Those darn ETERNAUTA fan films!

(LEER EN ESPAÑOL)

Last week, www.quietearth.us mentioned all the independent projects coming forth as a prelude to the long-awaited film version of Hector G. Oesterheld’s EL ETERNAUTA. Our project among them. Well, we promised we would get back on a number of issues they raised. So, here goes.

Naturally, like Quiet Earth suggests, we don't have the rights. But as sci-fi fans, we wanted to explore this universe through our creative endeavours, obviously giving due credit to its brilliant author and not making a dime off of it. Our inspiration was in fact fuelled by the real snow that fell in Buenos Aires on July 9th, 2007.

It normally doesn't snow in the capital of Argentina, because it's too damn humid in the winter. And suddenly, out of nowhere, when we hard-core sci-fi lovers & filmmakers saw those flakes coming down, we started seeing the movie… our movie. And thus, we began coming up with stories and scenarios of other characters on that fateful day.

Then we got distracted by the thousand other things that we do. Among them, the short film we did for the Warner Brothers Watchmen Contest, which turned out to be a winner. To make matters more complex, some of us have non-media day jobs, while others of us sneak out of bed to strike a passionate encounter with Adobe After Effects, and yes, a few of us produce content for the television and online industries. Just that none of it involves aliens wiping out Buenos Aires with toxic snow.

After all, Argentine mainstream media, most of its filmmakers and especially its critics don’t really get science fiction. But we knew sooner or later that had to change.

So, it was a pleasant surprise – about a year later - when we heard that the prestigious Pedro Almodovar along with partners from Italy and Argentina had bought the rights to do the real deal. And as much as a lot of fans are concerned of what they might do because they don't play on the Sci-Fi Home Team, for the record; we firmly believe they're professional enough to sort this out when the time comes.

Yet, before hiring Lucrecia Martel's replacement – green screen ace or not - we strongly believe they should do one thing first. Hire a professional screenwriter with a strong grip on this genre. Yes, Oesterheld’s story has strong political overtones (as do many graphic novels by Alan Moore), but on a second layer. The first is an all out post apocalyptic tale of war against strange creatures, adventure and survival. In short, EL ETERNAUTA is not just a sci-fi movie; it is an “event” movie.

Now about that test footage that everybody says is "official"... Well, everybody except for the VFX studio who put it out that only describe it as an experimental project. So maybe Almodovar secretly hired them to mess around with stuff even though he's got no working script yet. Hmmm.

Who knows? It's just as likely that misinformation from now on will only be second to the one on alien encounters. That's right, you are now hearing the first bar of the X-Files theme song in your brain...

Oh, and speaking of music, ours is not from any Italian movie. It’s not by the talented DJ Goblin either. Though we got a kick out of reading this, lol. It's actually original and was composed by our friends from MMB – who’ve done stuff for us before - and put it out on a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Generic License for anyone to download. Legally boys and girls.

And last, but certainly not least, we’d like to thank Quite Earth and Mr. Avery for bringing our project to the attention of online audiences. Very cool of you, fellas!

Now, we've got a darn fan film to produce!