If you’ve been a fan of science fiction television and movies for a bit, there’s a good chance that you’re familiar with actor David Hewlett. He’s best known as the snarky, take-in-small-doses Doctor Rodney McKay who was featured as a recurring character in SG-1 only to be promoted to a regular in my personal favorite entry in the franchise, Stargate: Atlantis, but you may also know him from Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dark Matter, the amazing cult classics Cube and Pin (so creepy), and most recently in the Golden Globe winning, Academy Award nominated (SO MANY NOMINATIONS!! Congrats Guillermo!!), The Shape of Water.

What you may not know about this British-born, Canadian-raised actor is that he’s also a huge fan of film-making and artistic creativity. So much so that when he found out that the effects software and film-making company, Red Giant, who had made of fan of him with their short film, Old/New (narrated by Patton Oswalt), had a new version of their effects software, Red Giant Universe 2.2 was being released, He wanted in.

Speaking to SYFY WIRE Hewlett said he reached out to Red Giant and told them, “I will work for software”.

He met with Red Giant’s head of marketing, Aharon Rabinowitz and learned that their love of film making and creativity re-ignited his love of making movies for the pure enjoyment of doing so. This sentiment was compounded upon working with Guillermo Del Toro who is well-known for being a fan first, an artist second, and a film-maker last saying, “He’s a nerd like us, but he’s true to that. He knows what needs to be done. The star of Guillermo’s movies is Guillermo.”

What they made is a wonderful love-letter to the genre. There are a lot of great trope nods in this short. Not to ruin anything, but keep an eye out for the great Stargate drop!