MEET THE FILMMAKERS: TRAVIS BAIN

Part 6 of The Sydney Science Fiction Film Festival IN CONVERSATION Series, hosted by Festival Director and Screen-Space Managing Editor, Simon Foster.

STARSPAWN: OVERTURE (Australia, Dir: Travis Bain; 19 mins) WORLD PREMIERE. Recently widowed farmer Randolph Sutton (Vernon Wells) goes to collect his teenage daughter Amy (Meganne West) from a party, but their routine drive home turns into a frightening close encounter, when the Suttons are stalked by a winged alien creature that seems intent on extracting Amy's brain.

Screening with STRANGEVILLE in NORTHERN LIGHT: QUEENSLAND SCIFI SHOWCASE on Saturday November 21 from 1.00pm at Actors Centre Australia. 

TICKET AND SESSION INFORMATION FOR THE 2020 SCIENCE FICTION FILM FESTIVAL

SIMON: What have been the science-fiction works – books, films, art of any kind – that have inspired your work and forged your love for the genre?

TRAVIS: The one that started it all was Star Wars. It was the first film I saw in a cinema, when I was four, and it got me addicted to sci-fi for life. Then TV shows like Star Blazers, Doctor Who, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica and Battle of the Planets, which I guess pretty much every Australian boy in the late '70s watched, and they sealed the deal for me. The '80s were a golden age for big-screen sci-fi, with guys like Cameron, Carpenter, Verhoeven and Spielberg leading the charge. As well as watching all the new films of that era, I was also discovering the classics like Forbidden Planet, George Pal's The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, 2001 and Fantastic Voyage, which I always got very excited about whenever it popped up on Saturday afternoon TV. But Starspawn: Overture is predominantly inspired by John Carpenter. Fellow fans of his work will notice I borrowed his favourite font and anamorphic cinematography. Spielberg was also a big influence, especially Close Encounters, but I must admit I usually prefer Carpenter's darker, edgier approach to sci-fi. I think The Thing is one of the greatest pieces of cinema ever made.

SIMON: How did the original concept for your film take shape? What aspects of your film’s narrative and your protagonist’s journey were most important to you? 

TRAVIS: About seven years ago I conceived of a sci-fi horror tale that would bring together elements of H.P. Lovecraft's writings with the Aussie legend of the Min Min Lights, weird ghost lights that have been seen in remote areas for generations. I figured out a way to combine them in a creepy outback setting, and I got very fired up about the idea and wrote a screenplay entitled Starspawn. When it was done, I stepped back, took a look at it and thought “Jeez, this is gonna be hard for an indie filmmaker to do with limited resources.” So I came up with the idea of making a proof-of-concept short prequel first, to show potential investors what I had in mind for the feature version. The idea was to take a sampling of what viewers can expect from the feature and distil it into a short story that sets up the main one by providing a bit of backstory and context. At its core, the film is really about a father wanting to protect his child and give them the best in life, and that means a lot to me because I lost my Dad last year. He was always my nurturer and protector when I was a kid. The horror in most of Lovecraft's stories stems from the fear of losing one's sanity, because both of his parents had complete mental breakdowns before they died. In Starspawn: Overture, the horror derives from a fear of losing a child. She's all he's got left in the world, so when some creature he can't comprehend starts stalking her, he understandably gets very shaken up and hyper-protective.

SIMON: Does the ‘science-fiction’ genre have deep roots in the art and cultural history of your homeland? Were the resources, facilities and talent pool required to bring your film to life easily sourced?

TRAVIS: We don't seem to have much of a tradition of sci-fi in Australian literature, TV and cinema, probably not as much as the Americans or the Brits. Over the years there have been hits and misses - you've got films like Mad Max 2 in the former category and The Time Guardian in the latter. If anything, Aboriginal culture has more of a connection to the supernatural and the uncanny. I've written a few sci-fi scripts, but over the years producers and funding body suits have told me “Oh, we don't make sci-fi in Australia because it's too expensive. You should leave it to the Americans.” I've always thought that was bullshit, because sci-fi doesn't automatically mean a $200 million CGI-stuffed epic, it can be a $7,000 indie like Shane Carruth's Primer, focusing more on ideas and characters than effects.

SIMON: Describe for us the very best day you had in the life cycle of your film…

TRAVIS: The day we finished it! The film had a long post-production period. We went through two different ‘creature effect’ guys, an Aussie and an American, with a CV ten miles long from working on Hollywood blockbusters. The same thing happened in both cases: after their initial bursts of enthusiasm, they eventually got too wrapped up in their own pet projects to stick with Starspawn: Overture. So my VFX supervisor Pete and I decided to take a different approach for the creature effects: we started recruiting international 3D effects artists online, using a site called Artella Indie, and after a few false starts, we found some really great collaborators. So the final day of post was hands-down the best day on the whole film, because it was just such a massive relief to finish it at last. The film used to literally keep me awake at night, worrying how the hell I was ever going to finish it. But ironically, once the pandemic started, suddenly all our VFX team members were stuck at home with tons of spare time on their hands, so they were able to finish the effects work way ahead of schedule.

SIMON: Having guided your film from idea to completion, what lessons and advice would you offer a young science-fiction filmmaker about to embark on a similar journey?

TRAVIS: I'd say just give it a go, using whatever resources you can scrounge together, because there'll always be a market for quality sci-fi films with interesting themes and ideas. It's OK to borrow elements from your favourite sci-fi works, as long as you don't go too far and become derivative. Don't be put off by the industry gatekeepers who say sci-fi is too expensive – it doesn't have to be, and in any case, you can do a lot with off-the-shelf software these days. And be sure to surround yourself with the most talented, committed people you can find to help support your vision. I was lucky to have a great team on Starspawn: Overture and I think the proof is on the screen. We can't wait to reunite and hopefully shoot the feature version in 2022. That's the plan, anyway.