By Matthew Lowe
With recent films like Terminus and Infini, Australia is entering a boom period for thoughtful, albeit low budget, science fiction cinema. You can now add to that list the very exciting Space/Time. Described by its own writers as “Breaking Bad with time travel”, the film is set in a world on the brink of disaster. In amongst the starvation, war, and economic collapse, a group of scientists are working on a complex engine with magnanimous ramifications: not only interstellar travel, but the ability to bend time and space itself; in other words, a time machine. When their project is eventually suspended, the group must turn to criminal activity in order to finance their operation, with consequences that could unravel the whole fabric of space and time.
Where did the concept come from? Was time travel something that always fascinated you? “I’ve always loved time travel films. Time travel offers endless potential for storytellers and filmmakers. There are so many great films that use it in such interesting ways, but there’s still a lot to mine from the concept that we haven’t seen on screen before. [Co-writer, co-producer] Adam Harmer and I had a new take on it. I loved the idea of using time travel as a means to explore questions of work/life balance, and the cost of committing to an idea that is all-consuming. It’s a question that I’ve often struggled with, and one that is very relatable. The best science fiction takes concepts like time travel and uses them as a means to explore relatable, human themes.”
The ethics of time travel are mind boggling, and the film deals with this… “The film is all about consequences. There are two central arguments, one, as I mentioned, is the conflict between your work and home life, and the idea of committing so completely to an idea. The second is more about the ethical dilemma of being able to redo your mistakes and start again. The path that our characters take to complete their goal of building the machine is a very dark one. They are pushed beyond their moral limits, and are gradually drawn deeper into the underworld in their attempt to finance their operation. So the question is, if you succeed in saving lives, do the ends justify the means? And then, what if you could go back and undo those crimes once you’re successful in creating the machine? Is the person that goes back still a criminal once they’ve changed history? It’s a complicated and fascinating question.”
Was it difficult to find funding for the film? “Most of the budget comes from my, Adam, and [producer] Jai [Hogg’s] own savings…and a pretty big bank loan! We were fortunate to have other investors join us once we had started filming and they could see what we were doing. It was exciting having people respond so enthusiastically to what we were doing that they wanted to put in money to make it even better!”
You’ve said that you never wanted Space/Time to feel like a small film. How do you make a big science fiction film on a small budget? “With every project that Adam and I have come up with together, we always hit a point in the writing where we say, ‘Okay. This one has gotten too big; it’s going in the ‘big budget drawer’ for later.’ With Space/Time, the fact that the characters in the film had to beg, borrow, and steal to build their machine gave me this crazy confidence that the film would benefit from being made in the same way. That was convenient, given that it was the only way that it was going to get made! But it really did serve the film. We worked hard to make sure that the world always felt large and had a sense of scale. We ignored the conventional wisdom and set the film in numerous locations at all times of the day and night. Making sure that the world feels expansive and real is one of the big ways that we kept Space/Time from feeling low budget or small.”
Were there particular sci-fi tropes that you were determined not to have in your movie? “Oh yes, definitely. We always knew that we wanted a female lead, and for the ‘wife at home’ character to be male. This instantly flipped a lot of tropes on their head. Not that it’s that shocking to have a female hero in a sci-fi film – Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor beat us by thirty-something years. A lot of the time, we’d hit a trope and find that writing it from our lead character, Liv’s point of view made it really interesting. There were a lot of stylistic things that are hallmarks of low budget films that we wanted to avoid too. I regularly heard myself saying, ‘Okay, we’re doing one of ‘those’ scenes. We have to find a new way to do it or we’re doing something else.’ And we always did. It was great. Space/Time also has a few solid monologues by scientists talking about the machine and its purpose, so we were constantly on ‘Bond villain watch.’ We were all keeping an eye on that!”
Does the Australian landscape – or Australia itself, culturally – play a major part in Space/Time? “It does and it doesn’t. The majority of the film takes place in Australia, and there are several Australian characters. Liv, our lead character, is an Australian. She’s supported by characters from the US, the UK, and all over the world. When we first meet our heroes, they are working on an island in the middle of The Pacific, with a team of scientists that are the best of the best from around the world. When the project loses its funding, though, and the team must relocate and go underground, they set up in Australia because it’s far away from the prying eyes of their original benefactors. So we end up with this international cast of so many different nationalities all set up in Australia, which feels very Australian to me somehow. That mix of cultures and personalities working together is a very Aussie idea, and it’s a big part of our identity. We used Australia as the setting in much the same way that a lot of Hollywood films set in America don’t really make a big deal about being set in America. They just are. We tried to treat Australia in the same way, and present the location in a way that best served the story.”
Space/Time will be released in 2017. You can get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Space/Time as part of The 2016 SciFi Film Festival, with the film featuring in The Upcoming Australian Film Showcase, a FREE EVENT which happens at The AFTRS Theatre (The Australian Film, Television & Radio School, The Entertainment Quarter, Moore Park, Sydney) on Saturday, October 22 from 10am – 2pm. The 2016 Sci-Fi Film Festival runs from October 19-23 at The Ritz Cinema, Randwick. For more information and to buy tickets, head to the official site.
