Maybe the single best thing I did last week was sit down and watch A Thousand Suns, a collection of sci-fi shorts on YouTube.
Comprising six short films in total--though there are plans for many, many more--some only run for a couple of minutes and some have a bit more to say, some are hauntingly sparse while others are surprisingly packed with action and detail.
Like any good short (especially ones this brief), there's just enough in each to set the scene, while leaving plenty of room for your imagination to run wild trying to fill in all the gaps. The first episode, Ice (above), was probably my favourite; it's about a deep space pioneer who, despite having the universe's coolest firepower at his disposal, ends up having a very bad day at work.
A Thousand Suns was put together by Blackmilk Studio, a production company, whose boss Macgregor says the basic pitch was "Imagine if The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror had a mutant offspring with Heavy Metal. Each story stands alone…but together all the stories tell one story: mankind’s struggle to survive in a universe that seems to want us extinct."
"When I was tired of being bossed around in commercials, I thought, 'Why not start with a blank canvas?' All those ideas and concept art I've collected over the years needed a home. A Thousand Suns became that playground for wild storytelling, a mix of funny, scary, emotional, and downright horrifying sci-fi."
All six shorts were funded internally by Blackmilk. "Financing the shorts ourselves, we didn’t have the budget to make a hundred million dollar movie", Macgregor tells me, "but...we knew we could make short films that felt like scenes from hundred million dollar movies if we just worked ourselves to the bone."
That funding extended beyond just VFX; most of the shorts involved sending actors and production crews out across the world. "Each short had its own unique challenges", Macgregor says. "Deal stands out due to the complexity of crafting the creature and navigating remote locations, from Iceland to California. Ice was an adventure shooting on a glacier in Iceland amidst a blizzard. Red brought its share of stress, shooting exclusively during blue hour in New Mexico with only a 16-minute window each day.”
While this initial drop is comprised of six shorts, Blackmilk's website outlines plans for a further 16. "We would like to continue cooking up more tales!" Macgregor says. "We're aiming to expand into a streaming series and even have feature-length stories in mind for the big screen. But, a little boost wouldn't hurt. If you've got sway in a streamer or movie studio, tell them you're greenlighting this!"
A Thousand Suns' first six episodes were directed by Ruairi Robinson, Macgregor, Tyson Wade Johnston and Tim Hyten, and written in collaboration with screenwriter Philip Gelatt. Some of the artists involved in designing the series' suits, weapons and spaceships were Raluca Porumbacu, Andrew Entwistle and Diego Marangoni, and you can see some of their work below:
If you want to watch the other three episodes, and some making-of specials behind the scenes, they're available here!
