Welcome to The Rotting Zombie, and thank you for agreeing to an interview. What were your inspirations for Alien Planet, and how long have you had the idea for the film?
Alien Planet is my love letter to sci-fi. It holds all the elements of my favourite films and is meant to feel like it fits right in with movies like Enemy Mine, Alien Nation, Planet of the Apes, V the mini-series and many more from that era. I've had the idea for Alien Planet for about 5 or so years now, but I didn't officially write the script until 2020 when the pandemic sent everyone home from work.
While a sci-fi film, this also includes plenty of moments of horror, as well as far more gore than expected. How important was it for a reliance on practical special effects rather than computer generated ones, and was this intended from the start, or something that happened naturally? What was your particular favourite special effect used?
Practical effects were always intended. This was an extremely important part of the pre-production process. From designing the characters looks to scheduling and planning how much time we needed to build everything before the shoot. I think we spent 4-6 months in pre-production just simply sculpting, painting and building all the practical effects and makeup.
You mentioned it had more gore than you expected, we used about 11 gallons of fake blood as a fun piece of trivia.
There was a good cast here, especially with the two main characters, though I found the puppet Giree to be the most enjoyable character. Was it hard to cast the right actors for the job, and was it a difficult task to give Giree so much visible on-screen personality?
It was not hard casting this movie. Like you said, everyone was so talented and such a fantastic performer, that it was very clear who my actors were when they auditioned. All slam dunks.
Bringing Giree to life was more time consuming than difficult. Our puppeteer, Naiia Lajoie was so awesome at bringing her to life that she nailed every take. The hardest part was spending months in post-production removing Naiia from the shot and adding digital blinks frame by frame. I think I spent 4 weeks straight just adding blinks to Giree and the Dweller.
Without going into spoilers, this had quite a bit of darkness to its film universe, both with the warring two alien sides recent history, and with the path the story took. Do you see any light that can be taken from this story? Do you see Alien Planet as a standalone story, or could you imagine a sequel or prequel one day being created?
I see a lot of light that can be taken from this story. I think we as viewers can see what paths lead to all of the movie's darkness, and use our conscience and morals to make sure we do better as humans. But sadly, this story is meant to mirror humans, so to me, we are this story.
This is not a standalone story. I have both sequel and prequel stories ready to be made. Hopefully the audience likes this movie enough to help another one happen!
What was the biggest challenge you faced while making the film, and what was the biggest highlight for you?
Challenge is always time and money. Making a movie is very expensive and this script was a large vision to do on an indie level budget. We only had enough budget to film for 14 days so I had to figure out how to accomplish that.
Finally, for people who haven't seen your movie, how would you best describe it?
This is a science fiction adventure film with deep meaningful social commentary. Topped with all the blood and monsters you could ever want.
Alien Planet is currently streaming on multiple channels and is available on Blu-ray. The Blu-ray includes exclusive behind the scenes and making of featurettes that can't be found on streaming. For more details check out the website, here. Thanks once again to Alan for answering my questions.
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