{"id":240803,"date":"2025-10-25T23:02:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T23:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/240803\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T23:02:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T23:02:07","slug":"a-sci-fi-movie-searching-for-truth-in-the-modern-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/240803\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sci-Fi Movie Searching for Truth in the Modern World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhile \u201cOrion<\/a>\u201d is an ambitious indie space saga, its examination of human nature is decidedly earthbound.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film stars Andrew McCarthy as Jim, a NASA bigwig tasked with helping Apollo (Drew Van Acker), an astronaut with memory loss, figure out what happened to cause his ship to crash and leave the other crew dead. Their back-and-forth makes up the core of the film, as twists, turns and discoveries gradually unfold.<\/p>\n

\n\tDirector Jaco Bouwer found plenty of grounded elements in Anne Vithayathil\u2019s script for \u201cOrion.\u201d Audiences will set sail on the film\u2019s maiden voyage when it has its world premiere at FilmQuest<\/a> in Provo, Utah, on Oct. 25.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t think we have an absolute truth anymore in this world,\u201d he says. \u201cThis really touches on that without being super on the nose. Science fiction intrigues me a lot. I like the genre because it\u2019s a little bit more of an expressionistic way of going about emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBouwer credits his collaborators for helping walk the film\u2019s tricky tightrope of making a largely two-hander feel expansive. He cites McCarthy\u2019s curiosity about the script \u2014\u00a0which is miles from the Brat Pack roles that first made him famous \u2014 as one big benefit.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe needs to know exactly what\u2019s going on,\u201d Bouwer says of McCarthy. \u201cHe really portrays Jim in a good way: There\u2019s a cerebral aspect to him, he\u2019s the master manipulator. In our film, there\u2019s a moment towards the end where we do see some part of humanity behind it. I find him really professional, and I think his range is much bigger than we\u2019ve seen before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBeyond the dialogue, Bouwer and his cinematographer David Kruta were eager to make the contained film feel taut and dynamic \u2014\u00a0no easy feat on an indie production.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe actually used quite a few different lenses,\u201d Bouwer says. \u201cFor the flashbacks, we used anamorphic, and we also changed the ratio. We sometimes went extreme wide-angle. Most of the effects were done in-camera. For me, it\u2019s always performance first, so it\u2019s important that the actors feel that. Because everything happens under one roof, the movement is motivated. So I would come in in the morning and we would block it in a way, and once we\u2019ve done that, then I had a meeting with my DP to see how we can best choreograph the camera to suit them. Sometimes it\u2019s purely for a visual, but mostly it was plotting their journey and letting the camera follow them or capture them in the best way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso critical were the sparingly-used glimpses of the further regions of outer space, which helped to convey the scale of the story \u2014\u00a0including a stunner of a final scene. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEspecially that shot at the end, you pull back and just see the smallness and the scale of it,\u201d Bouwer says. \u201cThere\u2019s something really great for me, and emotional and sad as well, about that image. It\u2019s kind of subliminal, but it was always in the back of my mind to make it feel that there is something bigger around. It makes the world bigger, although it\u2019s a two-location film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd while the vastness of the universe is worth considering, Bouwer had the most fun conjuring all of the fun and thrills out of a small-scale story.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was really trying to mislead the audience in subtle ways,\u201d he says. \u201cI think it boils down to performances. If the performances weren\u2019t believable, you\u2019re in big trouble. So I was very happy to have Drew and Andrew as my main guides through this maze of twists and turns.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWatch the first footage of \u201cOrion\u201d below.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While \u201cOrion\u201d is an ambitious indie space saga, its examination of human nature is decidedly earthbound. The film…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[64,63,134,143826,344,143827],"class_list":{"0":"post-240803","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-filmquest","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-orion"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}