Interview: Time Helmet Director Mike Jackson On Time Travel, '80s Nostalgia, & More

Time Helmet tells the story of Donald Voltmann who, after a lot of trial and error, has finally invented the titular device which allows him to get in touch with his future self. Voltmann hopes to use that instrument to climb out of the pits, metaphorically speaking, and become the best version of himself. However, his future self’s pettiness gets the better of him as he gets too busy trying to one-up his ex-wife. To make matters even more complicated, his neighbor gets her hands on a Time Helmet, thereby turning her into the Time Police’s Officer Prudence Slaughter, who is hellbent on putting a stop to Voltmann. I sat down for a virtual chat with the writer, editor, and director of the sci-fi feature film about time travel, ‘80s nostalgia, and more.

Film Fugitives: How did you come up with the idea for Time Helmet and how did it evolve into this feature film?

Mike Jackson: I had been trying to get my first feature made for quite a while, and my friend Zach Lipovsky (co-director of Final Destination: Bloodlines) suggested I write something cheap enough that I could just film it with my friends if I had to. So, necessity became the mother of invention! I love sci-fi, and it’s fun to do comedy, so I came up with the idea of the time helmet and its crazy inventor. By having the helmet project the user’s mind from the future into their body in the present, it lets me explore big sci-fi concepts in the present day, with a modest budget. And once I realized I could have a second helmet fall into the hands of his teenage neighbour, who grows up to be in the Time Police, I knew it had big comic potential.

FF: The film is clearly influenced by a lot of 80s sci-fi films. How do you walk the line between homage and originality?

Mike: I grew up with 80s sci-fi, and it’s deep in my bones, so I couldn’t help but write homages into the film. But with my background as a film editor, I’m a bit of a structure fiend, so I drew a hard line in how I would use those references: Everything in the plot and structure is original, and the references to classic sci-fi are limited to Don’s dialogue. He drops references constantly in his descriptions of the future, as a running gag, but we don’t know if he’s lying or not. But I think that separation was important, to keep those homages from overwhelming the real story. All that said, I couldn’t help but slip a few extra references into the shots of the distant future. Pretty much every number that shows up in the film, like addresses and storage locker numbers, is a reference to a classic movie or show.

FF: In addition to all the zany time-travel shenanigans, there is a very personal and heartfelt story unfolding as well. What’s the key to balancing plot progression and character development?

Mike: Giving Time Helmet a heartfelt story underneath all the sci-fi comedy madness was crucial. Without that heart, it would just be a series of gags, and no one would care. That’s true for any film, really. But it was especially important in Time Helmet, because Donald Voltmann is both the protagonist and the villain, at different points in the story. In the early treatment stage, Peter New helped me focus his character’s emotional journey, building it around his severed relationship with his young daughter. As to balancing plot vs. character development, I’ve always followed the old screenwriting rule that every scene has to either advance the plot or tell us something new about the characters. Preferably both.

FF: [Spoiler Alert] Amidst all the relatively family-friendly stuff, the head-explosion coming out of nowhere is quite shocking. How did you arrive at the decision to do that? And how did you fine-tune that head-explosion to make it look so awesome?

Mike: [Spoiler Alert] It’s funny, because I didn’t set out to make a family-friendly film, it just kind of happened… despite the fact that we have wall-to-wall swearing, a crazy amount of barfing, and yes, an exploding head. I just wrote what made me laugh, and would amp up the stakes. The critical thing though was to make the exploding head as funny as possible. I didn’t want the audience to be so grossed out that they were pulled out of the film. So, I kind of approached it like it was a Monty Python gag. I made sure you could see the victim’s two eyeballs looking shocked for the first few frames of the explosion, and then had the neck stump just keep squirting blood for another 3 minutes. It seemed to do the trick!

FF: Unlike most sci-fi films, Time Helmet doesn’t rely too much on VFX and CGI. But then you have the talking brains, which are entirely CGI. What kind of work went into bringing them to life?

