ABOUT US
Founded in 2020 by filmmaker Stephen V. Stone, Saturnscape is the culmination of his 25 years of indie filmmaking experience and Stephen's labor of love "In Saturn's Rings", a long-form giant screen/fulldome documentary, 15+ years in the making, narrated by LeVar Burton.
Saturnscape Pictures is "by filmmakers, for filmmakers and film lovers". We are ultra-lean and put all we have in the frame. We believe that sci-fi is the noblest genre and "B-Movie" often outlives a "A-Movie" over time. From "2001: A Space Odyssey" to "Aliens" to "Under the Skin", sci-fi is our inspiration, motivation and way of life.
OUR MANIFESTO
Saturnscape is committed to making "the films we want to make, the way we want to make them, with the people we want to make them with." It's not just our mantra, it's who we are. All of our films feature trans and/or female lead characters telling imaginative but authentic stories. We value diversity in every form as our strength, the engine of our creativity. We actively seek casts and crews peopled by those often overlooked in the film industry. At least 75% of above and below the line crew are women and/or gender-diverse on every project we now produce.
As Stephen is a disabled filmmaker, we also make films differently. We shoot short days, we take plenty of time off, and we make sets as safe and accessible as possible for everyone. Not just because everyone deserves the chance to make movies but because we believe we all, disabled or not, make better films this way. Creativity thrives when nurtured, protected in a womb of safety.
NO GEN AI
While we have always embraced technology to empower high production values on micro budgets, we've taken a stand against any use of generative AI in our filmmaking at any stage for any reason. We don't use it to brainstorm, write or plan, to assist with filmmaking or any other aspect. We are aware that machine learning is now ubiquitous throughout software and hardware.
Non-generative machine learning tools we can see a place for where they are not used as substitute for human creativity and don't involve the theft of artist's work but we now and forever will not use generative AI. And beyond the legal, moral, ethical crimes of generative AI, we just like love making movies the "old-fashioned" way.
ABOUT STEPHEN
Stephen (formerly Stephen van Vuuren) works professionally at their freelance company SV2 Post that provides turnkey post-production services for independent filmmakers.
“Unlike all the other art forms, film is able to seize and render the passage of time, to stop it, almost to possess it in infinity. I’d say that film is the sculpting of time.”
– Andrei Tarkovsky