A couple months ago, I had completed a detailed, $70,000 budget. It was broken into three nearly-equal parts: pre-production, production, and post-production. I felt like I had everything I needed to do this production right. Then, I made a couple of key decisions while doing some follow-up research that started the avalanche that left me with a new, proposed budget of a mere $13,000.
As I have mentioned before, I have been writing The Ilithyia on and off for six years now. The script has gone through five major revisions and evolved from a six-part, sci-fi spoof (written for finger puppets) to a sincere, epic adventure trilogy. While the core plot is nearly identical to the first draft, the characters have undergone major changes and development, which has re-shaped the story to its refined, nearly-complete form.
I was once asked, “What kind of science fiction rules are you following in your story?” It is a strange question, but quite legitimate. The simple answer: zero gravity and wormholes. The long answer: I would like to be scientifically accurate, but I do not intend to do research and limit the fiction part of my science to the realm of current theories.
Though we are still in the early stages of pre-production, I occasionally get a spark of inspiration and slip into production mode to quickly throw together a model or, in this case, an entire shot. In this case, I pictured how I was going to create an explosion of pure energy inside an asteroid field. It first took me an hour or two to create, then over the course of the next two weeks, I played around with different elements until I got an effect I was fairly happy with. It isn’t a finished shot, but it will serve as a good draft for a long while.
A still from my VFX Test
I feel like a kid in a candy shop! (A very expensive candy shop…) I recently discovered a website for 3D stock models: TurboSquid.com. On it, I found hundreds of space ship models for sale ranging from $10 – $200! Some are simple, but some are quite exquisite and include textures and lighting. To put this into perspective: if I had a couple detailed drawings of a similar ship, I could model one of the easier ones in 5-10 hours. That’s between $3 and $6 an hour of modeling, which doesn’t even factor in the time to design the thing.
Hi! I am the writer and director of The Ilithyia and also the author of this blog. I began writing the story in 2005 and, in 2011, I began the long process of trying to get it produced.
Recruiting is a terribly difficult task – at least when you don’t have a pile of cash to entice someone’s contribution. Instead, I have to convince someone to commit to a long-term project with the hopes that they might get paid in the end. It works a lot like this:
I have spent six years developing the story for “The Ilithyia” – a three-part, character-driven sci-fi adventure. My original plan was to create a short science-fiction spoof that I could cheaply produce with finger puppets shortly after graduating college. My wild imagination refused to be restrained by the physical limitations of finger puppets, so I upgraded to mechanical puppets that would be built to look like fingers. Then, the story took over, and my short spoof turned into a dramatic, 6-part miniseries.