Posts
AugustAug 29 Wednesday 07
Idle Mist and Waking Shadows precursors
These are drawings of some of the thinkers whose views I feel are connected to the philosophies behind Vana Espuma, Idle Mist and Waking Shadows.
Idle Mist XX: The Cat Unleashed
I didn't expect such warm reception to the film, much less that many of the --- ----------detractors to the filmmaking process would switch sides. But so it was, and interest rose for a follow up.
Idle Mist XIX: Award Show Controversy
The teacher who didn't allow us to shoot Vana Espuma as a student film (thank you, I wouldn't own the rights otherwise!) and was a pain in the ass throughout witnessed the enthusiastic response the film received in its first screenings and decided without our knowledge …
Idle Mist: Chapter Quotes
During editing I also added the quotes that appear at the beginning of each chapter in Vana Espuma.
Here they are, as requested...
There's a chapter title in Vana Espuma that combines Plato's parable of the cave with Shakespeare's Macbeth (here's a bit more from act V, …
Idle Mist XI: Confused spectators, onset nemesis, jealous gf and other trivia
My dad had a bit part in the classroom scene that I had to cut. To this day he hasn't forgiven me for it. It was in editing that I decided to make this a time-warp scene, to hint at how reality in the film was coming undone.
The breakfast scene was shot at my dad's …
Idle Mist XII : Music Out of Time
A few years before Idle Mist, I had written a couple of pieces of music that were played by several members of the Manizales Chamber Orchestra. Memo, the lead violinist/conductor, and Tracy, the Oboist, often collaborated in my musical enterprises. They put up with my …
Idle Mist XIII: illegal Editing
When the cameras were taken away we still had a couple of scenes to go, so we rented a cheaper camera for the last couple of scenes. I figured the grittier look and the change of format could be used to bringing a bit of a consciousness to metafictional framework oo the …
Idle Mist X: Concert scene
Knowing we had not time to record the band's songs in post we attempted to record them live in a bar with a real audience.
Idle Mist part IX: Walking into Harm's Way
Since we didn't have stuntmen or a special effects department, Juan, who played the Shade, the transgenic feline character, had to actually climb walls and leap from rooftops, decked out in black paint, make up and the claws he made attached to his hands. All this while …
Idle Mist: Beneath the Surface
In Idle Mist, Ciro is the author of the Vana Espuma comicbook, and that reality is intruding into his waking life. I used a different language, exploiting the power of the static comicbook image, to develop a story that wasn't exactly parallel, but rather a twisting …
Idle Mist VIII: Lurid Tales of Intrusion and Betrayal
Originally there were three other crew members other than me involved in the Vana Espuma short, not two. But on that first of three days of shooting conflict ensued. Since we were shooting at the Bellas Artes university campus, we momentarily endured the company of one …
Idle Mist: Cast and crew pictures
Notice the Vana Espuma t-shirts (drawings from the comicbook, more later).
Catalina Gallo (Valeria), Patricia Salazar (Camila), J.D. Borda (Polo)
Idle Mist part V: Alienation Effect
We were penniless, understaffed, out of time and completely inexperienced. My crew of friends weren't even interested in film-making. You see, in LA if you talk about an ultra-low budget film, people still assume you had a few tens of thousands of dollars to invest int …
Idle Mist part VI: The first Shot
Borda, a highschool friend and the bass player who I most often collaborated with, played Polo ("Bud" in Waking Shadows). He was also nice enough to let us use his family's apartment for the first scene we shot for the film. We find Cero, played by yours truly, putting …
Idle Mist VII: The Title Shot
The next scene was shot at Bellas Artes, the Caldas University's school of Music and Arts. I had played some of my scores with the chamber orchestra on one of the stages there, and had also put up some projected/live action shows at their theater. The building lies on a …
Idle Mist part IV: Casting
To make use of the equipment the university was lending us as a favor we had to rush into preproduction with a first and extremely rough draft of a script, scout a ridiculous amount of locations and most importantly, find our actors in record time. We cast a relatively …
Idle Mist part III / Mythmaking
Although I was completely unrealistic and wrote a story that required a ridiculous amount of locations and effects I did find a way to use the mistakes I knew would arise, to make them a part of the story.
At first, I was very worried about reality showing through the …
Idle Mist genesis part II / Writing
When I wrote Vana Espuma, the comic, and Idle Mist, the film, I was going purely on instinct, writing with no other ambition than to enjoy myself. I didn't consider clarity or attempted to follow any structural parameters. In someone else's eyes, the work may have …
Idle Mist genesis part I
To this day most of the emails I get have to do with Vana Espuma. I've been meaning to write more in depth about it at some point so we might as well get it out of the way.
Idle Mist, as I mentioned before, started life as Vana Espuma, a comicbook endorsed by the Fondos …
