Sunday, July 24, 2011

Short Film - Cockpit: The Rule of Engagement


Here is something entertaining from IO9 - the site has an exclusive premiere of award-winning short film Cockpit: The Rule of Engagement.

From the site:
  • It's the action-packed story of warfare at the edge of the galaxy, where an alien enemy can mess with human minds — as well as blowing up ships.
  • It is the story of a squadron of space fighter pilots, stranded in their cockpits deep in enemy space, struggling with reality and delusion as they are hunted by mind controlling aliens.
  • "COCKPIT: THE RULE OF ENGAGEMENT" is a standalone chapter from the same universe which follows the Carrier Captain (Ronny Cox) who must decide if it is worth risking the security of Earth to save a suffocating pilot who may or may not have been corrupted by the mind controlling aliens . . .
You would expect an indie short film to be a bit cheesy in both acting and special effects, but this is top notch in both categories!

Here is the link to the IO9 exclusive chapter
And for more info in the complete project here is the official Website

5 comments:

JoshM said...

That's pretty cool. Production-wise, it's very well done. Though I do sort of feel as though the whole paranoia-inducing alien menace trope is reaching the point of overdone. And I might not have minded so much if they'd come up with a plausible way around the video-log issue. But I couldn't buy the edited-log scenario, which sort of killed the rest of the story for me.

Beam Me Up said...

dead on Josh!
Switch these aliens with say Cylons and you have BSG. It was the production values. Am I likely to see the movie this is based on? Probably not. The monsters in the dark that can pose as humans has been done to tears and for me now this is more a horror flick than science fiction, no matter what the trappings. Hell Alien(s) was a monster in a dark tight space...nope. Bravo on the production I just wish they had chosen a fresher subject

JoshM said...

Yeah, I was thinking cylons, also the Silents in this season's Doctor Who opener (though, to Moffat's credit, he did something particularly and uniquely creepy with the aliens-messing-with-your-mind thing), plus the later DW "Rebel Flesh" two-parter.

And then, too, I'm in the middle of reading the "Ender's Game" trilogy, which sort of makes the whole "shoot first, question later" mentality seem too easy and overly reactionary.

Beam Me Up said...

Creepy yep, to a point but how many times have we read or seen "the aliens are here amongst us! Usually it's some sort of mass hypnosis (the cylons walked right up to this line and stopped) but uniquely different, I don't see it.

Oh yes, Ender will warp your opinion right of and continually. I am not sure the series ever met my expectations (kind of a The Last Starfighter thing) but even so, it is easily one of the best series I ever read.

Jesse Griffith said...

Thanks for the critique guys. I've gotten some criticism about the video log. I've always looked at it as the Tarceds work in mysterious ways... they can manipulate thoughts and technology (aka video logs). Also, Outback wasn't an alien among us, the alien was hiding on his ship controlling him, a bit different, though I am guilty of loving the paranoia of who's amongst us theme.