Despite all of the sophistication of gear and preparation, the model shots were ultimately filmed in front of sheets. Photo courtesy Seaquark Films To create the miniature shots, the team relied on a donated DitoGear motion control Omnislider. "By shooting stills instead of live video we were able to use low light and keep deep focus by lengthening exposure times (meaning a 10-second shot could take half an hour to film, and when you add multiple passes to that it was slow going)," writes Stockmeier. Photo courtesy Seaquark Films One of the biggest challenges in making the model work was the size limits imposed by the crew's filming space, which limited the final model to 4 feet. "There were numerous lighting effects and all kinds of wires and fiber optics that needed to be crammed inside a very small space. In the end, we felt more like surgeons than model builders!" writes modeller Charles Adams. Photo courtesy Charles Adams The starship in C began as a 2-foot prototype. Stockmeier's father, architect Wolfgang Stockmeier, recreated the model in SketchUp to generate concept art for the Kickstarter campaign. When it came time to create the movie, modeller Charles Adams imported the SketchUp model into Rhino, refined it and then broke it into parts for a laser cutter, which became the base upon which to add detailing. Image courtesy Charles Adams The ship's main UI elements were created by projecting animated Illustrator files onto surfaces. Some of the other consoles were created by running animations on an iPad and filming the result. Many of the walls used in the movie were made of hole-filled pegboard. By putting moving light sources in the background and keeping the depth of field shallow, the result was a ship awash in hypnotic bokeh effects. A view of the corridors from the outside. Note the doors, ready to slam down. Photo courtesy Seaquark Films The sets were made out of low-cost materials and had plenty of imperfections and seams. By filming with low-light settings and making careful use of lighting, they became seamless. Photo courtesy Seaquark Films Caroline Winterson as Lieutenant Commander Malleck prepares to change human history. Movie still courtesy Seaquark Films For the retro science documentary Beyond the Infinite*, the lighting situation was much simpler. For authenticity the team left behind the digital gear and filmed using a 16 mm Eclair ACL camera.* Photo courtesy Seaquark Films

When Derek Van Gorder and Otto Stockmeier decided to make a science fiction short about a mutiny on an interplanetary warship, they didn't have the funds for CGI. They did, on the other hand, have access to the digital cameras that are part and parcel of any contemporary filmmaker's toolkit. So they eschewed the digitally rendered graphics that are ubiquitous today, and instead set out to combine classic in-camera special effects with the advanced low-light filming capabilities of the latest cameras. The result: a unique science fiction vision for their film C 299,792 km/s, released yesterday.

C 299,792 km/s is a Kickstarter success story. The team was successfully funded in December 2011. They raised $37,317, double their target, at which point they decided to further their ambitions, ultimately turning to their fans for a second round of funding. All told, the movie was made for only $40,000 — but you wouldn't know it to look at it.

"Digital technology has made basic filmmaking tools available to everyone, but undertaking a project like this is still considered way outside of the indie filmmaking spectrum," says Stockmeier. "What we hoped to achieve with combining practical effects and digital equipment is to show that with a little ingenuity people can make really cool movies with very little resources."

The project has three main shooting environments. First, there was the live-action interior of the ship. Second, the exterior of the ship in flight. Third, a live-action retro-science documentary.

The interior of the ship was a set built largely from particleboard and pegboards with clever lighting and projectors to create the environment. The space sequences were filmed as stop-motion sequences with a model. By taking advantage of the camera's ability to shoot in low light, the team was able to create a spectacular setting using cheap, readily available lights like LEDs and Christmas tree bulbs that would have been too dim at the height of Hollywood's use of in-camera special effects.

By contrast, the "science documentary" sequences were filmed on location with 16mm cameras. Because they were filmed in broad daylight, the lighting situation was much simpler.

Wired contacted the team to learn more about what went on behind the scenes. Stockmeier took charge of responding "since Derek has been tied to the editing station for the past few weeks." What's striking is the number of different ways that digital tools played a role in a movie with no CGI.

A vocabulary note: Kit bashing is when you go to a model store and buy up boxed models kits like cars and naval vessels to repurpose the parts for your completely unrelated miniature. The original Star Wars spaceships where detailed by kit bashing.

Wired: Can you give us a run down of all the gear you used for the special effects?

