Brendon Small has teamed up with Funny or Die to premiere his live action short film Galaktikon: Nightmare: The Live-Action Intergalactic Metal Short Film. The video was directed by Small himself, and Nightmare also appears on Brendon Small’s Galaktikon II: Become the Storm.

Small recruited his brother Jeff to co-produce the piece, which helped him create more FX including outer-space sea creatures, robots, and space suits.

Brendon Small commented about the film:

“This is a love letter to all the filmmakers in the 70’s-80’s that helped inform my creativity in my childhood. From Spielberg, Lucas, Tobe Hooper, Roger Corman and all Dino De Laurentiis productions (Barbarella, Flash Gordon, Conan, Dune). I wanted to create a rule with the film tricks they used in that period. Instead of DOGME ’95 (using limitations to help create art), I wanted to coin a phrase called CORMAN ’82: anything Roger Corman could do in 1982 I can do with this project.”

He continued:

“I now have a big problem. I like shooting live action way too much. This is the best of both worlds. I get to prepare storyboards and color palates just like in the animation world, but get to build looks and camera moves in picture that would take forever in animation. You might just even see some of my old Metalocalypse visual tricks but in a live action scenario.

The end result is this: I want to direct big, epic live-action, practical special-effects projects.

Everything you see in this video is built from a tactical source, and composited with the early 80’s in mind. The ink tanks were crucial to making this work.”

Watch the short film below: