"I would say the primary source of inspiration for the story was the location," Caldwell says. The Seattle-based filmmakers knew of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, home to several rainforests. With its heavy greenery and misty atmosphere, the Hoh Rainforest in particular stood out as the perfect double for a far-away world. "From that sprouted a design philosophy around a more gritty, naturalistic type of sci-fi that we wanted to come out of it."

The duo had taken advantage of the local landscape with their previous short In the Pines, an impressionistic film that followed a young woman haunted by an alien abduction. Prospect had bigger ambitions, however, so they turned to Kickstarter. Their campaign bested its $20,000 goal, but with their focus on practical effects and custom-built props and costumes they had to stretch the budget as far as they could. "It was really tight," Earl stresses.

With the rainforest standing in for alien terrain, costuming became one of the essential ways of establishing the film’s universe. The goal was to create a future world that had peaked, and was slowly slipping into decline. Earl and Caldwell collected images of 1960s spacesuit designs as visual references, and then production designers Nicholas van Strander and Matt Acosta went to work. The suit helmets were high-altitude test pilot helmets purchased through eBay, with the breathing mechanisms and other costume elements created just for the production.