We’ve found through this process of assembling the animatic that our original ideas and intentions don’t necessary carry over to the screen as much as we had hoped. One element, a line that Anna hears over and over again in her head through the book: “What do you see?” was cut tonight after a pretty big discussion between Adrian and I. It pained me.

In the novel, there is a big through-line of Anna hearing her father’s voice as she is exposed to and experiences more of the D’ni environment. It’s a question that Anna was introduced to at a very young age (it is implied) and serves as a device to explain how she developed the curiosity and inner-scientist that her character necessitates.

Adrian and I always felt that this through-line was a poorly developed consolation for the fact that the novel lacked a more enriched definition of Anna and her father’s relationship - a relationship that’s pretty much been fully rewritten for the film adaptation. But, I wanted this one element that appears throughout the novel to stay - if for nothing else than to keep alive the connection to something that holds a pretty strong foot hold in lore and resonates with the fans. (In The Book of Atrus, it’s clear that Atrus is also familiar with this phrase, as his grandmother - Anna - passes it along to him).

In the end, I conceded. In reality, the phrase itself didn’t hold a lot of power in the context of the trailer and using it as the opening line (which I fought for incessantly) slowed down the first few seconds and only made sense if you were attached to sentiment from the novel itself. In other words, it did not fit for a general audience.

We’ve found that a lot of things are going to have to be restructured to really have an impact on a general audience, and we’re finding it to be a challenge to not start rewrites (and consequently have Phil develop even more boards based on those rewrites) right away. Sections of the trailer already are too close to Cyan lore and more of a homage than an effective introduction to the story. It’s a hard to find the balance of just enough to let Cyan know we’re staying true while not boring investors and future production staff to tears. This is not for the fans, and we keep on having to remind ourselves of that.

It’s strange when we take breaks from working from time to time. Since we’re living and breathing Myst right now, we can’t help but hit the forums and read through the latest news and quips. A couple of discussions have broken out recently about a movie again - and we so badly want to comment but know that we can’t. We wonder what everyone would say if they knew that something big was trying to be pulled off between a small apartment and a basement in South Bend, IN - and we wonder if seeing our intentions would make the fans think we were hacking things up. It’s tempting to drop hints, but if we’re going to effectively hit Cyan up coming out of nowhere, we can’t let the cat out of the bag.

In the end, we’ve moved to using elements of Eneah’s conversation in the sedan as the opening dialog elements of the trailer. “As a child, I often wondered if there were surface dwellers…”

It seems much more appropriate for the story we’re trying to tell.

3:14 am

tags: animatic, anna, Cyan, d'ni, eneah, fans, storyboarding, the book of atrus, the book of ti'ana, ti'ana