Aidan Brezonick’s Night Shift tells the story of a late-night search for a little hair of the dog that goes horribly wrong. In this interview, Aidan explains the role that claustrophobia plays in his film and how he was able to apply his traditional shooting style to a tiny bunker in East LA. He also shares his vision for a future with more diverse and inclusive representation in sci-fi.
To celebrate the franchise’s 40th anniversary, 20th Century Fox teamed up with Tongal to launch the Alien 40th Anniversary Shorts Project, giving filmmakers the opportunity to pitch entirely new original short films based on the distinctive world of the 1979 Alien. In a span of one week, we received over 550 pitches, more than any other production project on Tongal to date, and ultimately greenlit 6 filmmakers to produce their original shorts, providing them with a budget of $35,000 each.
After months of meticulous planning and production, the films are finally here! Each one is a testament to the kind of magic made only by talented and resourceful film crews. Since screening at Emerald City Comic Con and WonderCon, fans have been fawning over each of the shorts’ authenticity and what they add to the story world of the original.
Starting on March 31st, IGN began releasing one Alien short a week on their digital network, and to coincide with this release schedule, we’ll be publishing one interview a week with one of our 6 Alien filmmakers. Read on for an interview with Night Shift director Aidan Brezonick.
Ingrid Vining: This short required you to evoke a world that’s already been established in the original films, and we were impressed by the production value on everyone’s short film. How did you go about achieving the look of your film?
Aidan Brezonick: We knew that we wanted to base our story around an enclosed space. What the original did so well was build off that sense of claustrophobia. We used a bunker on the East side of Los Angeles, the location had this amazing half dome shape that highlighted this retro-future look. Also prop rental houses were out of the question -- but we’ve had decent luck using junk shops in the past and this project was no exception. My one bit of advice; hire a great DP/gaffer duo. It makes a world of difference, especially on indies.
IV: The space in which this was shot was quite small, but we were impressed by the variety of camera movements you packed in. All the filmmakers were required to storyboard for this project -- how did having that game plan locked before shooting help you both creatively and practically?
AB: I’m a huge fan of shooting traditionally. Saying that I love dollys and steadicams is an understatement. Holding on longer takes and giving our actors room to play made the environment feel more real. I’ve never stuck so closely to storyboards as on this project, haha, it helped us keep shots and coverage to a minimum. Most of the time we were shooting 3:1. Wider lenses coupled with a fair amount of tracking and dolly shots did a lot of service to establishing the location quickly, something that’s always been a challenge in shorts.
IV: This being the 40th anniversary of Alien, how did your short film pay homage to the original? And how did it bring something entirely new to the Alien universe?
AB: Slow burn is the main thing I take away structurally from Alien. So few sci-fi flicks spend the time letting their characters be human before the action hits. If there was one thing Alien taught me over the years, it’s that pacing your characters is immensely important. Once you get to know them as people, then you care about what happens to them when the shit goes down. The whole ticking time bomb setup of our film was a direct result of that.
While representation is starting to get better, it has never been where it deserves to be -- especially in sci-fi, which is a space often dominated by white nerds (that’s me). I think we can do better than that. It’s important to me to have more diverse representations in my writing and films.
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See more behind-the-scenes action on Instagram at @aidanbrezonick and @alienanthology, and be sure to keep your eyes glued to IGN where new Alien 40th anniversary short films will be released every week leading up to Alien Day on April 26th.
