Hi everybody, this is Mauricio Vargas writing and I'm really exited to share soon with you my next project. For now I'm gonna talk a little bit about it.

The Awakening is a short film that was born from an idea that came to my mind precisely when I was waking up in a saturday morning, probably I still had my head on the pillow with my eyes closed when I thought:

"What if someone wakes up and is not who he or she remembers to be? What if something happened while that person was unconscious and is no longer the same? What could it be?"

It occurred to me the idea of making a short film about someone who wakes up feeling different. A confused person trying to feel normal but finds out that is not anymore.

I thought it was something simple, so I got up from bed, wrote the idea in 5 lines and went immediately with my sister who was still in bed and asked her if she wanted to star in my short film; fortunately she said yes. A few minutes later I contacted a friend to help me and then I planned to start shooting the next day.

   I began writing and producing in a few hours with a budget of around 50 bucks and making tests to achieve some simple digital and practical effects.

  The next day, I spent the morning getting ready and by the afternoon, we started production in my friend's house. Just like other times, besides being my part to be the director, producer and writer, I was also in charge of make up and wardrobe, staff, cameraman, lighting and got really dirty (you'll understand why when you see the short film). The good thing though, and to relief for me was that my friend and my other sister helped in the role of: reflectors! They were really useful, being that there aren't a lot of things that you can do at the same time.
  We finished on the night and had dinner, I came back home to check the video and I realized that something was missing; making things fast do not make satisfactory results all the time; but thank goodness, there weren't a lot of things that needed to get fixed. So I decided to reshoot the next sunday, given that my sister and friend are not professional actors and they get busy during the week.

  Usually, when I make short films or plan to do so, I'm looking for a story to tell, share some concepts or top a previous work that I've done; but this is not any of those cases. This time I was looking to come out of a long period of creative and productive drought; I wanted to make a simple project, without too many complications, I just wanted to have fun and be active, and that way, after finishing, to take advantage of momentum to finish the short film The Price, an ambitious project for my chances and resources, which in theory it's not so difficult, but very laborious, and became really complicated because of how I was forced to shoot, something I'll explain in a future blog.

I hope that The Awakening, whether you get surprised or get a laugh, you find it to be a simple and fun short film, with all the charm and feeling that in the best of cases, an amateur and rushed short film can have.