The Ultimate Indie: How to Make a Sci-Fi Romance With a 7-Person Crew

Growing up, I was always the quiet kid in the back, doodling in a notebook. In 6th grade, instead of a yearbook, my classmates signed my sketchbook, filled with characters I created, action sequences I drew squares for and mapped out, and stories I was yearning to tell.

I’m always trying to get the images out of my head and in front of others, and the camera is my paintbrush.

When I got older, I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I had to learn how to take the dreams I had and convert them from my mind and get them onto the big screen.

This is that story.

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Get The Images Out Of Your Head

__Alex & MOR: A Love Odyssey __is a visually driven, dialogue-light indie film that focuses on a couple as they reunite through time, as one focuses on the first day they met, and the other wakes up in the desert without any memory of their relationship.

I shot this film with my own money, saved while working as an on-set VFX data wrangler and Props person on movies like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Hawkeye, Megalopolis , and, more recently, Superman.

I had gotten the chance to work on these films after a short film I made in 2016, N-Touch, had won an award sponsored by IMAX. I was flown out to LA, all expenses paid, and had lunch with the CEO’s of IMAX, one who I kept a relationship with, Bruce Markoe, who helped land me a gig in VFX on Avengers: Endgame.

The sets were massive, and so was the crew. Working on these bigger tentpole films is great, but it showed me something I’d never thought about before.

'Alex & MOR: A Love Odyssey'Credit: Echelon Studios

Working With A Small Crew

I prefer a smaller, more intimate crew on my projects. More information, fewer people.

At any given time on the set of Alex & MOR: A Love Odyssey, there were never more than eight people on set. This film was a study not only in indie filmmaking but also in patience. The inception of this story started in the summer of 2020. As we all can remember, on a global scale, tensions were high.

In 2022, I completed a 90-page screenplay with themes of love, soulmates, memory, isolation, and abandonment. After feedback and seeing how it resonated with readers emotionally, I set out to shoot a two-minute proof of concept.

I plucked scenes from the script, cast two local actors(after getting hundreds of submitted audition tapes), and asked five friends to help me. The proof of concept, along with a sketchbook from my composer Mark Peter Royce, a pitch deck, and a script, was packaged together and sent out to producers.

No one bit.

Making The Movie

After talking to a visual effects producer and mentor, whom I met on The Suicide Squad , Fiona Campbell Westgate, convinced me that if my script was picked up by a major studio, they wouldn't let me direct it because I hadn't directed a feature before (a handful of short films, though). Then she said words that struck a nerve in me:

"Or you can shoot it, gamble on yourself, and make the film you want to make.”

'Alex & MOR: A Love Odyssey'Credit: Echelon Studios

Gamble On Yourself

The proof of concept gave me the confidence that I could make this film. I carried over principles from the proof of concept to the feature and applied them on a slightly bigger scale: Guerrilla filmmaking, small cameras, minimal crew, no big lights or lighting setups(I used one tube light on two scenes in the entire film), everything was preplanned, shotlisted, and pre-thought out well before a shoot.

I approached shooting this film like a documentary. I wanted to capture the spontaneity of whatever the actors, Allie L. Harris & Thomas D. Brown II, would give me. Document their emotions, not manufacture them. The majority of the time on set, it was just the actors and me with a camera. I didn't put any pressure on finishing or an end date; we treated this project like summer film camp.

I reevaluated the 90-page screenplay I had, looked at how I could ground it in a way that I could shoot it myself. I had shot the majority of my projects in the past on the Sony A7sii. For this feature, I wanted to be prepared for lowlight situations, the ability to be nimble, and specifically, 10-bit color. I chose the Sony FX3 as my primary camera. It checked all the boxes, but also offered something else.

I didn’t have to think about the camera. I just needed something to be an extension of my eye, not a distraction.

'Alex & MOR: A Love Odyssey'Credit: Echelon Studios

Picking The Camera

__Alex & MOR: A Love Odyssey __is constructed of 5 chapters that all consist of their own lens choices, camera movement, color palettes, wardrobe, and setting.

