Space Detective

My best friend (and SWAMP MEDIA GROUP collaborator) Matt Sjafiroeddin and I began SPACE DETECTIVE over a decade ago as a short film meant to bolster our portfolio. Instead, SPACE DETECTIVE became an epic that consumed our life.

Our story is a culmination of every bit of entertainment that Matt and I devoured growing up. We loved sci-fi, we loved comics, we loved the movies; we're both pop culture junkies. We wanted to create a rousing space opera and a celebration of all that we loved. We wanted to play with our own culture and zap it through an alien lens. How would aliens reinterpret our society? How would our civilization influence theirs? And how could we exploit that for cheap jokes? We figured this might be the only movie that we ever make, so we threw caution to the wind and let our imaginations go nuts.

Still, we couldn’t raise a single penny. No one outside the Swamp believed in us, and crowdfunding was still a few years from being a thing. Sure, we may have bent a few laws and played the outlaw filmmaker bit, but we were SWAMP MEDIA GROUP and nothing was going to stop this picture!

It was early on when Matt and I realized that SPACE DETECTIVE was something special. We had taken inspiration from indie comics and created high-contrast black & white imagery that would not only hide our very cheap VFX, but give the audience a whole new kind of visual representation. The kinetic rough cuts gave us characters that weren’t exactly cartoons, but weren’t quite real either. It was impossible to look away. What started as a VFX cheat ended up working to our advantage aesthetically. Even our script remained tight as we evolved into a feature. We strove to create characters that were obvious archetypes, yet with fresh approaches. We felt that if Zyzzo, our little hip-hop alien gangsta, worked then the rest would follow. We experimented and grew the SPACE DETECTIVE universe with montages, comedy skits, and commentary. We even included a ridiculous music video. It all played. There wasn’t anything like our movie.

Directing SPACE DETECTIVE wasn’t easy. Quite frankly, there were a few times that I almost microwaved the footage. But how could I? All that I’ve ever wanted was to be a director. Hell, my earliest memory is of a movie theater and STAR WARS. But most importantly - my best friend and I made a movie we always wanted to see about the shit we've always loved. SPACE DETECTIVE is as much about who we are as it is about dudes with talking laser guns...

But don't worry, we don't cheap out on the talking laser guns!