AUSTIN — Duncan Jones has grown up around science fiction.

He lists some of his greatest cinematic influences as Alien, Blade Runner, Silent Running and Outland. That doesn’t even include The Man Who Fell to Earth, the 1976 cult classic that starred Jones’ father, David Bowie.

So it comes as little surprise that the British filmmaker wanted Moon, a small-scale outer space saga, to become his film debut. Being able to pull off such an ambitious feat, however, was no easy matter.

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Moon stars Sam Rockwell as an astronaut on a solitary mining mission.

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The film has only one primary character, an astronaut named Sam (Sam Rockwell) who is psychologically drained as he nears the completion of a three-year assignment to mine for helium-based fuels aboard a lunar capsule. But as he dreams of reuniting with his family, the isolated Sam is haunted by paranoia and hallucinations, arguing with his onboard computer and encountering an apparently cloned version of himself who claims to have jumped aboard to fulfill the very mission he has just endured.

The film contains elements of homage to some of Jones’ sci-fi childhood favorites but thematically might remind many most closely of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Stanley Kubrick classic that was released before Jones was born.

“The films that I was influenced by were the films that were influenced by 2001,” Jones said at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March. “I’m a big fan of 2001 and know how seminal it was. The good thing about that is you can play with people’s expectations. Let people think they know where it’s going and tweak it.”

Jones has directed a number of visually innovative television commercials, but he and producer Stuart Fenegan knew they wanted to make a splash for Jones’ feature debut.

“We always wanted to try and create something that would work as a calling card and give me the opportunity to continue to make more films,” Jones said. “We knew we needed to do it big, or as big as we could make it feel.”

Jones knew the idea was ambitious. There aren’t a lot of independent science fiction films, because the genre usually includes projects loaded with special effects and high-tech postproduction wizardry.

A small budget and 33-day shooting schedule wouldn’t allow for many luxuries or extra takes, so the filmmakers needed to be creative with Moon. The rovers on the lunar surface, for example, are re-created with old-fashioned miniatures instead of computer-generated effects.

“I wanted to keep the texture of reality. It creates a very distinct look. We wanted a blue-collar aesthetic look,” Jones said. “I wanted to shoot it all in-studio because we needed to have a controlled environment.”

Jones, 38, who went to college in Ohio and Tennessee, has lived in London for the past decade. He wrote the lead role in Moon specifically for Rockwell after meeting with the actor about a different project.

Rockwell was reluctant at first to accept the role, partially because its solitary nature plays against his reactive acting style. But for both actor and director, that challenge also was part of the appeal.

“It was like a math problem every day,” said Rockwell, who used an acting friend to help digest the script by reading the two parts alternately. “It was just a way to start to find some differences between the two personalities. We wanted to create that Robinson Crusoe quality to it.”

Logistically, having one actor play both lead roles in a film — with no other actors on set — was a challenge for the filmmakers. They used a double for some rehearsals and for others had Rockwell rehearse with a recorded take of himself in the other role. The production schedule required Rockwell to alternate between roles several times each day.

“It was very technical and very complicated for an indie film — and difficult to achieve,” Jones said. “It was a crazy thing to do, but Sam is such an amazing actor that we were able to do it.”

Jones said some of the concepts in the script are based in part on scientific fact, relating to the use of alternative fuels and the dangers of human cloning. But he is not trying to make any grand social statement.

“There is some truth to it, but it made an interesting and believable back story,” Jones said. “I wanted to tell a science fiction story that had a certain amount of believability to it. That’s why I wanted to set it on the moon. It’s something you can look at every night, and there’s a real direct relationship there that we as human beings have with this place we know so little about.”

Moon opens on Friday at the Angelika Film Center in Dallas.

TODD JORGENSON can be reached at 940-566-6871. His e-mail address is tjorgenson@dentonrc.com.