neat.

The problem with making a pilot that’s constrained to 6 minutes is, you have to establish the world and everyone’s dynamic in a very short time. So I had to write dialog that would lay out a map between the father, the daughter, the brother(s), the unknown mother, the mentor/friend, and the mysterious God being. The dialog had to be as efficient and direct as possible. I widdled down that dialog for a year, until each line was able to convey both an immediate goal, as well as insight into the larger motivations of the characters. Everything had to be implying a larger world – so by not answering certain questions or leaving certain aspects opaque, I was setting things up for future, more personal episodes. I could see how you would observe a lack of subtlety because there wasn’t time for any. The dialog also was very direct and usually leaning towards broad and iconic, because of the road map I was trying to set up in 6 minutes. I disagree about there not being a struggle. There were like 6 major struggles going on: Duty vs. passion, sibling rivalry, empire vs. natives, traditional morality vs. personal philosophical understanding of violence, physical courage vs. courage of the soul, and a general struggle of unconsciously attempting to lift the veil of material reality.

It’s cool man, not everything I work on is going to resonate with everyone. I don’t want to apologize for my work either. The opacity of the show definitely was intentional – especially for the main character who is struggling to deny/understand her own feelings toward herself and other living beings. Anyway – it would have been cool to make more, so people could’ve seen where it would go with the characters, but that doesn’t seem to be on the table.