Selected as part of the 2023 Star Imagine Shorts Incubator and premiering at the BFI London Film Festival in the same year, Marcus Anthony Thomas’ Space Plug, which has intrigued, confused and provoked audience debate in equal measure during its ensuing festival circuit run, is a short to that needs to be seen unsullied. Thomas intrepidly pushed far beyond the filmmaking processes and learning he had already garnered and alongside producing partner Jordi Morera put themselves to the test with what can only be described as epic results. Space Plug, shot in a rich depth of black and white is an example of the potency of dialogue free storytelling, original and imaginative visual effects and what is possible when we take ourselves outside of our comfort zones. For today’s multi-platform premiere of Thomas’ visionary short, we speak to him in detail about creating a narrative audiences can imprint their own meaning onto, using a miniature set for some of the more bizarre sequences and the all-important creation and development of the film’s unusual maternal caregiver.
Since completing your fiction directing course at the NFTS in 2021 you have made some well-regarded shorts, including Caterpillar which was featured in our 10 must-watch NFTS shorts list that year, but Space Plug is unlike that film or frankly anything I’ve seen before, tell us about the film’s conception?
I saw an open call for filmmakers to apply to make a funded short film with Disney and the NFTS, Star Imagine Shorts Incubator, which had to fit within the theme of Evolve. In going through all of the films I’d already written or short ideas I’d developed, there wasn’t anything that fitted the theme or that excited me enough to make another short. So, I scoured the notes on my phone and found a note from 2018 saying, “A human grows up in a blank white space with no stimuli and is fed coldly each day by a man in a hazmat suit”. It set my brain going and I decided to write a quick first draft to explore what that could be, to dig into the concept of what makes us human when there are no rules imprinted on us and to ponder what it is that makes us human. After writing the first draft, I then thought that it needed to be set somewhere very alien to make sure that it didn’t retread on ground that has already been explored in film – from there it was really a case of trying to make each draft more alien.
With this project I made sure to not censor myself, to write things that I didn’t know how to do and things I haven’t seen before in the hope that the director version of myself would be able to figure it out.
Up to this stage my films have all been set in the real world and when I’ve written a film, I’ve done so with one eye on knowing how I’ll eventually execute it as a director. With this project I made sure to not censor myself, to write things that I didn’t know how to do and things I haven’t seen before in the hope that the director version of myself would be able to figure it out. I also had my producer Jordi Morera who I had worked with previously on a short film called The Retreat on hand to help with the process of creating this wildly ambitious idea. The film really came together during post-production as piece by piece the story came together and the VFX, sound and music took it closer to the finish line. I’m really happy with the pacing and flow of the film which takes place over 18 years and me and my editor had to be exceptionally precise in selecting emotional beats to create a coherent story without any dialogue. It’s pure visual storytelling. My notes for the music were that I wanted it to feel big and loud so that the audience could be confidently guided through the story and to make some of the peaks in the story almost euphoric. I think the music from Oliver Wegmuller makes the film feel exceptionally cinematic in moments and helps add to the overall sense of scale in the film.
Did you know anything about any of the other films being made through the Star Imagine Incubator?
Disney and the NFTS brought the key creatives from each filmmaking team (there were 6 in total) to an introductory mixer event where we all did a mini Q&A to understand who we all were and our projects. They also did a good job of taking us on set visits to various studios, providing lots of sessions with filmmakers and HODs and we were also taken to a few premieres. This meant that all of the filmmaking groups got to gel and share advice as we all navigated our own individual productions. Once we finally finished and screened the films, I think people were pretty blown away by the final result.
Disney and the NFTS were obviously attached from the script stage and it was a highly ambitious script, and I think it could have absolutely ended up in a disaster, but thankfully they trusted in me and my producer Jordi Morera to pull it off. When they saw the film they were super happy with the final result, as were we and it got an excellent reception when it premiered at the London Film Festival in 2023. I personally went on a creative journey with this film and I really put myself on the edge of failure in order to see how far I could go as an artist, and with this experience, it has opened me up creatively to know that I can execute any story that I can possibly dream up. So now I look forward to the next creative challenge!
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You tell a version of the history of the world in 14 minutes – how did the script writing develop from that initial note and did you always want the film to go full circle?
With this short film I wanted to break away from everything that I’d done before. In my previous films, the stories have taken place over a few hours or a day and that’s because I feel having a story play out in as close to real time as possible gives you more space to relate to the protagonist, as you follow the immediacy of their decision-making and emotional journey. With Space Plug the challenge was to pick specific moments in a person’s life and allow the flow of those to create a meaning in the audience’s mind. The challenge with the scriptwriting process was in choosing the moments that would ensure the audience could follow quite a simple narrative and emotional thread so that they could experience the story with no dialogue.
The main goal with the story was to create a narrative so simple that the audience can imprint their own meaning onto it.
