Ash Filmmaker Flying Lotus Talks Forging His Own Path in the Sci-Fi World

Whether it be with his music or with his filmmaking efforts, Flying Lotus has established himself as a unique voice with an incomparable perspective. His feature film Kuso and his V/H/S/99 short “Ozzy’s Dungeon” stood out as being entirely unexpected experiences in the horror genre, while his all-new film Ash marks his most ambitious cinematic swing yet. Starring Eiza González and Aaron Paul, the sci-fi film borrows some familiar elements from classics in the genre, though Flying Lotus puts his unique vision on the material to make something that feels entirely fresh. Ash is set to hit theaters on March 21st.

“There’s a lot of stuff in there that I planned out, especially in terms of trying not to do Alien. I was trying very hard, just trying my hardest. There’s some things that are unavoidable, there’s some things you just can’t get away from, but that was one of those films where I was just like, ‘Let’s not build it this way,’” Flying Lotus shared with ComicBook about his approach to standing out from the crowd. “Because it’s infected every movie, it really has, and for good reason. So I think I just wanted to try to bring something fresh. We didn’t have a lot of money, we didn’t have much, so what can we do that was still interesting with very little? That was the approach.”

He continued, “Going back to old-school filmmaking, practical filmmaking. The one thing we did have, we had a practical set. When you step outside the set, you’re on the planet surface. And if you have that, that’s a lot more than most people have nowadays on big movies. They’ve got all the green screens and stuff. So I think sitting in a real environment and making the most out of that, that was a thing that I [thought], ‘How can we build that and make it colorful and vibrant and interesting?’ It’s only two characters for the majority of the movie. How do we keep this feeling alive?”

Ash is described, “On the mysterious planet of Ash, Riya (González) awakens to find her crew slaughtered. When a man named Brion (Paul) arrives to rescue her, an ordeal of psychological and physical terror ensues while Riya and Brion must decide if they can trust one another to survive.”

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Even though this film’s narrative will feel entirely new to audiences, Ash does include the frenetic and boundary-pushing editing style and visuals of previous efforts, with those past films emboldening Flying Lotus to embrace his techniques.

“There are some things that I feel I have a clear sight for, but then a lot of it is experimenting. A lot of it is experimenting,” the filmmaker detailed. “One thing that this film has given me is a bit more confidence in what I can achieve in the edit and what I can achieve with really simple effects. There were things that we were doing that felt really new, but it was just the way we did a lighting trick, and I have more faith in that, the process of filmmaking, more from doing this one.”

The filmmaker previously expressed that one reason he made the jump from being a musician to also exploring filmmaking was a conversation with Guillermo del Toro, who relayed to him, “Don’t direct the movies that you need to make, direct the movies that need you to make them.”

When pressed for what advice he might give other filmmakers, Flying Lotus got a bit more blunt, simply stating, “I’ll say this: Don’t make a movie. And if you still want to make it, then maybe it’s for you. Don’t do it — but if you feel in your heart that you won’t need to take my advice and you don’t need to hear what I’m telling you, if you feel very strongly that I’m an idiot and you’ve got to do it, then maybe you should. Because it’s hard. It’s hard. It’s so hard. I lost so much doing this movie, it was not an easy ride at all. And it’s not for everyone. So if you’re not cut out for it, save your time, save your energy. Do something else. Work or be a crew member, work in the crew and do something else.”

Ash lands in theaters on March 21st.

Are you looking forward to the movie? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter or on Instagram to talk all things Star Wars and horror!