New British film Beyond Existence is fast heading towards completion, with an Indiegogo campaign running to raise the funds to complete the visual effects. Award-winning director Shuman Hoque, whose short films have garnered several nominations including the SXSW Grand Jury Prize, Edinburgh International Best Short and the Anthony Minghella Award, took time out from the post-production to chat with Paul Simpson…

How did you get involved with Beyond Existence?

Steven Farah and I have been working together for years. We have another project, The King’s Men, which is a quite graphic hard-edged poker thriller, and we shot a proof of concept trailer for that which ended up getting over 2 million hits on YouTube. We thought we could turn it into a feature film, but everyone kept saying to us, “You’ve not made a feature film so we’re not going to give you the money to make a feature film.” We decided to do something small and use our own money to prove that we could make a feature film.

I looked about and saw how a lot of low budget films tend to be about a few characters in a few locations and can be a bit boring – it can work well, but there’s a danger that it can be stale.

You’re fighting against the set up to get the audience interest.

Exactly. I thought, “What if our main location is a car and we can go from one location to another and open up the story when we need to?” There’s still a visual journey. From that germ of an idea I came up with a cantankerous old professor who’s got a secret and a government agent who has to help him get to a specific location by a specific time. That’s all I had.

I talked to Steven and [producer] Claire [Daly] and Steven turned that into a high concept sci-fi thriller, with a Hollywood structure and flow to it. Then we added things like technology and the way it affects human beings, and the way we interact with each other – maybe there’s something more to it in the way it’s affecting us.

Did you add those elements organically as you were prepping the script or were they things you felt were needed if it was going to be SF?

A writer called Max Barry wrote a book called Lexicon, and there’s a sequence in it where a character has to go into this void where no one is allowed into, and they can only communicate over radio. That was the first germ of the idea – what if it was a place like that they were going to and there was some sort of alien artefact or something there that was integral to saving humanity?

It was always going to be sci-fi but Steven in his writing made it into much more of a thriller. The elements of technology all came around the time Trump was being nominated, and there was this feel we were creating an environment where we’re going to destroy ourselves, so we started to add that to the mix. It’s not a political film.

Science fiction holds up a mirror to society and you can comment on things more obliquely.

That’s what we tried to do. On the surface level we wanted it to be a film to just enjoy, but if you really like sci-fi, there are elements there for you.

What’s your background?

I’m Bengali, British raised, so the idea of going into an artistic or creative endeavour was really alien, but it grew in my mind that I really wanted to make films. I realised at uni that I was going to fail the year because I didn’t care about any of it, so I might as well drop out and see if I could make a go of film. It took a long time, doing music videos, commercials, online content, short films – 15 or 16 years.

What attracts you to a project?

I like a good story, as in a good plot. Something that moves forward.

That’s an interesting because there’s a difference between plot and story – is it the movement from A to B to C or the story of the characters?

It’s a combination – I want a good story that has a good plot. There are definitely films out there that have great stories that don’t have a great plot but that’s a very specific skillset that some directors and writers can do and not everyone is good at it.

I want characters that act in a way that makes sense to me – I hate it when a character is doing something for the story, making a choice just to make the story move forward. On a thematic level, obviously I love sci-fi, and I want to make sci-fi, but beyond that a good story with characters that act in what I consider to be a real way, who make real choices.

What’s been the biggest challenge about doing this?

Money and time! Not enough money, not enough time. That said, it’s incredible what we’ve been able to pull off on quite a ridiculously small budget. Part of that is the way filming technology has really opened things up now – there are things that literally would have been unthinkable 10 years ago let alone 20. We are using plug-ins that are exactly the same as used in Hollywood on millions of dollar-budget movies. The price of software has come down so much but you still need the skill level to use that software in the best possible way – and the best people cost money. Luckily we know people – we all have careers working commercially so we can pull in favours – but there are only so many favours you can pull in.

Because you don’t have a lot of money, you don’t have a lot of time so you have to maximise it, that’s been the biggest challenge.

What is the unique selling point for this film?

I think it’s a very unique film – one thing I don’t think you see a lot of is British sci-fi. British characters, set in Britain and is sci-fi. That makes it very unique straightaway. Also whenever you see a film where the world’s at stake, it’s pretty much always set in America – here’s a film where the world’s at stake and takes place in Britain. It’s British sci-fi that takes place in a very British world.

So what makes it British?

The feel; it has a very rounded real world feel to it. We got some really great locations with a feel and an atmosphere to them, and the style of writing is not hysterical, it’s not over the top. It’s sci-fi so it’s fantastical; you have to suspend the disbelief but there’s an element of this is plausible. I like to think that anyway. If we accept the rules of this universe, then I think it’s quite believable and how it might happen.

Where are you in terms of post-production?

We’re picture-locked, it’s being graded and audio mixed. We’ve got about 50-60% of the VFX shots completed. There are some 3D elements which are beyond my skill level and it’s a case of trying to find a VFX company to come on board. We’re 75-80% of the way there and the film can realistically be finished in the next 6 months or so.

We’re probably going to go the festival route the end of this year, start of next year.

Are you regarding this as done, or are you seeing the festival route as a testing ground ready to do reshoots?

As the film stands, it’s very lean. What we’ve shot is what we’ve got. There isn’t really much scope to change the film beyond minor things – but of course in an ideal world, it would be great.

What have you learned as a director from this experience?

One of those things that everyone knows, but until you’ve made a feature you don’t really appreciate is how important it is to have a really solid script. It’s going to get rewritten during shooting and the editing rewrites the film to a degree, but having that there all the way to refer back to was essential. What’s here in the script?

Thanks to Emma Deakins for her help in setting up the interview.