Posted in: Exclusive, Interview, Movies | Tagged: 5000 Space Aliens, exclusive, interview, Lucas Ferrara, Newman Ferrara, Scott Bateman

5000 Space Aliens Director on Extraterrestrials' Pop Culture Impact

Director Scott Bateman and producer Lucas Ferrara talk to Bleeding Cool about the animated thrill ride 5000 Space Aliens from Newman Ferrara.

When director Scott Bateman set out on his journey to explore pop culture's fascination with extraterrestrials and UFOs, he conceived the idea of 5000 Space Aliens, a project that took years to complete, scrounging found footage, vintage photo studio pictures from Venezuela and Romania, scraps from a 100-year-old psychology textbook, and turning it into more into 5000 one-second shots of animated characters. Bateman directed You, Your Brain & You, and producer Lucas Ferrara spoke to Bleeding Cool about the arduous journey from his concept short 600 Aliens to his inspirations that made 5000 Space Aliens a reality and AI.

How '5000 Space Aliens' Became a Worthy Passion Project for Scott Bateman

Bleeding Cool: What's the inspiration behind '5000 Space Aliens?'
Bateman: There's a lot of inspiration behind that [laughs].

What was the spark that lit the project for you?
The actual spark was I wanted to… I've made a couple of films. I wanted to make another film, but I was low on money, and I wanted to devise a way to make a movie by myself on my laptop. I thought of using found footage, rotoscoping, and animating it. I already had this idea for this one-second rhythm of shots, which is hypnotic. I combined those ideas into something fun to watch.

Regarding the concepts and sources, how long did it take to gather everything and compile it together?
I would look for stuff as I needed it. It was like a whole part of the process was finding all the footage, and then the next thing was animating. I was looking for something to animate, then returning to look for something else. I found a lot of that stuff on the public domain at Archive.org, like old home movies that date back to the 1920s when you didn't even know they had whole films. Some wealthy people had movie covers in those days. It's also finding crazy things like old instructional films and vintage retro TV commercials, which are excellent sources of footage.

Given the wealth of information out there, was it something that you might expand out like a part two, per se, or is this the comprehensive vision of what it came out to be?
Ferrara: I think he's psychic.
Bateman: He might be [laughs].
Ferrara: Tom, we have a call right after this to discuss the possible sequel, so there may be more *raises eyebrows*.
Bateman: I'm up for it, but we don't know yet. We haven't talked about this yet, but we're talking about it [laughs].

What were some of the styles and artists that influenced you?
I've been animating for a long time, but this project is looking back at what a big influence for me was Terry Gilliam from Monty Python. Those old animations on the TV show…I caught that show as a teenager when it aired on PBS. That was a big influence on me, both the comedy and animation. Another huge animation influence on me from my childhood was the movie, 'Yellow Submarine' (1968). The bright colors and their use of rotoscoping, places, textures, and everything have greatly influenced me in general. I put a lot of that into '5000 Space Aliens.' Lucas will tell you there's also some pop art Andy Warhol influence in there.

What would you find was the most challenging aspect of production?
It took two and a half years, and the hardest part was to keep going sometimes. It's the longest I've ever worked on any single project in my life. Sometimes, you're in the middle of it. You don't know. "Are people going to like this?" Occasionally, at a point in a long project, I ask myself, "Do I even know this?" You keep going, and the hardest part was the perseverance, seeing this strange project through and having the faith to know that there are some people out there who will be into this.

What from your previous projects helped you to make '5000 Space Aliens?'
I did a proof-of-concept short film called '600 Space Aliens', which was 10 minutes of footage to see if it would work. That was an idea. I had to see if this was even a thing. I showed it at a few film festivals, and the crowds loved it. I thought, "Okay, I've got something here and that." That permitted me to make the feature film version.

Aside from possible sequel talk, is there anything else on the drawing board coming up?
I've got a short film starting to get into some festivals called 'Can We Really Know Anything About Carrots?' which I made with AI art and stuff. When I started making the film, AI was this goofy technology that gave people three arms and eight fingers. I thought, "That's going to be fun to make a movie out of." By the time I finished months later, AI is the enemy of all creative people everywhere, but I'm putting it out there a little bit at a time so the people will see this is a parody using this stuff. People will enjoy it. It's a funny film, and I'm also working up ideas for other movies right now.

AI feels like they'll treat it like a Pandora's box, realizing that the ethical lines must be clearly drawn, but they act like none exist. They need to make it clear to the public.
In this case, I am using A.I. as a parody of itself, and it's got to make people laugh at the technology and show how dumb a tech it is, so hopefully, people will figure that out when they see it.

Newman Ferrara's 5000 Space Aliens is available on digital.

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