This meant setting up the protagonist and creature’s life cycles very quickly and then showing the emotional impact that this life cycle has on the protagonist. I did write this film very quickly as I was determined not to overthink it, so I wrote around four or five drafts over the course of two or three weeks and would produce each new draft on one solid day of writing. I figured that the faster I wrote, the closer I would get to the story pouring out of me, which I think is essential when creating a story as ‘out there’ as this. It was about trusting my imagination and flow. As for the cyclical narrative…it isn’t intentionally supposed to be one, but it is open to the audience about what happens at the end. The main goal with the story was to create a narrative so simple that the audience can imprint their own meaning onto it, and I really want each individual audience member to be the authority on the meaning they take from this story.
My main remit with the creature was that I wanted to preserve the actors eyes because I feel that when I look into an animal’s eyes, even though we can’t speak the same language I can connect with them on an intangible level and I wanted that to be the case with the creatures.
You undertook a 16 month mentorship with Warner Brothers shadowing showrunner Miguel Sapochnik and the episodic directors of House of the Dragon. How did this incredible opportunity influence Space Plug?
Whilst there I spent a lot of time in and around visual effects. I had a lot of theoretical knowledge on how everything could be executed but without the practical know-how. With the creature in particular being the biggest challenge, I knew it had to be very practical if it was to deliver upon the promise of the script, so I had to do a lot of design work and documents that outlined my vision for this very clearly so that we understood the practical challenges involved in creating it. We settled upon using RedGirlFX for the prosthetic creature head and then costume designers Sophia Denny and Eve Kann to create the bulk of the costume. My main remit with the creature was that I wanted to preserve the actor’s eyes because I feel that when I look into an animal’s eyes, even though we can’t speak the same language I can connect with them on an intangible level and I wanted that to be the case with the creatures…for the audience to be able to connect with them on an unconscious level.
We had the space created by Sehar Kidwai, which we knew had to be extremely simple by design, but within it, they had to embrace the smaller technical challenges within the film. There were also logistical challenges around the use of VFX alongside production design as we did a substantial amount of compositing work on this film. We used a miniature set for the birthing sequences, we had to plan how the creatures would escape out of the window which meant doing several versions of the same shot, with and without a reflective window. There were so many challenges that needed to be worked through. Thankfully we had an exceptional VFX Supervisor Lee Watson with us throughout helping oversee all of the shots and techniques within the film. He was a constant source of knowledge as the film was exceptionally ambitious from a visual effects standpoint!
How did you settle on the shape and size of the creature who is infantile, yet terrifying, yet also nurturing and was it always going to be played by a woman?
The creature itself really came to life during the post-production process and sound was the most transformative aspect in that it made it a living, breathing life form that was loving and disturbing in equal measure. The size was dictated by the belief that when the creature is up against a baby it would be a terrifying mass, but when against an adult, it wouldn’t be intimidating at all. That was important in order to justify the shift in the main character as they grow up, their relationship with these creatures changes quite significantly. In creating this alien too, I wanted to make it very specifically alien. Having a breast on its chest would immediately make it recognisable as something from this planet, so I figured why not place it in the middle of its face? This opened up so many possibilities in terms of the difference in feeding as a baby compared to an adult. And with that, the intimate eye contact that needs to occur in order to survive. It just made it very complex and interesting to me.
I was never sold on the gender of who would be playing the role, but we needed someone relatively small and someone comfortable with being submerged in prosthetics for five days. An amazing actor called Iniki Mariano who I previously worked with on my short film The Retreat, and who is now a good friend, was fully game to be a space alien. She was such a good presence on set and her commitment to the role really reads on screen. A lot of people empathise with the creatures and that’s a testament to her because even though she was baked in a costume, she was constantly ensuring that the creature was breathing, moving fluently and she was doing the work behind the character to ensure they weren’t just a glorified prop.
After the look, how did you develop the creature’s sound which would obviously need to be mimicked?
So on set, Iniki was buried in the costume so we could barely hear her, so none of her vocalisations made it into the film (as far as I’m aware). There is the scene where the creature and the boy have an argument. The young boy is enraged whilst screaming because Iniki was really arguing back with her screams, so all of her work was there to help performances on set, including her own.
From there it became about interrogating the meaning of the vocals to ensure that sometimes the creature sounded sympathetic, other times it’s as though it’s calling out, or it could be happy.
In terms of the creature’s vocals added in post, I think Grace and Zoltan, our sound designers who recently won an award for the project, nailed it pretty quickly. I gave the note that these were fluid-filled creatures, so it would be that breathing and vocalisations would create gurgles and bubbles within it. They said they used llamas, dogs, cats and camels amongst other animals to create the vocals…It’s really a mish-mash. From there it became about interrogating the meaning of the vocals to ensure that sometimes the creature sounded sympathetic, other times it’s as though it’s calling out, or it could be happy. There is a clear logic and journey to the creature’s vocals and especially for when a creature and protagonist learn to get along.
