Quick note on Vana Espuma DVDs

Dear Lisbeth, Boris, Tommy and all the people requesting signed Vana Espuma copies.... Thanks for your patience. Every request made is being recorded and will be addressed.
Best wishes,
A.

Idle Mist: The 1996 Vana Espuma comic

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 Ministry of Culture in Colombia. I was sixteen and their critical and financial contribution as well as my dad's input at this time were highly influential in the path my professional life would take. While in College I kept trying to steer projects into the direction I wanted to follow and sometimes I got away with getting graded on them and some times I didn't. In 1998 we were encouraged to propose ideas to be shot by the whole class as five minute shorts. I couldn't help myself and wrote a 45 minute screenplay that required multiple locations, stunts, and special effects. I should've known better, but now I'm glad I didn't. The class, wisely, or/and lazily, decided to stick to the five minute shorts which would be more easily done in the few days they had with the equipment. I decided I'd still do the film, enlisted a couple of loyal and brave friends, and was relentless in the pursuit of some time with the camera and the editing suite. The teacher allowed me to have the equipment for the three days on which it wasn't being used for the real class projects as long as I accepted the fact that I wouldn't be graded on my film because after all, it was NOT a school project, it was a favor. I couldn't care less for grades so off we went. It's funny to think back on how dependent we felt on that "favor" since editing on laptops has become so incredibly easy and digital cameras have become so cheap. But we didn't have the money or the resources, back then so we thought of those three days as the end-all be-all of our film-making opportunities.

To be continued...

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, but I wasn't trying to be commercial, I was following the internal logic of the piece, which by its very nature was highly subjective and disorienting. To this day I think that the often over-simplistic take on screen-writing structure that is widely taught might be somewhat obvious, overdone and limiting. First off, you don't have to try to write a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. These three movements are so ingrained in our psyche that they are the instant default. They are the most likely stages to be found in anything you write whether good or bad. If anything, the challenge would be to try to write a story that works as well, or better without a beginning, a middle or an end. Structure is extremely important, but it must organically developed in accordance with the specific nature of each work, not the other way around. Sometimes I think some of the screenwriting gurus make their money out of selling the same two-bedroom, one-story house floor plans to people who might want to build castles, parks or tunnels. But what about the F.L. Wrights, the Le Corbusiers, the Gaudis (this last one my personal favorite) of screenwriting?
By no means do I want to compare myself to these great architects. I simply wish to point out that although there are certain elements you need to be familiar with (yes one needs to understand concepts such as "wall", "window" and "door", for example, and the effect that dimensions, light and weight will have on the visitors and inhabitants of your building,) but one shouldn't feel trapped in a one-size fits all approach to writing.
Feel free to devise the structure that best suites the needs of that particular story. That might require more vision and work, but so did Fallingwater.

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 script 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.

