Well, I’ve never been much of one for journals, but some things have been happening that Patrick has suggested warrant my taking up the habit.

It looks like we’re about to embark on a bit of a project, and it seems like it may be prudent to document it for posterity’s sake. I’m not sure if this is going anywhere, but okay…

About a month ago, Christmas night to be exact, I went over to Patrick’s to hang out after the family things were all said and done. We ended up sitting down in front of his computer to play a bit of the Myst sequel, Riven. We got to talking and Patrick started to recap the stories of the games and the novels.

I must admit, he had mentioned the novels to me back in ‘99 when I was still living in Pasadena, but I only got as far as walking into Vroman’s Bookstore and finding the only book of the three that they had. It was a solitary copy of The Book of D’ni. I bought it and it proceeded to sit on my shelf and has since been lost in the move. Never got around to reading it.

Anyway, he started to tell me about all of this lore that surrounded the games and these novels and the D’ni, and the more he talked, the more fascinated I became. The stories had this epic quality that was totally exciting. I think the fact that we were sitting in front of the immersive world of Riven may have had something to do with this, but suddenly we were talking about how it would be awesome if Patrick could eventually realize this dream of making movies out of Myst.

So that was pretty much it. I got tired. I left. But something stuck with me.

The following week was so painfully slow at work. RV production shuts down around the holidays and those of us that supply those companies with materials suddenly find ourselves sitting in our offices with absolutely nothing to do but surf the Internet and read screenplays on triggerstreet.com…well, that’s what I was doing anyway. In my boredom, I starting thinking about Myst again. Something pretty special happened while I was sitting there. I got the urge to write. I haven’t written a word since the month after I moved back here and I was not feeling terribly motivated to ever write again, but then this came along. I wrote this rather sparse monologue based on what information I did know for certain in my limited knowledge of Myst.

“I now fear that the same form of madness that has gripped my father Gehn now turns its gaze toward my two sons.”

(I’d have to dig up the rest on my hard-drive, and to be perfectly honest, I’m feeling entirely too lazy to do that right now.)

So, I wrote this and that night I showed it to Patrick. He thought it sounded quite a bit like Atrus and that it was cool. We talked more about how great these movies would be and that was that.

About three days ago, I was at my father’s house and I was just hanging out and something came to me. I started to wonder if maybe we should be looking into this Myst thing a little bit more. I was wondering why Patrick should wait for this “someday” to come. I thought maybe we should think about making a short film based on Myst and send it to Cyan. Maybe we could convince them that we can make a great film.

Patrick thought I was crazy. I am. It is a crazy idea. He originally laughed, but then we started talking about it. This lead to a four hour brainstorming session at the end of which we were both completely inspired and absolutely determined to try to do this thing.

Yesterday, I sat down and wrote a 10 page draft of a short film about Aitrus and Veovis riding to K’veer in a boat and talking about the nature of “The Art”. We had all of these visual ideas that we had talked about in our little pipedreaming session and I just dumped them all into a script. I took it to Patrick tonight. He loved it. I think we’re going to make a short film about Myst. “Passage to K’veer”

10:05 pm

tags: passage to k'veer