Otto Stockmeier: All of our miniature photography was done using the 2 meter DitoGear motion-control Omnislider, which is often used for time-lapse photography and stop animation. The repeatable motion allowed us to get multiple passes for each shot, meaning we could expose for different elements separately and turn the different passes on and off in the edit to create various effects. Also the continuous motion setting let us shoot high resolution stills for each frame while maintaining the correct motion blur. By shooting stills instead of live video we were able to use low light and keep deep focus by lengthening exposure times (meaning a 10 second shot could take half an hour to film, and when you add multiple passes to that it was slow going).

We found a lot of use for projectors both on set and during miniature photography. On set they served for background screens and combined with pegboard to create textured moving walls. Our designer Thomas Kronbichler would create a still version of the graphic for us and then Derek would animate it in Final Cut Pro. At one point for the bridge scenes we had 4-5 projectors going all playing looped videos. For the planet shots we ended up projecting a video of Jupiter behind the ship that moved in sync with the camera to make it look like only the ship is moving. This created an interesting additional effect, since the texture of the screen still moved with the ship it gave a sort of haze to the planet which we liked.

Otherwise, everything is lights, flares, split screen and other tricks. We got a lot of mileage out of some simple home-depot LED lights in creating all of the different explosion and firing flares.

Wired: What are some of your favorite low tech lighting or set design hacks that the digital cameras enabled?

Stockmeier: Here are a few (and not to sound like a broken record, but almost all of these are thanks to low light, these lights would all normally be too dim to use and keep things cheap).

We picked up some cheap party police lights (which we dubbed "spinners"), that we used for alarm lights. We taped them onto c-stands for flexibility and used them to break up the space and keep everything moving. Our sets were OK, but you need a lot of distractions going on or viewers might start noticing the cardboard and staples.

Likewise, aside from our small kitchen fluorescents ("c-lights") that we used everywhere, we got some longer ceiling lights ("gate lights") that we combined with wax paper and gels and put behind the cut outs next to the gates.

My personal favorite had to have been this little round LED under-counter kitchen light we found ("flare light"). For some reason the reflective housing surrounding the LED source on that fixture made the coolest flares and we used it for all of the gun effects as well as all of the spaceship firing effects. In fact for the ship effects we used a lot of long exposures and wiggling lights around to get beams of lights, or flickering blasts (I would tilt the flare light in a different direction between each frame).

Wired: The UI of the ship features prominently in the film. Tell us about the design of the UI and a little bit about how it was filmed.

Stockmeier: A big part of what sells this film is keeping things tight and fast, and we found that showing a lot of user interface screens to be a very effective way to quickly explain things without us having to build more sets or models. From the beginning we planned to take advantage of this, and as it progressed we found ourselves generating more and more graphics because it was so helpful.

As I briefly explained with the projectors, all of the graphics were designed by Thomas Kronbichler. He would send us illustrator files with everything laid out and a rough plan of how to animate it. Derek would then take all the elements into Final Cut and animate them frame-by-frame. We would then either project them into the sets, or film them off of an iPad. When filming the iPad we used filters, multiple passes, and soft focus to really extenuate the feeling that you are looking at a screen in a room and not a completely digitally generated image.

Wired: How did you create the ship?

Stockmeier: Here is the journey of the model. Originally we raided a Toys 'R Us for cool parts and bashed together a small 2ft model. When we started the Kickstarter, however, we knew we wanted something better and more iconic to help sell the project, so we called in my father, Wolfgang Stockmeier. He is an architect and is the one responsible for all of the set designs and the re-imagining of the ship. Using pictures of the original model he took the basic shape we had and "re-built" it in SketchUp. We used this much more exciting incarnation to generate a lot of cool concept art for the Kickstarter campaign.

When Charles Adams came on board to actually build the ship, he used my father's 3D model to re-build it once again in Rhino, adding a lot more amazing details, but more importantly this allowed him to produce accurate shapes for laser printing. Basically, with the Rhino 3D model Charles was able to generate a base kit of laser cut parts, much like a model kit you might get in a store. He then kit bashed all the amazing intricate details onto this base.

Wired: How many people worked on this?

Stockmeier: Set photography involved about 30 people between actors and crew. For Beyond the Infinite we were four and miniature photography included four ship builders plus the two of us. When you include people who did design work, sound effects and music, it comes out about 45.

Wired: How are you feeling?

Stockmeier: We're feeling pretty great! We've been working so intensely on this project for the past year it is hard to comprehend that it is actually over and out there, but in the end we got damn close to achieving what we set out to do, despite numerous hurdles and challenges so we feel really good about it. Mostly though, we are super excited about what is coming next, we both learned a tremendous amount from this project and are very eager to take a crack at the next big challenge.