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 wide net throughout our whole city, probing colleges and art schools, growing desperate by the hour. We needed, not just the right guy, but someone who could believably front a band and play the guitar as the male lead. I was initially pushing for someone I saw on campus who looked just like my drawing of the character on the comicbook. Not a very good reason for favoritisms I soon found out. Someone I was dating, whose personality I can see in retrospect could have matched the part, decided on her own to cut and dye her hair just like the main character, but our relationship was ending and afraid that this would bring more complications to the set, I never auditioned her.
I had to find the right "Valeria". She was the heart of the story. But we weren't having any luck. One part we'd cast before we started was the silent role of "Shade", the mysterious cat-like creature. The role demanded extreme acrobatic agility and we knew just the man for the job, Juan, one of my best friends and one third of our crew. Juan had long been competing as a gymnast but was handling props, stunts, set dressing, sound and a variety of other functions in our team. He was also the only one we could have gotten to let us put all that unhealthy regular paint all over his body!
Liana, one of my absolute best friends at the time and the remaining third of our crew was handling the multiple roles of line producer, assistant director, casting director, script girl, etc etc...
She and I were getting desperate trying to find our actors and on the verge of our deadline we went to an acting school which was also the headquarters of an interesting theater troupe. We were after the main man, Carlos Augusto, the director, a teacher and also an actor that had impressed me with a recent show during the International Theater Festival. He ended up playing the shrink, and we'll get into that, but the most important thing that day was that on our way up to his office we walked past Catalina Gallo. Liana and I looked at each other and when Catalina came in, briefly and gently interrupting our meeting with our "Shrink". When we saw them interact something instantly clicked: we both blurted out an invitation to the last day of auditions.
All our hopes were crushed for Cero, the main lead, when actors failed to show up, and the one I was rooting for only looked the part. After his audition, he left the room and Liana and I were shaking heads, wondering what we were going to do with no time, and no one else left to audition for this crucial role. We had no other option, she said. I should give it a shot: I had the added benefit of knowing all the lines, the song, and we could count on me to show up. It was true, I admitted, but I was also already going to be wearing too many hats on the set. What the hey, I gave it a shot and left it up to them too choose from the tapes. That's how I ended up on film, completely distracted, exhausted and obviously more focused on something else, directing. This experience did give me a greater appreciation for acting. I never had any interest in acting before having to plunge into the middle of the action, but it was kind of fun and it could be even more so, and more productive, under different conditions.
I was, however, still feeling like the last audition day was a disaster until Patricia Salazar, a.k.a Pato, our past "Valeria" favorite contender, showed up and did a good reading. Then Catalina came in and knocked it out of the park. I asked Patricia to come back in and read for the other part of Camila, Valeria's friend. After talking to her, it had became apparent that she resembled Camila much more than the people we'd brought in with that character in mind. Patricia sat down and read with Catalina and sparks were flying. There they were, "Valeria and Camila", those fictitious people I knew so well, naturally behaving as the closest of friends, even when the two actresses had never met each other before. I'll never forget that moment. Thank you both.

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 little we had we spent on tapes and cabs. Our crew hadn't touched a camera before. Neither of my two friends had even owned a handycam. And I, who had, was going to be acting as well, which prevented me from operating most of the time. Initially, our crew consisted of four people, not three. But the fourth member, originally our cinematographer, stopped showing up, so his duties had to be taken over by the remaining members of the group, sometimes even the actors themselves. That would've been a disaster unto itself but we kept with it because I was hoping that the main theme of the story could actually be better expressed through an unpolished look which could help create another level: A metafictional perspective. Out of necessity came the idea that an alienation effect such as Brecht's, when used not only in the acting, but the complete cinematic approach on this movie, could alter the audience's perception and make them self-aware, which could deepen the point the movie was trying to make. If you've seen the film, you know what I'm babbling about.
Knowing the secret at the end of the story was what helped me think of possible uses for the massive amount of obstacles we would encounter.

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 script. I didn't question my reasons or decisions and simply pushed through to the end on instinct alone. But now, in retrospect, I can clearly see the obvious reasoning behind some of the scenes. This early one in particular was meant to give an instant glimpse into Cero's day-to-day life, reveal his carefree, good-natured character and set up a pivotal concert scene with just a few lines and movement.
The end of this scene, like a lot of the early shots of the movie, opens up to establish the world where the story takes place. After gathering up the courage to ask Cero to sneak him into his show, Pedro runs to the window and screams his idea to Cero but it's too late. The engine of Polo's jeep drowns Pedro's voice and he can only watch Cero waving goodbye from the passenger seat.

As the car disappears in the distance we get a view of Palermo, an upscale neighborhood where most kids who went to my private school lived in. My dad also lived in Palermo and it was his apartment that doubled for Valeria's, a main location of the film. I don't remember when I said "action" for the first time or anything like that. I was on camera and since we were out of time and needed to move on to the next location, I couldn't check on what we were getting. I was afraid of the tyrannical pitfalls of directing and hadn't struck that all-important balance of creative compromise when time is running out. I was unsatisfied as we shot this first scene, but felt too green to "impose" my will on the crew. Never again I thought, but in next few days I might have gone too far the other way. To be continued...

