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 seams in what I could see would be a rushed and chaotic shoot, but then it hit me, that was exactly what my story was about. Reality coming undone. Getting a glimpse of what lies beneath what we normally perceive. The idea wasn't new, the Vana Espuma comic itself was meta-fictional, but when I was translating that concept for the film medium it allowed me push, to downright expose, what I would've had a hard time repressing, our shortcomings.

Once that possibility became evident, the whole scrīpt just flew. In fact, those concepts also evolved in my mind into what is now Waking Shadows, and a more intimate story I've written since.

Sometimes we writers take the maxim "Write what you know" too literally. What about fantasy, and sci-fi? Action and horror? The answer for me lies in the fact that we know in many different ways, in many different levels. We learn not only from our lives but other people's as well, from history, from our environment, we know emotionally and intellectually, and if we grow up reading mysteries or pulp fiction, for example, we can make our way down those dark alleys like we do through our own neighborhood. We learn from imagination, from our deep connection to a myriad of basic human responses, to a long forgotten past that still survives in our genetic make up. We know what we believe. We can glean archetypes from our everyday struggles. Myths, and their more intimate reflections, live through us.