Two astronauts prepare for a vital mission to Mars—until one realizes his co-pilot is hilariously unqualified, forcing a choice between duty and disaster.

AstroNots is a sharp-witted sci-fi comedy from director Andrew Seaton that takes space travel to absurd new heights. Set on the eve of a monumental Mars launch, the film introduces us to Major Tom Collins—a dedicated astronaut fully prepared for humanity’s most important mission. But as the countdown begins, he makes a horrifying discovery: his co-pilot, Abe, is wildly underqualified and inexplicably made it through training. What unfolds is a hilariously tense standoff in the cockpit as the two men face a dilemma with cosmic stakes.

Balancing deadpan humor with pitch-perfect pacing, AstroNots delivers big laughs while cleverly poking fun at institutional oversight, ego, and the fine line between confidence and catastrophe. Seaton’s direction keeps things grounded in character-driven comedy, even as the premise rockets into the ridiculous. With its clever writing and memorable performances, the film is an entertaining reminder that not all missions are as airtight as they appear—especially when one of the astronauts probably shouldn’t be there at all.

AstroNots opens with an epic, serious tone—but quickly veers into absurdity. What inspired this tonal bait-and-switch, and what were you hoping to subvert?

I wanted to have the film feel as familiar as possible. To me the greatest comedy lay in the absurdity of the situation taking place in the seriousness of the setting. So I wanted the audience to recognise this film as a serious space exploration film. We used films like Apollo 11 as our reference here. We lent into tropes like the bar and news report sequence at the beginning of the film to set this serious tone. But I wanted to pull the rug out from under the audience to elicit a big reaction.

Major Tom and Abe have such a fun dynamic—how did you approach writing (or casting) this mismatched astronaut duo?

Adam Dunn who plays Major Tom and Aaron Glenane who plays Abe are also the co-writers of the film. This meant they already had such a great dynamic and were able to play off each other and improvise throughout the filming.

The film pokes fun at bureaucracy and incompetence in high-stakes environments. Was there a particular real-world inspiration for this?

No there wasn’t really a real world inspiration for this. I did really love the idea that the space mission in our film had simply run out of time and through incompetence had thrust someone completely unprepared into the hot seat. I think the audience can quickly draw comparisons to a lot of what is going on in the world right now.

Comedy in confined spaces, like a cockpit, can be challenging. How did you approach staging and shooting these scenes to keep things visually engaging?

I wanted to make sure the audience didn’t get fatigued during what is a static scene. There is no blocking or scene changes to mix things up with so I relied upon coverage to ensure we had enough angles that I could weave in to ensure the scene continued to feel interesting. For example there is a reverse wide over the shoulder of the astronauts looking out to the expanse of sky in front of them. We used this only sparingly quite near the end of the film as the two characters decide that they will go ahead with the mission.

The film manages to feel both grand and intimate. How did you balance the sci-fi scale with the minimalist, character-driven setup?

Scale was important. I wanted the film to feel big, to feel epic, making the absurdity of the situation all the more comedic. Borrowing tropes from the genre including set design with lots of light up buttons and costumes that looked as authentic as possible provided this scale. The intimacy of the film comes through the way we lensed it, at times the two characters are opposed, and shots that gave as much negative space between them (although limited in a cockpit) were used, but as they begin to align we used shots that were tighter, or featured them in the same frame together giving a more connected, intimate feel.

What camera did you use to shoot AstroNots, and how did that choice support the comedic and sci-fi tone of the film?

We shot on 2x ARRI Alexa Mini’s, with Cooke Anamorphic/i SF lenses to really dial up the sci-fi tone of the film. Shooting two cameras meant that the actors could play off each other and improvised moments were caught in a wide and tight shot simultaneously.

The spaceship set has a great DIY charm while still feeling grounded in sci-fi—how did you approach set decor and production design?

We used a lot of reference shots from other great sci-fi films (Apollo 11, Stowaway, First Man etc) and pulled out what we liked and what would make the film feel as legitimate and serious as possible. We custom 3D printed the helmets, augmenting an actual space helmet design to have a larger deeper front opening to ensure the actors faces would be visible and well lit on set.

Do you have plans to develop AstroNots into a feature-length film?

We do, yes. We purposefully kept the end of the film open, or at least the audience know they survived the launch so we always knew there was more of a journey for these two characters to go on.

Can you share with us some of your favorite short films you’ve seen lately?

We’ve been really lucky to screen our film at a range of festivals around the world and we’ve screened alongside some fabulous films. My favourites have to be Call Me Mommy by Haley Alea Erickson & Lee Eddy, which we screened with at St Kilda Film festival and Yakka by Jack Shepherd that we screened alongside at the Stellar Film Festival this year.