describe how wonderful I feel that I helped to make this movie possible. Of course my brother Adam can take the lion's share of the credit; it was his idea after all, he made it possible.

I've never met another thirteen-year old boy who admired the work of Charlie Chaplin so much that he wanted to pay tribute to him in the form of an original black-and-white short-film, yet that's just the kind of guy my brother is.

Origins:

The idea for this film had been simmering in his mind for a long time now, and every so often he used to bug Bettina and me about making it. "Can we do it today? How about tomorrow? Next weekend?" I thought it was cute that he wanted to be make movies again, like we used to do with our "Leslie & Kyle" sock-puppet videos, but for me those days were long gone. We had other, better things to do, like watch other people's internet videos. =p

Production:

Finally my sister and I gave in, and we drove ourselves and Adam to our nearby park to start shooting. We only spent about a half-hour there, due to loss of daylight (it was around sunset at the time), but we had all the footage we would need. A few hours cutting and rearranging video-clips in Adobe Premiere Pro later and it was practically done. The music came last of all, believe it or not. As soon as we played the video along to "Maple Leaf Rag", we all knew it was a perfect match.

What's next?

Hard to say really. After putting the video up on YouTube and sharing it on Facebook, the apparent lack of response seems like an anticlimactic end to this story, though who knows? Perhaps with time will come recognition. All I know for sure is from now on I'll never get that music out of my head, nor will I ever want to. The more I watch the final product of me and my siblings' teamwork, the more I love it.

I hope that whoever reads this will love it too and share this video with anyone who needs a good-natured laugh.