More on The Process

In case you're curious: Yeah, Abigail is being set up as the rival for Carlos; this rivalry will have the usual important ramifications later on. I just needed the mandatory foreshadowing in order to get things going right out of the box.

Unlike the other two, Hector is not getting his own little moment to shine. I need to set up another rivalry between Carlos and Rafael. By showing that each has their own areas of expertise, and that they do well withing those areas, I'm hoping that the audience gets the idea that these will be facing off later on, and the best way I figured to do that was to highlight the two boys without highlighting Hector. I'll have some fun with Hector later on, but the rivalry between Carlos and Rafael needed to be set up, and indirectly I think works best for now.

Also, by now Ive gotten rid of the almost-mandatory shirtless scenes of the main protagonists. This means that anyone watching the movie for half-naked boys has had that need satisfied and we can now concentrate on the story.

And, yeah; my lack of ability to speak Spanish has been interesting. It would have been interesting to use it to establish some of these characters as being Mexican-Americans a little further, and I know it's a cliche. Here's hoping that it works...