Idle Mist Prologue / From College To Film

Did your father or mother ever tell you: "You might not understand it now, but one day you will and you'll thank me"?

Well, my childhood was full of those, and it irked the heck out of me. To a stubborn and cocky know-it-all kid, that line seemed the most illogical and lazy way to bluff yourself out of an argument. Well, now I am no longer "young enough to know everything" (Oscar Wilde's words) and guess what, my mom turned out to be right just about every time.

She never bought me a bicycle, and at the time I couldn't comprehend why my little stunts and two fractures in borrowed bikes would be enough to deter her.

She and my dad talked me into going to college even though I knew I wanted to draw comics since I was seven. I used to think anything else would be distracting.

Sometimes in College, we did participate in marches against the privatization of our public university, but mostly, I constantly fought the establishment for less noble reasons, I felt held back and was simply trying to do my own thing. I wasted a long time getting unrelated stuff out of the way while devouring the knowledge that I truly craved at home, out of books I independently sought out. The place didn't seem to be so edifying at the time, I learned about doing the things I loved the most by doing them on my own time... BUT I don't know whether I would have ever gotten into film if it wasn't for College. I might have, but what I know for certain is that to me, it happened in college, when I was ripe for a medium through which I could blend my visual fascination with my love for music, photography and movement. It wasn't so much what was being taught, it was simply having exposure and access to these endeavors that made all the difference. I'd been writing music for years, but was dying to explore rhythm and pacing, through a directly controlled time frame in different more visual ways. In the first semester I got to use live action onstage, projected photography and live music to tell a story that was part of the Vana Espuma thread. Other possibilities were obviously evident in film as well. I discovered what I wanted was to tell stories, and in film I could also use music and photography to that end.

Because of my wandering mind, always moving in all directions I often need deadlines to get myself focused on something. So it wasn't until I had a sort of assignment that I took my first serious step into the world of film. To be Continued...