How two filmmakers built a 300-shot VFX pipeline without a Hollywood studio

A man in a Star Trek costume.

Fan films are becoming more popular, intricate and inventive, as I discovered recently when the small team at German studio Loreley Productions shared how they used Unreal Engine and an iPhone-powered virtual production workflow to make a trilogy of Star Trek fan films.

But behind the fun on-screen, there’s a workload equal to that of a modern production, where simply surviving the day can be a challenge, especially when Loreley’s recent YouTube film, Erstkontakt, featured around 300 VFX shots, all handled by two people – director Benjamin Schulz and director of photography Heiko Thies – in post-production. “We are only two people in post production,” they say. “So yes, you have to be borderline crazy.”