Homemade Sci-Fi

Shockwave Darkside: Last humans battle it out on the moon in 3D

We met Jay Weisman at Comic-Con a couple weeks ago, where he was promoting his upcoming 3D feature, Shockwave, Darkside.

Yes, that's right, he's making an indie 3D sci-fi feature. Gutsy.

And to be perfectly honest, once we saw his frakking awesome trailer, we had to make sure indie sci-fi enthusiasts everywhere saw it.

Read on for our exclusive interview with Jay.

Unremembered: A physics mystery

Made on a truly DIY budget around $30,000, Unremembered explores causality and physics anomalies in a non-linear structure to tell the story of a man with no past revisiting events to repair his life.

Read on for an exclusive interview with Portland based director Greg Kerr.

Similo: Artificial love amidst the Antarctic melt

Meet Similo, an impressive-looking short film that we can't wait to see finished. According to their Kickstarter page:

SIMILO is a science fiction love story set in the year 2064. The polar ice caps have melted. The world struggles to survive drought and poverty. But those few who live in the new cities in the arctic can live a happy life. At least, that´s what they want to believe.

What is a Similo? Similo: An artificial person designed to be the perfect lover. Similo comes from the word Simulating.

Based on a teaser film by Zacharias and Macgregor, Similo has reached its funding goal (thanks to donations via Kickstarter) and the filmmakers are now in the tedious process of putting together the visual effects shots for the short film.

It looks gorgeous and atmospheric. Keep your eyes open for this one on the festival circuit.

The Mercury Men: Retro sci-fi noir web series

The Mercury Men is a retro sci-fi web series with a noir flavor. Based on Christopher Preksta's earlier award winning short, "The Mercury Men" takes place in 1975 Pittsburgh where a low-level government bureaucrat finds himself trapped in his office building where the Mercury Men are staging their diabolical plot.

Cockpit: The Rule of Engagement - science fiction horror in space

I met Jesse Griffith in college.

We both were undergraduates at UC Santa Cruz and he had just made a no-budget sci-fi feature film (the third in a series, if I recall correctly).

It was amateur. It was corny. Everything about it looked like ultra-cheap student filmmaking. But it was a powerfully delirious experience to see a fellow student make a feature film, inspiring my own "don't ask permission" approach many years later.

Jesse now works in the movie industry professionally and continues to make movies on the side -- films that look every bit as polished as any Hollywood blockbuster.

Check out the trailer his latest short film, Cockpit: The Rule of Engagement, and read our exclusive interview with him.