In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream

I’m not going to lie, I’m not super proud of the final product, if only because I knew what I wanted it to be, I knew how to do it, and I would have done it if I hadn’t run out of time. When making this project, I had all these grand ideas of how I was going to use Unreal Engine to make the spaceship that’s in the background, but it turns out Unreal Engine is hard to use for a beginner like me and I had to settle for a 3D room designer. I used the the production studio in the HCC to record, but forgot to turn on the microphones and had to re-record all the audio. Because I was rereading the lines, and adlibbed a bit when I was recording, the pace was a little different. I had to edit the video to match the audio, which resulted in some funky jump cuts, fast forward, and slow-motion. That and my editor had so many things to keep track of, it started lagging and I couldn’t actually see if things were lined up correctly. I figured I would hide them with computer glitches, but it would take too long, so I’m leaving them as they are. It’s not ideal, but if Hunger Games can get away with funky cuts, so can I.

The camera is supposed to be inside various computer screens around the ship, I made what the characters could see on the screen in Powerpoint, flipped it around so it would be right way around for them, and overlayed it over the video. The image of the ship on Bravo’s screen was made by my brother in Kerbal Space Program.

The characters are all named with the phonetic alphabet. I started with Echo, who was going to be alone on the ship and talking to the computer since her crewmates were dead and trying to explain creativity to it. Then I decided that would be kind of bleak, so I added a character called Charlie (who evolved into Delta) that she could talk to. At that point, I realized I was 2/5 of the way through a five-man-band of clones named after the phonetic alphabet, so I just added the other three. I shot each one one at a time, changing their hair and makeup in between to keep them apart. I had whole personalities and backstories for them (which you can kind of see if you pause and try to read Alpha’s previous log entry) but that didn’t make it to filming. They were all cloned from the same person at the same time, and then each was taken and raised their whole lives for a different purpose on the mission. Alpha was a soldier and leader, Bravo was a pilot, Charlie was a biologist, Delta was a linguist, and Echo was an engineer. There was also another scene in which Echo puts the Central Intelligence into her watch and shows her that Delta has died, but I cut that scene as the footage wasn’t working.

Some of the not-my sources I used was this image of the pilot seat, this radio static, this crash, this siren, and this image for Delta’s homescreen.

I know it’s rushed, I know people are the wrong size and looking at the wrong place, but I consider this a rough draft rather than a failed final. It was the hardest project I’ve ever done on the shortest timeline I’ve ever done, with effects I’ve never done before or struggled with in the past. So I’m going to try again once finals week is over and post the better final to my YouTube channel. (If you want to see it, subscribe and it will be the next thing I post.) When I have more time, more energy, and more practice, it will be better. I’m just frustrated because I know what I have to do to make it exactly as I want it to be, I just ran out of time to do it. Still, I think it’s fairly solid for nothing going right as I was making it and doing it by myself in a week, so I’m proud of what I was able to do even if I’m not proud of how much that ended up being, if that makes sense.