Back in March of last year we sat down with director HaZ Dulull to discuss his feline vs canine conspiracy, battlefield short Fubar as it expanded into its ‘Redux’ incarnation. As a short, Fubar was pretty epic in the scale of its world building and VFX so it only seems logical that Haz would cast his directorial gaze towards the vastness of space for his next creative challenge in Project Kronos.
“After Fubar Redux I wanted to do something more live action based (to show I could work with live action, actors, etc.) but also something new and risky too (in the same vain as Fubar Redux in a way). I have always been fascinated by space travel as a kid so I took that interest into a genre I’ve always loved in cinema – Sci-Fi. Since it’s a short film I had to keep the audience hooked, and I used the idea of a building mystery using theoretical research pushed with the idea of “what if?”
It could have easily be a full on CGI, Prometheus-esque style short film, but I didn’t want to do yet another spaceships and lovely looking planets film like other shorts have done. I wanted to make a compelling, yet grounded to reality docu-sci-fi which I hope I’ve achieved with Project Kronos.
The script is written from research which exists today, and the way I approached it with the actors was to ask what they thought of the ideas presented in the film and then have them perform those opinions to the camera as a way of me getting their authentic performances. The use of a controlled set for pieces to camera and a lot of NASA archive footage augmented with VFX and some CGI was the approach I took in creating my shots in the film.”
Despite the gap between the release of Fubar and Project Kronos, the short’s script was actually completed around the same time Haz was wrapping on Fubar Redux. The folks over at Adobe came onboard as sponsors of the technology used to created Project Kronos and so the entire short was realised using Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite of software over its six month production period. Haz also got some welcome support with some of the CGI elements in the film such as the Probe and other scenes towards the end.
So, have the ambitions of space exploration resulted in an increase of Earthbound opportunities for the director?
“The film has opened doors for my directing career, for example I was signed for representation by Scott Glassgold of I-AM Entertainment in Hollywood based off the trailer released a few months back and worked closely with him as I reached the end of the production. One thing I have learned on the project is working closely with studio led executives makes a huge difference and actually lets you see the bigger picture of the project as a director. I’m currently developing the feature film treatment of Project Kronos as well as other projects.
I want to take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to all the blogs and viewers for their awesome support in sharing it out on social media, etc. and of course the really good feedback comments.”