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 where I had often found myself reading, in a place where we could glimpse the beautiful geography of central Colombia. But since we're located close to the equator, our weather is unpredictable and it turned out to be foggy that day. So nothing was visible from my favorite spot and we wouldn't be able to return with the camera. I was dissapointed at first but soon realized it actually worked best for the mood and theme we were going for. Later on, when Tigris Films approached me about worldwide distribution for Vana Espuma, this shot inspired the English title. Vana Espuma is the original name I had also previously used for the comic book. It was the translation given to Freud's German word Schaum (froth or spume), on a Spanish version of his book On Dreams. (I think the translator was using an expresion first used by Lope de Vega on his 1612 play Fuente Ovejuna [vv.899-907]) In his introduction Freud mentioned that most of his colleagues had dismissed his pioneering work on the unconscious, claiming that dreams were "merely froth". But what if the same could be said about day to day reality? I decided to use Vana Espuma as an ironic title, because I was taking a view directly opposite to that of Freud's contemporaries. I later found out, mine was a Cartesian take on reality. "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep" as Shakespeare would say.
"Idle Mist" seemed an appropriate metaphor for the world in which these characters, our shadows and reflections on a stage, struggled to exert their identity, their existence even. Siddhartha Gautama, the awakened, had put it this way: "Think this about the fleeting world. A star at dawn, a bubble in the stream".

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 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 script 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.

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 thread that intersected and eventually collided with the main plot line. These two are the first of at least four layers of reality addressed in the story. As reflections multiply and one world breaks into another, the rift causes the characters to question the nature of their own reality, and a chain reaction is possible but the last two layers of reality depend heavily on audience participation. As fictional characters arrive at the end of their universe and stare into the abyss, they get a chance to awaken to a reality beyond their previously limited perception, and their answer is a question directed at you: Is there a fourth wall for you to break?
The end is an existential affirmation. The characters we've gotten to know don't cease to exist, they awaken. They are forever transformed. They are like the philosopher who steps out of Plato's cave and is momentarily blinded by the brightness of the truth.
But none of this is obvious, because my story about parallel worlds and multiple perspectives wasn't meant to have one answer. Slight variations in the interpretations of particular events have led some in the audience to come up with other, perfectly valid interpretations. Most are within the realm of what I wanted to say, and it's satisfying to see the variety and cunning of some of these approaches. Even though, I feel mystery is fertile ground for discovery, I wasn't worried at the time about how implicit or explicit these ideas were on the page. I was basically enjoying myself. I enjoy being a participant in the stories I read or watch and derived enormous pleasure the works of Borges, Cortazar, Bioy Caseres, Joyce, Ionesco, Fellini, or Bergman who allow me to read between the lines, and plunge beneath the surface.

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 holding the camera some times. I only had to put my self in danger once. Since we didn't have many vehicles and could not stop traffic, to get the shot of Cero getting run over, I had to simply walk into the busy Santander highway in Manizales.

Idle Mist X: Concert scene

I actually played a different song on-stage than the one you hear in the film when you see the footage.
It was a split decision in post to use a different song I had just recorded... an interesting editing challenge.

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 apartment. They put up with a lot from me over there. Months before I'd brought the chamber orchestra to rehearse and record something I wrote to his living room. Fortunately, he seemed to like it but here I was again with plenty of scenes to shoot in their main bedroom for example. I took some of the sex out of the story, and I'm glad...
Whenever my then girlfriend, an open-minded artist, joined me in a screening of the film, she would elbow me in the arm every time things got physical between Cero and Valeria. Maybe it was to avoid future bruising that I had trimmed some racy scenes down during editing.

Although the white haired man Cero bumps against after waking up was actually Liana's father, the woman that sees Cero stumbling on the street, wasn't acting. She looked over her shoulder and afraid pulled her son away from me, probably thinking I was a junky coming down or something. She didn't see any crew because by then the crew was only Liana (line producer etc) who was holding the camera from the balcony of a nearby building.

In the the confrontation scene between Valeria and the doctor, those phones you hear ringing repeatedly in the background were from the secretary to the real doctor whose office we were using. Some of his patients had arrived and they where waiting while our only professional actor struggled to remember his lines in a pivotal scene in the film. To top it off, the teacher made his last appearance to rush us, claim the equipment and cleverly pointed out how we were making a mistake by showing certain reflections, the lights, and tripods and I had to waste precious time showing him the script and explaining how they fit into the story. I don't think he got it until he saw the finished film.

