In this episode of the No Film School Podcast, recorded at Fantastic Fest 2026 in Austin, No Film School founder Ryan Koo talks with Into the Sky writer-directors Drew Mylrea and Evan Buxbaum about the decade-long path to making their sci-fi comedy. They trace the project from an early script that Evan initially rejected through Black List evaluations, financing, casting Sam Richardson, and an ambitious 25-day production with dozens of locations and hundreds of VFX shots.
Drew and Evan also explain how they divided responsibilities as co-directors, used LiDAR scans and LEGO figures to pre-visualize scenes, navigated production setbacks, tested unfinished cuts with audiences, and learned to trust their instincts while making an independent film designed to feel like a blockbuster.
In this episode, we discuss:
- How Drew and Evan became filmmaking collaborators after spending hours together shooting a Method soap commercial in a tiny shower
- Evan’s experience making Sun Belt Express and the long gap between his first and second features
- Why Drew kept returning to the alien-abduction concept that eventually became Into the Sky
- Revisiting old material after years of becoming better writers and filmmakers
- How strong Black List evaluations gave the filmmakers psychological momentum to commit to the project
- Spending roughly two years rewriting the script and assembling financing
- Why casting director Kate Geller became an important part of building the movie’s cast
- How attaching Sam Richardson helped the project gain momentum
- The pressures created when an in-demand actor gives an independent production a narrow shooting window
- Walking away from a “turnkey” production-services solution that would have forced most of the movie onto a single estate
- Finding the town of Catskill, New York, and rebuilding their location strategy around what the movie actually needed
- Why filmmakers sometimes have to reject the easiest logistical solution when it threatens the film creatively
- Shooting the movie in 25 days while managing frequent company moves
- How Drew and Evan divided directing responsibilities according to their complementary strengths
- Drew’s focus on visual storytelling, camera placement, and spectacle versus Evan’s focus on performance, character, and dialogue
- Using iPhone LiDAR scans and Polycam to create digital models of locations
- Printing location blueprints and using custom Lego figures and a Lego camera to block scenes with the AD and cinematographer
- Building detailed storyboards and turning them into rough animatics for complicated sequences
- Trying to create an “indie blockbuster” without a blockbuster budget
- The challenge of completing approximately 500 visual-effects shots with an extremely small VFX team
- Why extensive preparation became a starting point for improvisation once production problems appeared
- Delaying a cornfield sequence until the final day of photography so the corn would be tall enough for the scene
- How rain, heat, scheduling problems, and other uncontrollable factors reshaped the production
- Watching dailies and determining whether scenes needed to be reshot
- Why a scene they believed needed a reshoot ultimately used mostly material from the original shoot
- Working 12-hour shooting days followed by another four or five hours of preparation each night
- Splitting up the first stages of post-production so Drew could eventually watch the assembly with fresh eyes
- Why comedy becomes difficult to judge after watching the same material dozens of times
- Screening cuts for friends and family to measure real laughter and audience energy
- Using QR codes and Google Forms to collect individual reactions before a group discussion could influence everyone’s opinions
- Measuring character likability and other audience responses between different test screenings
- Asking test audiences to respond to major VFX sequences while those sequences were still extremely unfinished
- The moment completed visual effects and music finally made the filmmakers feel that the movie was working
- Their goal of making large, entertaining movies with heart on an independent scale
- Why Drew and Evan believe their filmmaking education ultimately came from making things, making mistakes, and “touching the stove”
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Author: Ryan Koo
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