I would love to know more details about the creation of the sonic landscape, when they came into the project and most significantly, when you knew that silence and quiet were acceptable even in a dialogue free film.
So this was very tricky. It was a delicate balance of how much do you add into a minimalist environment. The second we started to add the clangs of metal into a structure that is moving through space, it felt familiar to other films and that was against what I was trying to create. I felt that to make something truly alien, we had to have materials that feel familiar to us but are acting in a way that feels organic or biological. The walls giving birth was the biggest challenge for every single department because what does that even mean? When it got to sound, it was really about leaning into the vocalisations of the creature and its breaths to layer on top of the quiet of the room itself. What does the sound of glass bending and rippling feel like?
There were so many great conversations throughout the process. In the final scene we were allowed to be a bit more free in creating a big sonic shift with the change in environment. The note I gave was that I want it to begin by feeling terrifying, but it should eventually transition into being euphoric. So it feels very cold and harsh at the top of that scene, with the bassy grunts and growls of creatures filling the vacuum of space. Then it really escalates and becomes something bigger and I think beautiful. Our sound designers Grace and Zoltan recently won a Music+Sound award for their work on this film and that’s a testament to the amazing work they did on this project!
It occurred to me during this process that I hadn’t really seen black actors in a black and white sci-fi before, so as we were going through the process of making the film, the images really began to jump off the screen.
It seems so obvious having watched it that Space Plug belongs in a black and white palette, how did you ensure the image had a depth and lushness within that monochrome colour scheme?
We luckily figured out that the film needed to be in black and white during pre-production, maybe about two months before we were due to be shooting. This allowed us to look at all of the colour that would exist in the film (which is mostly bodily fluids) and then test them to ensure that we could play with contrast properly. We did skin tests with the creature’s skin and also with a stand in that matched the complexion of our lead actor. It was all so that we could balance the contrast of the black and white against each other to ensure there was clear variation. We had to be very precise so that we made the most of the format to create a film that was visually arresting. It occurred to me during this process that I hadn’t really seen black actors in a black and white sci-fi before, so as we were going through the process of making the film, the images really began to jump off the screen as something I’d never seen before. We quickly learnt that different intensities of purple were the best way to create different levels of grey in the image, so our creature is purple, as was the urine and vomit in our film.
In the grade our cinematographer Sonja Huttunen requested that contrast be altered in such a way that it would resemble steel, thus creating a colder looking image across the film. I know the difference between colour temperatures when shooting a film in colour, but I wasn’t aware you could create the same feeling in black and white. She’s a genius though and she really knocked it out of the park with the visuals, as did the production designer and VFX artist.
I absolutely loved the audience reaction to the first two minutes of the film we saw at the Bolton Film Festival last month and I want to know more about the audience reactions and questions you’ve answered during your festival run.
I was really happy when they said we’d be screening the first two minutes because I know that it cuts perfectly onto the titles at two mins and the first scene is such a journey for the audience, so I was excited to see what people would think. It starts off very relaxed, but it quickly descends into horror territory before becoming…something else. It’s probably my favourite opening scene of any of the films I’ve done. When we screen it with an audience people really have no idea what to think by the time the opening titles thump up on screen, which is a really fun place to be. I just wanted to ensure that it felt so confidently done that they would have trust in me as a storyteller and that they’ll go along with it to see where the story heads.
The opening scene is weird, but it keeps getting weirder from there to be honest, so usually people either have no idea what to think about it at the end or they are just blown away by what they’ve seen. A lot of people are impressed by the creature work which I am super proud of because it was one of the most challenging aspects of the film considering the budget level we were operating at. Most commonly though, it seems to create a dialogue between people about what it means, which I really enjoy listening in to. That was my main goal in creating this.
What were your biggest creative takeaways and learnings from pulling off such an ambitious project and how are you bringing those into your future projects?
I wrote myself the biggest challenge with this film, not just creatively but technically too. It was such a challenge, but one I was happy to meet with all of the knowledge I’d gained whilst shadowing on Season 1 of House of the Dragon. I knew how to approach everything theoretically, so this was my opportunity to take the reigns and test it out. I think our biggest fears were around creating a convincing creature and to make sure that it wasn’t visually boring. Shooting with limited actors in a plain white room in theory should be pretty boring, but we found a way to create really interesting frames and there is so much beauty in the minimalism, so I’m really proud of the film’s aesthetic. Now I know I can shoot in any room and make it look interesting which is incredibly freeing as a filmmaker.
Also, I wrote myself into several holes with this film and gave myself a lot of creative challenges to solve, such as how these creatures are birthed through the walls. Writing things down without having an idea of how I’d eventually execute them was a great exercise and frees me up to write any scenario that I could wish to imagine from here on out, which is a blessing as I head into doing my own feature work. So now I’ll go into my long-form projects with the utmost confidence and validation in the knowledge that I’ve gained on my journey so far as a filmmaker!