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 first attempts at composing and scoring music and always seemed happy to lend a hand and play in my audio-visual events.
Memo, a good friend, also played in one of Vana Espuma's live onstage incarnations, and along with Tracy played the score for another live/still photography experiment I wrote called "El Silencio en Los Muros" (The Silence on the Walls).
I had every intention of collaborating with them on the Idle Mist short film soundtrack and wrote a theme for us all of us to record. Unfortunately, I soon got too caught up with the whole process of preproduction and production and couldn't schedule more than one very short recording session with each of them during one of the late nights after shooting. I could only arrange for Memo to play the violin over some tracks of guitar effects I recorded for the dream/comicbook realm... and Tracy only got to play the oboe on the main theme. I knew we wouldn't have any real post production time, so I ended up recording most of the music by myself on a keyboard and an electric guitar through the only couple of hours I had allotted my self for sleep during the the production of the short. I cast Borda, my friend and bass player, in a similar role in the movie so we recorded a couple of songs live in a bar, so that we could use them on the film. After shooting on those grueling three days, I remember going home to record and mix the music on my old four-track Tascam so that it could be ready in time for the couple of days I'd have on the editing suite. Later this almost improvised pieces would be also be reprised live. In the end I would have to leave the editing suite sooner than expected to make room for the student projects, so finishing a cut of the movie was and adventure in itself...

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 filmmaking itself, which was, in part, the subject of the work... The nexus between dreaming and creative work and the dichotomy between art and the objective perception of the world.
When our time in the university's editing suite was cut short to allow for the school films to make use the institution's equipment, we were politely removed and had to look for another place to finish up. With no funds, I was extatic to find out that the sister of one of our actors worked in a local news channel. At around 2 am I was snuck in and allowed to secretly use the station's equipment to finish putting together the Idle Mist film.

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, scene V):

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

(Shakespeare's words also gave me the idea for the title of my trilogy in progress: WAKing Shadows)

The other chapter titles of Idle Mist:

The world, a fleeting image on the moving water.
Eugene Ionesco

There are no facts, only interpretations.
Nietzsche

If I am deceived I am.
Agustinus

To Be is to be Perceived.
Berkeley

The abyss gazes also into you.
Nietzsche

We our thoughts we make the world.
Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

Idle Mist XIX: Award Show Controversy

The teacher who didn't allow us to shoot Vana Espuma as a student film (fortunately, it meant I kept all the rights to it) and who was a pain in the ass throughout the shoot witnessed the enthusiastic response the film received in its first screenings and decided without our knowledge to enter it into an award competition on our behalf. We only found out days before the ceremony when we were notified we had been nominated for all major awards. I wasn't much into dressing up or taking things too seriously so we showed up in jeans and t-shirts... Vana Espuma t-shirts, though. We were stopped at the entrance and as elegant and eminent people walked past us we had to explain we were had been nominated. Finally the guy at the door called his superior who called someone else who came, saw our t-shirts, and rushed us in! It seems he already knew we'd have to accept the major awards on stage: Best Film, Best Screenplay and Catalina's Best Actress award.
Here are some pictures from the event and a better view at the t-shirt as modeled by my little brother Nico who isn't so little anymore.

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 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 storyboards

These are the storyboards for an alternative beginning for the Vana Espuma/Idle Mist film. I enjoyed writing and drawing them because they offered a taste of what was to come and showed how these dreams were breaking into their waking reality. The killings depicted here made it into the film but I didn't use the framing device of Valeria writing, because back then it was a red herring. These glimpses of the murders were flashfowards that appeared connected to her writing, but turned out to be Cero's prophetic nightmares. The idea of Valeria writing what would happen stuck and was one of the forking paths that would lead me to write Waking Shadows.

If you have or download the free shockwave player you can see an animated version of these storyboards: (see the bottom of the post) Go to... www.wakingshadows.com , head to the Visions page and you'll find three oval buttons on the right... Click on the middle one.