williams reportedly had more reasons than just a lower budget for making "darkest night" as a found-footage film. according to what he wrote himself, he wanted the film to be a "cinéma vérité" recording of the way reality looks during a nightmare, specifically his own nightmares as a child. "these nightmares never had great production values or looked beautiful. they were always dark, fragmentary, claustrophobic and chaotic. i never had control over what my 'mental camera' actually saw. while dreaming, i felt like i was autistic in almost every sense of the word, unable to control myself while in that terrible world. in fact," he added, "my nightmares never look like a 15 million-dollar production."