The PERSEPHONE web series went through a few changes last week. I had been struggling with my original episode 4, not sure how or why it fit into the series, I wrote it and rewrote and rewrote it, until I decided to scrap it (and episode 9). So, with the excess trimmed, I moved episode 5 to 4, and now the series will be 8 tight episodes instead 10. (You can do things like that when you don't have a studio looking over your shoulder!)
But I still needed to explain a bit of the story. So I wrote a new intro for the next episode, and set out to film it, until I was looking through my drive for something else entirely and came across old footage we had shot for Persephone last year! Being so ingrained on the current look of the series, I had completely forgotten about it. But it's beautiful footage and what we filmed back then happened to fit perfectly into the new intro. Persephone's look is entirely different, but the new intro is a dream sequence, so serendipity wins out.
This is one image from the old Persephone footage. There was a snake in the water when we shot this scene. We didn't see it until it had passed her, actress unharmed. I love this image and can think of a thousand uses for it.
A few years ago I went to the Tim Burton exhibit at MOMA. The walls were filled with his early sketches and drawings, script pages, glass cases held costumes from various films. A gallery Wonderland of one of our best creative minds - and what struck me the most was how often he re-used ideas and images until they found their proper home. There were early drawings of Edward Scissorhands (who started out as an evil gardener), the spiral hilltop we all know from "Nightmare Before Christmas" had been showing up in stories well before that one.
As artists we rework ideas a lot. I've started over for PERSEPHONE three times. We mold our characters and stories until we shape them into what we truly want. Sometimes, an idea or image comes to us years or months before we ever know where it belongs - but if you keep it, one day you'll find again, just when you need it. ;)
