ABOUT THE FILM
A mystical sci-fi comedy adventure about
the meaning of life. Inspired by everything from Star Trek to classic
Warner Bros. cartoons, with references to Nietzche,
Einstein, and Leonardo da Vinci, The Adventures of
Space Baby & Mental Man is for kids… for anyone who cares about
kids... and for anyone who’s ever wondered “what it's all
about.” THE FILMMAKERS
SPACE BABY is the first feature length
family film created entirely by a family, all in their own home. The
film was co-written by eight year old Sam and his Dad, Rex. The stars of
the film are Sam, his sister Sophia, and his baby brother William. We moved out of our house for a few weeks
and turned it into a film set. Our guest room became Blue’s
room. We created Sam’s laboratory and Peter’s Electronics
Shop in our creepy dungeon-like basement. Our tv-room
became Sam’s bedroom, and we built all sorts of strange contraptions,
including his bed out of stray plumbing pipes painted gold. Sophia
designed and painted her own bedroom walls, and we brought in dozens of
plants and small trees to make it look like a jungle. The rest of the
house was used as-is: kitchen, living room, foyer. Of
the dozens of crew members, the ones who didn’t live nearby slept on
couches and unused bedrooms. We turned our spare rooms on the third
floor into production offices, and later a full postproduction studio for
editing, visual effects, re-recording and sound mixing. Simon Coombs,
who made the satellite in Goldeneye and lots of
other cool visual effects, came to live with us for a summer and showed us
how it’s done. (First, you design the shape of an object, say a
baseball and its stitching, and the surfaces on the object, such as a map of
the world and red thread, and then you set up lights of various colors and brightnesses, figure out a motion path for the object so
it flies around in a good way, and then you let computers figure out how the
object will look as it moves around.) At one point we had TWENTY FOUR
old computers rendering the visual effects, which is a good thing since
sometimes it took several hours to render a single frame (and we had over
10,000 frames of visual effects!) We put Sam into a closet to record the
voice over narration, but we still had to stop recording whenever a truck or
airplane would go by. We changed our mind a lot about what he should
say, so you might be able to tell his voice gets older as the film goes
along! CREDITS
Executive Producer Michael
Palm ●
Directed by Rex Dean Written by Sam Dean & Rex Dean ● Story by the Dean Family Produced by Rex Dean, Denise Skinner &
Carol Patton Visual Effects by Simon Coombs & James Leutz ● Edited by Peter White Musical Score Composed by Alan Williams ● Additional Music by Alison Brown Cinematography by John Leuba ● Line Produced by Denise Skinner A KIDS RULE® FILM ● HEARTBEAT
MEDIA CORP. PRESS QUOTES
-- David Kleiler,
local film critic whose Boston Underground Film Festival awarded “I always thought of
the film as a cross between MY LIFE AS A DOG and E.T. In a way it’s about what might happen
to the baby at the end of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, or to Little Prince if he
ever returned to our planet….The film gives me ways of thinking about
some of the most complex and difficult experiences in life: love, death, existence, friendship, and
joy.” “Fine comedic acting.” “Everyone should see this
movie!” “The film has a wonderful
sensibility and freshness about it. Its themes are lovely, originally
presented, timely, and very much hit a chord with our family. My kids – one boy, one girl –
each identified with different elements of the film. My wife especially loved its spiritual
elements.” “I love these
kids!” “You’ve made a
film about my son… about my daughter… about me… I always
wished I had a friend like Blue, and a secret underground laboratory… I
was Nature Girl when I was little…” |
Copyright
© 2005 Space Baby & Mental Man, LLC. All rights reserved.
A KIDS RULE® FILM ● HEARTBEAT MEDIA
CORP.