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)

pictures from the early shows 96

The shows I mentioned earlier at the theater at the School of Arts and another club during the first year of college when I had long hair.

Read more

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 hilltop overlooking my neighborhood, La Francia, but what attracted me were stunning Andes mountains perfectly visible further in the distance. This would be the campus of Valeria's liberal arts college. The idea was to shoot the exterior scenes in a spot...Read more

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 an end to the private guitar class he's teaching. Pedro, the eight-year-old student, was actually a gymnastics student of Juan's, our sound/stunts guy. I was pressed for time when I wrote the scrīpt. I didn't question my reasons or de...Read more

War of the Consoles: a new indy hope

I'm writing this intro to remind myself not to fall into a trap. I won't expect any coherence, or continuity out of this space and neither should you. Whatever's going through my mind on a given day at the time I sit at the computer will show up here. I might continue a thread on a project...Read more

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 the film. And of course being here at the epicenter of the industry you'll find plenty of semi-professional actors and capable crews that are willing to work for deferred pay. No such luck in Manizales back then. And we really had no money. What litt...Read more

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 scrīpt, scout a ridiculous amount of locations and most importantly, find our actors in record time. We cast a relatively wide net throughout our whole city, probin...Read more

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 suffered because of that, bu...Read more

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 ...Read more

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 Mixtos of Colcultura, and the ...Read more