It's movie time again!
As we here at Skeptoid Media embark upon yet another film production...
If you ask me what’s my favorite part about my regular job — yes, I actually have a day job when I’m not here writing on Substack — it’s making movies. I’m the Creative Director at Skeptoid Media (my new position, title, yay), and this will be our third full-length feature documentary, available on your favorite streaming services next year.
It’s called Alien Echoes, a reference to what signs there might be out there in space of another intelligent, communicating civilization. Is their planet showing technosignatures and biosignatures? Are they making any outbound communication attempts themselves? The only thing we know for sure about hypothetical alien civilizations is that they haven’t given us any signs yet that they exist — although, in their defense, we’ve only had the knowledge and technology to detect any such signs for a very few years.
This has given rise to what we call the Fermi Paradox. The physicist Enrico Fermi was once chatting with some friends at Los Alamos National Lab in 1950, and as nearly everyone agreed the universe is probably teeming with life, Fermi asked in frustration “So then where is everybody??” (or some variation on that — documentation of the event is both myriad and legendary).
Alien Echoes seeks to answer this question — or, at least, give what we think the most likely answers are. So we’re going to talk to lots of very knowledgable people who have the latest and best thoughts on the subject. But perhaps more significantly, we’re also going to find out what a lot of ordinary, non-expert people think, and then see what the experts think of that.
Like everything we do at Skeptoid (and as I try to do here on my Substack), the idea is to help people be better informed with a good basic science foundation. No matter what your thoughts are on any subject, those ideas are better when they are better informed.
In short, I’m not here to tell anyone what to think — but I will tell you what the experts have concluded on just about any topic you want, and I’ll tell you how they came to that conclusion. Hopefully, that will steer people onto a better course as they seek to form their own conclusions.
Please give the teaser video a watch — it’s 2 minutes long and will give you a taste of how we’re going to present this. And if you feel like being a part of it, please donate to the production! Skeptoid is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit so donations may be tax deductible for US taxpayers. We offer rewards for every level of donation. For major donors, you can get screen credit including an actual IMDb credit:
Executive Producer (first screen credit), $25,000
Co-executive Producer, $10,000
Associate Producer, $5,000
And lots of other awards from $25 on up.
If you’re interested in partnering with me as a major donor, please feel free to contact me directly and we can talk, brian@skeptoid.com
Here is a quick rundown on our previous films:
The UFO Movie THEY Don’t Want You to See (2023) — Despite its tongue-in-cheek title, this is (IMHO) a pretty damn good presentation. I feel it’s the best work I’ve ever done, and I’m looking to outdo it in Alien Echoes. It served 25 million streams, proving that our films will take full advantage of your donation, to get our pro-science message to as many people as we can. 1h 33min, available on streaming now.
Winner, GeekFest Toronto, 2024
Winner, Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival, 2023
Winner, LA Sci-Fi & Horror Festival, 2023
Finalist, Raw Science Film Festival, 2023
Science Friction (2022) — Interviews with scientists who were deceptively edited out of context by TV documentaries to present some sensationalist viewpoint rather than what they actually said. We gave them the chance to clear the record. 1h 42min, available on streaming now.
Winner, Fortean Film Festival, 2022
Winner, Los Angeles Motion Picture Festival, 2022
Winner, MegaFlix Film Awards, 2022
Winner, OTB|Only the Best Film Awards, 2022
Principles of Curiosity (2017) — This is a 40-minute classroom film, complete with free educational materials for teachers, that teaches the basics of scientific skepticism and critical thinking. 40min, available on streaming now.
Winner, Award of Merit, IndieFEST, 2017
Winner, Award of Merit, Best Shorts Competition, 2017
Finalist, Professional Documentary, Raw Science Film Festival, 2017
So it’s time to jump back into the game and go trotting about making a movie. As I said it’s a lot of fun, though it’s also a brutal schedule — if you’re like me, you understand that’s part of the fun.