‘This is an old-fashioned science fiction film of the technological level of ICARUS XB1: it will use real models, and matte shots.”

BILL, THE GALACTIC HERO is a feature-length science fiction comedy set in the far reaches of our galaxy, as humans wage war against a reptilian alien species, known as Chingers. It is extremely low budget, and relatively high concept. How is a story of space warfare between two high-technology civilizations to be achieved, doing justice to its original, on a super-low budget?

Partially because most of the work will be done by students – ideally my production students at the University of Colorado – under the occasional supervision of professionals from the industry. But mainly because Harry Harrison's original novel – his counterblast to STAR$HIP TROOPERS – has to be made this way. It's told not from the flight deck but from the engine room: or to be more exact, the fusebays, where ranks of expendable Fusetenders Sixth Class wait to replace burned-out fuses, or die.

Harry's story of grunts – and one grunt in particular – in the lowest echelon of the war machine – can readily be recreated in an academic environment. ATLAS, home of the University of Colorado's Film Studies Program, features concrete staircases and windowless basement corridors which already resemble the corridors and fusebays of the Good Ship Fanny Hill. The Visual Arts Complex features asymmetrical hallways and strange machines. Tunnels beneath the campus provide us with the bowels of Helior, the Imperial Planet. The Engineering Dept. has space suits and a mock-up Space Shuttle replacement.

But no one location is essential to the picture! Bill's one trip "above ground" to Helior's Walled Gardens, can be recreated at a venue like the NCAR.

Veniola, the swamp planet, where Bill is sent to a penal colony, will be shot in an appropriately green location.

Some sixty pages of BILL THE GALACTIC HERO will be shot live action, with space-suited actors, on 35mm black and white film. About ten pages will be shot on a stage using front or rear projection.

‘One of the things I try to teach my students is the "impossible triangle of quality": the one whereby any manufactured item – including a film – can be made good, and fast, but not cheap; fast, and cheap, but not good; or good, and cheap, but not fast.’

There are about ten (overlapping) pages of model shots and special effects, including glimpses of the Voids of Space. We will build our own models, under the supervision of visual effects pros from Tippett Studios (ROBOCOP, STARSHIP TROOPERS, MAD GOD) and Collateral Image (who created the visual effects for REPO CHICK and STRAIGHT TO HELL RETURNS). My colleague Victor Jendras will, I hope, supervise the creation of the medals, and the production design.

One of the things I try to teach my students is the "impossible triangle of quality": the one whereby any manufactured item – including a film – can be made good, and fast, but not cheap; fast, and cheap, but not good; or good, and cheap, but not fast.BILL THE GALACTIC HERO begins and ends as an animated cartoon. The anime department, run, I hope, by my colleague Chris Pearce, will also create Eager Chinger, the tiny reptilian spy.

The live action – actors in space suits in staircases, sound stages, and swamps – can be accomplished within twenty days. But the "VFX" part of the project does not unfold quickly. This is an old-fashioned science fiction film of the technological level of ICARUS XB1: it will use real models, and matte shots.

Since we're outputting a digital version of the film – your DVD or BluRay disc, or download - post production will involve some CGI – computer generated images. How else to achieve our ray gun blasts, or interplanetary lasers? But we aim to keep our technology rooted in the mid 1960s, when the greatest of all science fiction films (DR STRANGELOVE, ICARUS, and 2001) were made with three-dimensional analog models, and when Harry Harrison conceived and wrote BILL THE GALACTIC HERO.

Our model-building, plate-shooting and costume work will be done this fall The main shoot of BILL THE GALACTIC HERO will be in early spring. But post-production will take longer than that!

One of the things I try to teach my students is the "impossible triangle of quality": the one whereby any manufactured item – including a film – can be made good, and fast, but not cheap; fast, and cheap, but not good; or good, and cheap, but not fast.

A quality independent film aims for the last of these three. We will endeavor to post a rough cut – viewable with a unique download key – in the Summer of 2014, and to ship the more important costumes and models when we're sure they aren't needed. BILL THE GALACTIC HERO – its sound design and music under the supervision of Academy Award winner Richard Beggs and film composer Dan Wool – will be finished by December 2014.

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Related links:

• Kickstarter funding page (now closed but with background information)
• Guardian report 17.04.13
• Alex Cox blog

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