Local film crew plans sci-fi flick screening

By JACQUELINE CAIN | Staff Writer
jackie@miltonindependent.com

With imaginations as large as the Intrinsic Films crew’s, a one-car garage in Milton is convincingly transformed into a spaceship bound for Mars.

The feature-length, sci-fi psycho-drama “Tin Can,” screening this Friday, Oct. 21 at the Palace 9 Cinema in So. Burlington at 8:30 p.m., centers on three astronauts of the Cercopes on its first manned mission to Mars in the not-so-distant future. The movie was almost entirely shot in writer and producer Stephen J. Maas’ garage on Red Clover Way.

Suspense fuels the story, not eye-catching special effects like in many of today’s science fiction films. Maas said that’s what he and director Logan Howe were going for: Using limited resources to “maximize [our] creative output.”

The storyline opens with Peter Bennett (played by Maas), Mark Riley (Eric Clifford of Montpelier) and Alan Kenneth (Jayson Argento of Essex) a little more than two months into their two-year mission, and tensions are high. Space is tight aboard Cercopes; privacy does not exist, and personalities conflict.

When equipment starts malfunctioning, Bennett’s communication with ground control in Korolev, Russia is futile, and he begins to suspect the purpose of the mission is not what his crew was lead to believe. Things go from bad to worse in all regards: More equipment failure, dissension between Riley and Kenneth and immense feelings of isolation for Bennett. Flashbacks and memory sequences help the audience understand just how conflicted Bennett is feeling.

“The Case For Mars”
Maas sat in his dining room during a recent interview, wearing a T-shirt with an obscure “Star Wars” reference. He explained how he considers science fiction his “home base.”

“Tin Can” is inspired by aerospace engineer Robert Zubrin’s 1996 book, “The Case For Mars,” which details a plan for a cheap, manned trip to Mars, which keeps costs down by using automated systems and Mars’ resources to manufacture the return journey’s fuel.

“It’s an ingenious concept, which will never make it through the red tape ... [When] you put a program through Congress, you can’t get it through without people attaching stuff to it,” Maas said. “[Zubrin’s] original idea was so simplistic and just pure science, no frills. Live off the land, and we can go to Mars just like that.”

Though the film uses heady science terms like “terraforming” – making other planets habitable – the actual message of the film cuts through the aerospace jargon, Maas said.

“[‘Tin Can’ is] about three guys who become isolated,” he said. “It’s not that often you’re really forced to look at yourself, because we have a lot of distractions, you know? It’s really an examination of what happens when you have no choice.”

Cercopes of Red Clover Way
Maas began diagramming how he could turn his garage into a spaceship in 2007. He drafted the screenplay in early 2008, and he and Howe, of Shelburne, started building the set in January 2009.

Howe made a 3D model of the ship using Google’s free software program, SketchUp. The final set included plywood, sheet metal and a variety of salvaged junk, including the radio station 95 Triple X’s 2000s-era radio equipment as the command center. The estimated $5,000 budget was paid out-of-pocket by the film crew.

“We wanted it to be as detailed as possible with real things,” Maas said. “That makes the difference between it being just amateur-looking, versus something that feels like it has substance.”

Howe’s vision for Cercopes called for a completely immersive set. Within Maas’ garage, the ship was entirely enclosed – ceiling and all –  with a 1.5-foot corridor from which the film crew worked, he said. Cameras recorded from slits in walls, giving the effect of surveillance. Director of photography Barb Pendl rigged cameras up to achieve just the right angle.

Though the enclosed set made shooting a challenge, it helped the actors truly become their characters, Maas said.

“Nobody went in there except for the astronauts when we were shooting ... It was very real,” he said.

Indeed, the Cercopes of the movie doesn’t recall Maas’ one-car garage at all. The structure is currently headquarters for Maas’ home window renovation project. A stack of 2-by-3 framing salvaged from the spaceship will probably become a playhouse for Maas’ 2-year-old daughter, Emeline, and her soon-to-arrive sister, he said. Disembodied pieces of the ship are strewn about, including the old radio soundboard and the urinal device that plays an important – albeit somewhat sickening – role in the film.

Breaking down the set was hard for the crew, Maas said. “Tin Can” was Maas’s first feature-length film, so the set meant a lot to him.

“We spent 10 months building it and a year and a half shooting it,” and it only took one day to tear it all down, he said, adding, “It becomes a character in the film. That was a big part of the way we designed it; we wanted it to be almost a living thing.”

Because the crew was volunteer, scheduling was the No. 1 challenge, Maas said.
“My wife was very gracious and let me keep the garage for a long time for just [Cercopes]. The deal was I had to clean her car off in the winter. That was fine with me,” he said, and then laughing, added, “It ended up being two winters that I was doing that.”

Vermont’s extreme weather brought more challenges. During winter filming, “We ran five or six space heaters – yes, ‘space’ jokes abounded during production – inside the set in between takes,” Maas said.

Though the space heaters prevented breath vapor from appearing in the film, the actors still wore thermal underwear, and the crew in the corridor wore full winter gear. Conversely, the scenes shot inside the astronauts’ bunks were during the summer when the garage was swelteringly hot.

Most of the story takes place within Cercopes, but dreams and memories were shot on-location around Vermont during the summer before the set was ready. Maas’ Milton back yard, including the Lamoille River, is the scene of some of the movie’s natural shots.

One of the flashback scenes took place on the reconstructed “Late Night Saturday with Tim Kavanagh” set, the WCAX talk show that ran from 2006 – 2009. Kavanagh, who plays himself interviewing the astronauts in a cameo role, was the executive producer of “Tin Can.”

But Vermont itself is not a character in the film. Besides mentioning ground control in Russia, everything outside the ship takes place generally on Earth, Maas said.
“It’s never said where any of it takes place, actually,” he said. “There’s a lot of intentionally vague things in the film.”

The future of “Tin Can”
Maas, Howe, Clifford, Kavanagh and Milton’s Mike Foster make up Intrinsic Films, a company formed during production of “Tin Can.”

Currently, Intrinsic is distributing the film and is narrowing down a “huge list” of potential projects, Maas said.

“My next film won’t be nearly as hardcore sci-fi as this is. I want to do something different,” he said.

In September, the company returned from the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival, where “Tin Can” garnered laurels for “Most Artistic Film.”

“To make an artistic film was one of our main goals. It was nice to win that,” Maas said, adding the accolade is attributable to Howe’s direction.

“Tin Can” was accepted as an official entry of the Vermont International Film Festival, the only feature-length narrative of the 24 pictures in the Vermont Films category, festival coordinator Gail Clook said. It will screen this Friday at 8:30 p.m. at Palace 9 Cinema in So. Burlington.

“Everyone keeps asking when they can see it; now’s the time,” Maas said.
Like all Vermont films featured in the festival, the screening is free. A suggested  $5 donation goes to the festival, said Deb Ellis, president of the festival’s board of trustees.

“Tin Can” is eligible for the James Gladstone Award, a $500 cash prize, Clook said, but Maas and his crew don’t have any expectations.

“We don’t get anything out of this other than the exposure and being able to show it to people, which is what we want to do,” Maas said. “We’re just really psyched to be playing at home.”

Though the film isn’t rated, the crew said it should be considered R for strong language and intense psychological situations.

To learn more about “Tin Can,” visit www.tincanmovie.com, “Like” the film’s page on Facebook and follow @TinCanMovie on Twitter.