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 of our teachers, who was "checking in on the equipment". Whenever I couldn't hear him, he told the cast and crew there was no way the movie could get done. He criticized me by comparing me to Fellini (I'm serious, in his mind, this was a big insult, apparently) and discouraged my team from continuing. I think he already regretted lending us the equipment and wanted it back in time for the real, official student projects to get shot. With the exception of the then cinematographer, everyone remained loyal. This guy hadn't read the scrīpt but after the teacher's "constructive" visit, he proceeded to contradict directorial decisions and fight for different ideas which had nothing to do with the screenplay I wrote. If unacceptable under normal circumstances, this situation was even worse taking into account the amount of set ups we had ahead of us in the remaining two days of the shoot. Said DP failed to show up after that and that meant that everyone else, including the cast, had to take turns doing the camera work. It wasn't until I was literally holding the statuettes we had received on an award show that this person felt he should approach me to try to make up. The other two crew members, Liana and Juan, who you can see in the pictures posted yesterday, along with cast members Cata, Pato and Borda went way out of their way to make Idle Mist happen. Missed classes, sleep, worked for insane hours, for free, even pitched in, every now and then. Through this mutual struggle, they became my closest friends. As for the teacher, he was never a clear-cut villain. It was he who submitted the film to the aforementioned competition after witnessing a successful screening. I later found out that after the short started generating attention, the university that refused to officially endorse its production was, unbeknownst to me, using its footage as a recruiting tool. But all this is truly not important in the face of a real life tragedy which was soon to come.