Featuring Zoe Hadjidimitriou, ‘Wood Panel Believer’ was born out of an ongoing personal fascination with cryptids and various Indigenous mythologies. This topic paired seamlessly in my mind with an equal fascination for the “Alice In Wonderland”, “down the rabbit hole” nature of obsessive/compulsive psychosis. As somebody who lives with Autism, PAD (Panic Attack Disorder), and OCD (Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder), I have faced many episodes of what I can now understand as manic paranoia or psychosis. Although these periods of my life offered a myriad of trauma, they are also endlessly fascinating to me. The dark side of the brain, in all of it’s deceiving and incomprehensible complexities has been following me around like a second shadow for as long as I can remember. I have always been captivated by the idea that if you stare into the void, it stares right back. Obsession has no end, the rabbit hole just allows you to fall deeper and deeper. Although its presence became more subtextual in the final shoot, “Bigfoot” felt like the perfect cryptid to star as the principal inducer of our characters mania and obsession. And there is no greater or more aesthetically stunning setting for dangerous solitude than a wood panelled cabin in the woods. In finding this dream location as well as costume/set design and the character building done between Zoe and I, I believe we were able to tell our story and capture the dark 80’s thriller atmosphere we were striving for.