"If someone tells you that your work is one of an amateur, remember that amateur built Noah's Ark and professionals the Titanic."

The project development started in Fall of 2001 during which I was striving to find an idea for a low budget long feature film to do my directorial debut. I knew I wanted to do a close set piece, that would require few locations, characters and a restrained time unit; in other term less, less and less equals less costs…

The original plan was to do a full feature film for a shoe’s string budget (around 20 000$) in the same line as Robert Rodriguez, Roman Polanski or Stanley Kubrick all did for their first film. As they all have put it, “the best way to learn directing is to direct”. I had done numerous short features before, and have done many more since, but nothing to help me bring filmmaking from an expensive hobby to a way to make a living.

In the Spring of 2003, I’ve proceeded to write the first draft of the script while doing a Minor in Scriptwriting at UQàM. The First Draft and a few that followed were in French, but as I became aware, probing the Industry production standard, markets, unions and others, an English language movie of this scale would be easier to cast and distribute then a French one.

I’ve proceeded in polishing the script until I was satisfied with it. That is in the early Spring of 2005. At this point I’ve translated the whole script in English and send it to a Script Analyst (John Rainey) in Los Angeles to get a review and annotations. I’ve proceeded to fine tune the story with the advices and comments that I’ve received from him, and then hired him to do a rewrite, before writing a final draft that integrated his rewrite and mine as one ultimate screenplay. The final draft of Totem & Taboo is dated from somewhere in July 2005.

During the 3 years I’ve spent writing the script, I had not been idle, and proceeded in researching and gathering information on all the aspects of film production, from writing, to cinematography, costuming, make up, distribution, similar projects (the WHY of their successes and failures) following workshops, seminars and panels of all types. Because I knew that the technical aspect of the production - due to the nature of the project - would rest primarily on my shoulders, I’ve created a database of technical knowledge that I could refer to for the crafting of the movie (production and all), finding the proper puzzle piece for each of the challenges that the script brought. I basically have been in pre-production for 3 years before starting the real pre-production.

As I’ve gathered data, and as the script completion became ominous, I slowly gathered people around the project; young emerging filmmakers like me who couldn’t find a medium with which to showcase their talents. I proceeded to exchange knowledge with them and discuss of possibilities for the production. During that time, I also accumulated funds since I knew from the start that such an enterprise would need to be privately funded.

During the final rewrites of the Summer of 2005, I first planned to shoot during Fall of 2005. As the rewrites took longer and pre-production proved to be longer then expected, the film was pushed back to July 2006 which has been its final start date. This allowed me and my First A.D to continue preparing the shooting and, as the project grew in size, find better alternatives then first anticipated. One of the reasons the pre-production took so long is that I did all the pre-production and all the breakdowns for all the departments with the only help of my First A.D., minimizing cost and strain on a low paid crew. Near the end of pre-production, I’ve hired a Production Secretary, who later became Script Consultant during Production, to help dampen the flow of things to do and plan.

After my required union application to ACTRA, I began casting non-union with Montreal School Of Performing Arts (M.S.O.P.A.), a well known institution in Montreal’s acting circle. My instinct of translating the script in English proved good, since we had to do a search over Canada, Vermont and New York states to find a non-union actor skilled enough to play the lead character. Casting the Native roles proved tedious and often hazy. We had to research the community and find entryways into them to manage to finish casting during early days of shooting.

I personally invested much of the required funds for the shooting, having my father invest in my production company the rest that was needed. The budget came out to be much more then planned initially when I started the endeavour, but I managed to gather all of it.

The Production was very lucky Location wise. We first planned to shoot near Montréal in such place as Mont St-Bruno or Mont St-Hilaire, but were abash by the high sums required by these places to shoot in. The Production which would have been a nomad one, with lots of movement, finally found a location containing all, even the more complicated elements. This location was an Outfitter (Pourvoirie Waban-Aki) in La Tuque, owned by Native Abénakis of Wolinak who co-produced the movie by renting locations, staff, lodging, infrastructures and services to the Production for a token sum. The Production did one movement to St-Sauveur to shoot some scenes which were impossible to shoot in La Tuque due to geography and vegetation. Some re-shoots were later made in Carignan to complete the shooting and re-shoot some scenes that I was dissatisfied with.

I then entered post-production, in mid-September, after I was able to find additional funds to buy my workstation to edit at home. I have worked on few other projects in the meantime, and had post-production meetings find my Assistant –Editor and the Sound & Music editor/Composer, discussing plan for achieving the directorial vision and financing the rest of the way to completion. After troubleshooting my workstation and digitalising all my footage, I began post-synchronization of sound and image in late December 2006 (75% of the footage was recorded with sound separated from image on a laptop, and the rest was recorded straight into the camera’s XLR channels when conditions proved to extremes to carry clunky sound recording equipment on location).

Since I ran out of money at the end of production, which came out to be full of surprises, some a bit more costly then initially expected, post-production took more time than expected. It is now in its last miles, as this production history gets written, music is putting the final touches to the movie before doing the final mix.