I am happy to announce that Christopher Moonlight Productions has decided to stand behind Amalgamated Dynamics Inc. (ADI) to help promote the Kickstarter for their movie, Harbinger Down. It will be directed by ADI's own Alec Gillis and produced by Tom Woodruff Jr. It will star the amazing Lance Henriksen.
This is a project of passion for everyone and that's why we've thrown our support behind it. The money will go towards creating the same caliber of practical effects that won Gills and Woodruff the Academy Award for Death Becomes Her and also got them nominated for and Oscar for Alien 3. They are asking for $350,000.00 which must be raise by June 7th, 2013. This may sound like a lot of money, but in a world where movies cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, it's really nothing. I'll post the press release below, but I want to say that on a personal level, I really care about this project. It means a great deal to me that there are creators like Alec and Tom, who are not in this for the money but for the joy of realizing their art. They need it. We need it. Why? Because work like this is not a means to an end. It exists for its own sake. Like all art, it is meant to fill our lives and bring us together, like a tribe gathering around a fire to hear the elder tell tales in the dark, and not put money in the pockets of investors, who don't care what the final product is, as long as they get theirs. So, if you are the kind of person who believes that the meaning of life is to make it as full and happy for all, as you can, please do so by joining us in pledging to this project.
...and now, a small sample of the incredible amount of work that has already gone into this project:
...and my own contributions to the cause:
...and here's how we did it:
Academy Award-Winning Team Attempts to Resurrect Lost Art of Classic Horror Film Through Launching Kickstarter Campaign In the spirit of classic films such as Alien and The Thing, Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. aspire to bring “Harbinger Down” to the silver screen with the help of fan support for their independent project LOS ANGELES, CA – Academy Award-winning Visual Effects artists Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr., co-founders of Studio ADI (Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc.) have launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring their science fiction/horror film celebrating animatronics and makeup FX, “Harbinger Down,” to the silver screen. Gillis and Woodruff hope fans are excited to help not only make a new horror classic, but also to uplift an art form. The filmmakers’ goal is to raise $350,000 from fan support via the Kickstarter campaign by June 7, 2013 to get the project off the ground.
Harbinger Down, set to star notable sci-fi and horror film actor Lance Henriksen, depicts a group of grad students have booked passage on the fishing trawler Harbinger to study the effects of global warming on a pod of Orcas in the Bering Sea. When the ship's crew dredges up a recently thawed piece of old Soviet space wreckage, things quickly become deadly. It seems that the Russians experimented with tardigrades, tiny resilient animals able to withstand the extremes of space radiation. The creatures survived, but not without mutation. Now the crew is exposed to aggressively mutating organisms. After being locked in ice for 3 decades, the creatures aren't about to give up the warmth of human companionship.
“Animatronics and Makeup FX have been utilized less frequently in recent films, but this is not because of audience disinterest,” announced Gillis, who will write and direct the film. “In the spirit of sci-fi/horror classics, Alien and The Thing, Harbinger Down is a tense, claustrophobic full-length creature film that will feature only practical Animatronics and Makeup Effects. Fans of the art of Animatronics and Makeup FX know this technique is currently overlooked by the big studios; I'm hoping the fans will help us remedy that by supporting this labor of love.”
“Our company, Amalgamated Dynamics, will create the kind of Oscar caliber Creature Effects for which we are known,” commented Woodruff, who will produce, along with Studio ADI’s Jennifer Tung. “Traditional techniques still have a place in modern genre films. We didn’t give up painting, when cameras were invented.”
Gillis and Woodruff have over 60 years of experience between them and have worked with many top filmmakers, including James Cameron, David Fincher, Paul Verhoeven, Ridley Scott, Neill Blomkamp, Robert Zemeckis, Joe Johnston, Nora Ephron and Mike Nichols just to name a few. The filmmakers are utilizing Kickstarter to ask supporters of “old-school” visual effects to give them the opportunity to show it.
Contributors to the Harbinger Down Kickstarter Campaign will receive unique, amazing, thrilling, one-of-a-kind incentives for supporting the project. More details about the project can be found on the Harbinger Down Kickstarter website: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1117671683/harbinger-down-a-practical-creature-fx-film
About Studio ADI (Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc.) Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc. was founded by Academy Award winning creators of special characters and character effects artists Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. Calling upon a diverse range of talents and techniques, Studio ADI creates prosthetic make-ups, animatronic puppets, actor duplicates and replica animals. With over twenty years of professional experience, we bring “real” character effects to the set to interact with the actors, lighting and practical atmosphere. We pride ourselves on working with the industry’s leading Computer-generated imagery (CGI) companies to find the right balance of digital and practical effects. For more information and a resume of work on past productions, visit the Studio ADI website: http://www.studioadi.com/ or, the Studio ADI YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/studioADI
All attached jpg photos © 20013 Studio ADI. Permissions granted only for usage in conjunction with “Harbinger Down.” EPK/VIDEO CLIPS/ PHOTOS/INTERVIEWS/STUDIO & SET VISITS available upon request.
