Journey to Planet X

Cast/Crew Info
Cast: Troy Bernier, Eric Swain
Director: Myles Kane, Josh Koury
Produced by: Trisha Barkman
Editing By: Myles Kane, Josh Koury
Music By: Jonah Rapino

Eric Swain is a geologist working in ground-water resources is his day job, but his passion is making fantasy films. As the documentary begins Myles Kane and Josh Koury introduce us to Eric, and show us clips from several of his early short films. These works range from Science fiction to tales of knights from a magical world seemingly straight out of the mind of a 7th grade boy. While the subject matter changes, the films all seem populated by woman with little acting ability but very large breasts, preformed in front of backdrops created through the use of a”Green-Screen.”

The basic timeline of this film is to track Eric Swain, who has been joined now by fellow hobbyist, Troy Bernier is they begin to create their latest, and if Troy has his way, greatest new film. This new work is called Planet X (Though the title changes as the project moves forward). Determined to make a movie with higher production quality than anything they had done to date, they purchase a HD camera a mic and then write, and storyboard a film that common sense should tell them requires a multimillion dollar budget,but that does not stop them from making the $2,000 version. After seeing the results of their two year effort, it becomes easier to understand why Prometheus carried a $130,000,000 budget.

It is great to see two filmmakers who have imagination, drive and refuse to allow a cast of poor actors working for free, spacesuits and weapons made from stuff they found at Home depot and green screened backgrounds that look like they came from the first generation of video games, to stand in their way. Myles Kane and Josh Koury do a great job of letting us laugh at the amateur quality of the film while still having respect for Eric and Troy. The take-away is not that the team are incapable of making a film, but that the film they made is impossible for anyone to make given the conditions and limitations they faced.

I had the privilege of talking to both Eric and Troy during a party later in the week, and found them both to be friendly, open and passionate about film-making.