Mike: There’s actually over 500 VFX shots in Time Helmet, but most of them are invisible, or just things you wouldn’t think about. But yeah, building Time Command and the talking brains was a big job. The original plan was to have them be heads in jars, Futurama-style, and shoot them practically with live actors, but that never panned out. So, I taught myself a 3D package and built and animated it all! It went through a lot of different designs and revisions, before I settled on the brains with the glass faces. They were the sweet-spot between looking cool, and being something I could actually animate myself. But I made it all much harder for myself by having Time Command be all glass and shiny chrome, which took forever to render! I think I had my computer rendering overnight, every night, for over 7 months.

FF: There is a surprising amount of action in the film as well. Some hand-to-hand combat as well as a car chase. How did you and your crew pull that off?

Mike: Carefully! We had an excellent stunt coordinator and a talented stunt woman, who worked with Camryn MacDonald, who plays Officer Slaughter. Camryn is a trained dancer, so she was really good at that physical work. The trickiest thing was doing all those fight scenes without damaging our time helmet props! We had a durable stunt version for hers, but only one helmet for Peter New, and it was heavy, awkward and delicate. We had a couple of close calls, it fell off his head onto pavement in one scene, and my heart stopped. I was sure it was going to shatter, but it somehow survived. We did rip his cool smoking jacket in the restroom fight scene though. So, no injuries to people, just wardrobe. The car chase we shot with a skeleton crew, late at night. Donald’s car was actually my own beat-up P.T. Cruiser, and the other car was Exec Producer Robin Chan’s. That was a lot of fun.

FF: While the entire cast is amazing, Peter New has to do most of the heavy-lifting. What was it like developing the character of Donald Voltmann with him, especially when it came to him switching between the future and present versions of the character?

Mike: Peter New and I are lifelong friends, and I knew from the start that I wanted him to play the lead. I wrote the part specifically for him, leaning into his strengths both as a comedic actor, and as a dramatic one. Peter brings a powerful emotional depth and warmth to his characters, no matter how silly they may seem on the surface. And he’s incredibly creative and precise when it comes to comedy. I knew he had the skills to spin on a dime between different versions of the character, able to move smoothly from a loud, slapstick gag to a heartbreaking moment of deep pathos… and then back. It was wonderful watching him bring Donald Voltmann to life.

FF: What are some of the films that have influenced your storytelling in Time Helmet?

Mike: I’d say my biggest storytelling influences were sci-fi films from the 70s and 80s, especially those with a lighter or comedic touch: Back to the Future, Buckaroo Banzai, Dark Star. For more recent films, Hot Tub Time Machine showed that you can keep your time travel mechanics super simple and still tell a great story. But probably my biggest influence has been the films of Terry Gilliam. So clever, so funny, and so heartfelt. Those are the films I saw as a kid that made me want to make movies. Peter and I are both huge fans of his work.

FF: What are your favorite films, TV shows, or books about time travel?

Mike: Time travel is such a great sci-fi device, and it’s so hard to get right. There’s just so many twists and turns you have to manage and track, and it’s so easy to accidentally tie your story in knots. Back to the Future is of course one of the greatest, I love Time Bandits, 12 Monkeys, Doctor Who, there’s some great Star Trek episodes with time travel. William Gibson and Bruce Sterling wrote a short story called Mozart in Mirrorshades that really stuck with me. And I was incredibly inspired by Primer, which probably has the most realistic, believable treatment of time travel in film history.

FF: If you got your hands on a time helmet, what would you have done with it?

Mike: I think I’d have used it to avoid getting side-tracked and wasting time! Gone back and told my young self to focus on a film career earlier… I bounced around between different creative careers for quite a while before I became a film editor and started directing. Maybe go back and try to meet my partner Lesley a few years sooner! And definitely told myself not to eat that sandwich yesterday, it was disappointing.