Along with the FX3, I used the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 for some opening shots of scenes in the desert, when it was just the actor and me. Finally, some proof-of-concept footage was shot as supplemental material by a friend on 16mm film with his Krasnogorsk 3. Three different formats, one story. All of this to say, what I shot on doesn’t matter.

The story and the characters I was capturing became far more interesting to me.

Focus On Character

An essential aspect of Alex & MOR: A Love Odyssey is the locations. I wanted to take the audience on a journey not only emotionally but visually as well. Being based in Atlanta, Georgia, it would be pretty hard for me not to prominently feature a city that’s fed me creatively for years.

Most of the Alex chapter is set in Midtown Atlanta, known for being a city in the forest, which only thematically enriches the story, being that Alex is a botanist. With this story, I was eager to play with dynamics and opposites. I needed a desert, a place where you’d be hard pressed to find any trees to contrast the forest-like greens of Midtown. After months of research online.

I landed on Hanksville, Utah.

'Alex & MOR: A Love Odyssey'Credit: Echelon Studios

Location, Location, Location

To this day, Hanksville has some otherworldly views that truly added depth to the story in my head in ways I couldn't imagine, not only visually but sonically as well. Out there, everything was silent, like stepping inside a recording booth.

Hanksville became somewhat of an introspective place for us to film. The town’s got one hotel, a couple of restaurants, a gas station, and a coffee shop, all less than a few miles apart. We shot there for five days, and it granted Thomas and I a sense of creative freedom unlike ever before. It was just two friends in the desert, making a film, no crew, no studios, no one to tell us what was right; we creatively governed ourselves and learned to trust each other.

Continuing the contrast, Allie, Thomas, and I drove to Driftwood Beach, a coastal part of Jekyll Island in Georgia, where these giant driftwood trees washed upon the shore. Tied into themes, the film's opening chapter, “Eternity,” is really meant to set the tone of the film, but also Alex being a botanist; it was very dynamic to have these giant decaying driftwood trees surrounding her as we hear waves wash along the coast.

The final big component of the setting in this film was the farm. In the final chapter, Alex tends to this farm to continue the growth of the Solus Corporation on other planets. The Farm was a friend's family farm located in Alexandria, Alabama. It serves as another contrasting point, in that it has these beautiful vistas, but now lavish green trees everywhere. The farm visually represents Alex’s success, but it sonically represents her solitude by calling back the silence and isolation of the desert.

Upon finishing filming, I cut together a teaser and uploaded it to Instagram. That teaser caught the attention of an independent production company, A Group of Ferrets, which focuses on micro-budget films and first-time filmmakers. After meeting and hitting it off with the Ferrets, Michael, Corey, and David told me that they weren’t just interested in helping me with Alex & MOR but wanted to help get my next film made, as well as future collaborations. Mostly impressed that I managed to make something like this on such a small crew and limited funds.

Then came every filmmaker's favorite part of their journey: Rejection.

'Alex & MOR: A Love Odyssey'Credit: Echelon Studios

Handling Rejection

This film was my baby. I spent years making it, and got it to a point where I was ready to show it off to people, but first I wanted to send it to festivals.

Of course, we started with the upper-tier festivals, but I thoroughly did research into who I was submitting to. Do I really want to submit a hyper-visual indie sci-fi love drama to a festival that only accepts 3-4 narrative features a year? I looked for festivals that I thought were more inclined to want to screen a film like mine.

For months, it was radio silent.

Waiting For An Answer

After a year of countless festival rejections, things started to change. We were graciously accepted into the Phoenix Film Festival and caught the interest of a distributor all within the start of the year.

Echelon Studios became interested in the film and offered to distribute it not only domestically but worldwide on various streaming platforms.

Along the way, the biggest win to me is that no one has asked me to recut or change anything about the film. People see something they hadn’t seen before, and they want to be a part of it, not change it.

__Alex & MOR c__ontinues to defy its inception.

What this film has evolved into is greater than I originally imagined. It truly is a visual journey for the eyes, the ears, and the heart.

I made this film to be a calling card, a sounding bell, a lighthouse, to let the world know what I can do with limited funds, a handful of friends, and years of patience.

__Alex & MOR: A Love Odyssey __hits streaming in Summer 2026, distributed by Echelon Studios.