{"id":42780,"date":"2013-05-18T13:58:07","date_gmt":"2013-05-18T12:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=42780"},"modified":"2013-05-18T13:59:21","modified_gmt":"2013-05-18T12:59:21","slug":"alien-and-the-thing-fx-master-kickstarts-cgi-free-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/news\/alien-and-the-thing-fx-master-kickstarts-cgi-free-film\/","title":{"rendered":"Alien and The Thing FX master Kickstarts CGI-free film"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"FX<\/a>
FX creator and co-founder of Amalgamated Dynamics, Inc Alec Gillis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kickstarter has funded an eclectic range of start-up projects from fashion to food, but in the\u00a0recent wake of a $5.7 million Veronica Mars<\/em> movie project and Zach Braff\u2019s $2.5 million indy\u00a0follow-up to Garden State<\/em>, filmmakers are taking a serious look at what could become a new\u00a0paradigm in long-form film financing.<\/p>\n

The latest director to roll the Kickstarter dice is Alec Gillis, co-founder of Amalgamated\u00a0Dynamics<\/a> (ADI) the LA-based creature shop with a list of genre credits that includes Alien\u00a03<\/em>, Death Becomes Her<\/em>, Starship Troopers<\/em>, Alien: Resurrection<\/em>, Hollow Man<\/em>, AVP: Alien Vs.\u00a0Predator<\/em> and Spider-Man<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Disenchanted by the lack of respect and opportunity that major studios have been giving\u00a0cutting-edge makeup FX and animatronics in recent years, Gillis and ADI co-founder Tom\u00a0Woodruff Jr. have decided to cut take their case directly to the genre fan community. The result is\u00a0Harbinger Down<\/em><\/a>, a \u2018Practical Creature Film,\u2019 about a group of grad students that books passage\u00a0on a fishing trawler, who run afoul of a piece of Soviet space wreckage, a group of rapidly mutating organisms and a ship\u2019s crew trying to battle the deadly creatures.<\/p>\n

With a $350,000 goal, the project is by no means a certainty, but with 20% of funding already\u00a0in place by the first week, the numbers are looking good so far. Gillis recently sat down exclusively with\u00a0SciFiNow<\/strong> to discuss the state of the industry, the growing disparity between practical and digital\u00a0effects and his decision to use Kickstarter for his directorial debut\u2026<\/p>\n

What made you decide to do Harbinger Down as a Kickstarter-funded project?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Basically, there was a convergence of different things happening about a year and a half ago.\u00a0Number one was that we were kind of in the doldrums after The Thing<\/em> came out. It was yet\u00a0another film where we found ourselves commiserating with guys like Rick Baker or the guys\u00a0at Legacy about doing work that gets replaced by digital. Around that time, there was a lot\u00a0of fan chatter, because The Thing<\/em> was such an eagerly anticipated prequel, and the fans were\u00a0asking questions like, \u2018Did ADI screw up? What was wrong with the work that Woodruff and\u00a0Gillis did?\u2019 So we thought, \u2018Why don\u2019t we wait for the movie to come and go- because it looks\u00a0like we\u2019re not going to have long to wait- to wait- and we\u2019ll put up a video?\u2019<\/p>\n

[dmalbum path=”\/wp-content\/uploads\/dm-albums\/ADI\/”\/]<\/p>\n

So we quietly\u00a0cut together a five-minute video of our work on The Thing<\/em> and put it up and the response was\u00a0overwhelming. I couldn\u2019t believe how much support came back from the fans, who saw a quality\u00a0in what we did that was akin to the kind of work that Rob Bottin did in the \u201880s, that had the\u00a0tactile quality that digital work oftentimes lacks.<\/p>\n

We looked at that and said, \u2018There are still people who like what we do!\u2019 because we had been\u00a0getting beaten up a bit over the last five or six years in feature films. So we decided to put up a\u00a0couple of other videos, like our Green Goblin test makeup for the first Spider-Man<\/em> film, and that\u00a0video got an even bigger fan response than The Thing<\/em> did, so we thought, \u2018Well, maybe people\u00a0would be interested in our work for Ridley Scott\u2019s I Am Legend<\/em> and again, there was another\u00a0big outpouring of, \u2018Why didn\u2019t they use makeups like that instead of the digital characters they\u00a0used?\u2019<\/p>\n

It made us realise there was a real dichotomy between what goes on behind closed doors\u00a0on studio lots and in creative meetings, and what is talked about by the fans on the Internet.That\u2019s when we said, \u2018Let\u2019s start a YouTube channel and find out how it\u2019s done and we\u2019ll start\u00a0putting up some of our archival stuff, which will be fun and a way to get a bit more love for it.\u2019<\/p>\n

\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QEZBhL5lpqg<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

But with each of these videos, we would talk to people in the comments, who would say, \u2018Why\u00a0do studios choose CGI over what you do? Is what you do more expensive?\u2019 and we would\u00a0say, \u2018No, it\u2019s actually a lot cheaper,\u2019 and people were stunned by that, because they felt there was\u00a0greater artistry in the practical and makeup work than there is in the digital work. But something\u00a0was not being given to the audience that the audience wanted, so we started listening to the fans,\u00a0who were also saying, \u2018You\u2019ve got to do something on Kickstarter!\u2019<\/p>\n

Honestly, we were resistant to it at first, so it wasn\u2019t until I looked around my shop and saw\u00a0an empty facility that I realized we were actually at the mercy of studios that didn\u2019t actually\u00a0care about our techniques anymore. They view it as a commodity and a product, and they\u2019ve\u00a0corporatised the structure of creating art and in the end it all becomes disposable. That\u2019s not how\u00a0the fans see our work. I am not anti-digital and neither is Tom. We love the digital tools and we\u00a0think it\u2019s a fantastic storytelling device, but so are animatronics and makeup. For us, because\u00a0that\u2019s our first love, because we believe there is a tactile reality and believability that you create\u00a0with animatronics and makeup. And if you fund it properly and give people enough time and\u00a0money to do their job properly, you won\u2019t have to replace it.<\/p>\n

Anyway, all of these elements made us start thinking, \u2018Hey, maybe we should just skip the\u00a0studios and go directly to the fans. We\u2019re happy to be the first guys to step up from the makeup\u00a0and creature realm and say, \u2018We\u2019ve got something here we think you\u2019ll like!\u2019 whether or not\u00a0crowd funding becomes the model for giving fans the kind of films they want, I don\u2019t know, but\u00a0we\u2019ve got to do something right now before we drive all the talented people out of this industry,\u00a0and all we\u2019re left with is the techniques that studio executives decide we should be putting on\u00a0screen. To me, that is unacceptable.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QWLGykHzffY<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

But at the same time, you\u2019ve wanted to get into filmmaking yourself. Does this remove some\u00a0of the obstacles that would normally stand in your way?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It does. And when I say that Kickstarter has democratised filmmaking, part of that is that it\u2019s\u00a0removed the gate keepers. There are two things that we need to get around: one, we need to get\u00a0around the fact that gigantic budgets bring gatekeepers with them, who are there to protect that\u00a0budget from being spent in ways that the studio disagrees with. If you can do something with a\u00a0lower budget, you remove some of those gatekeepers.<\/p>\n

The other thing is, you don\u2019t have to go to the people who own the money and therefore have\u00a0a say in which techniques you put on screen. If we go to the fans and say, \u2018We\u2019re not making a\u00a0$30 million film, we\u2019re doing a $300,000 movie,\u2019 by studio standards, it\u2019s not a lot of money,\u00a0plus we can offer them some fun gifts and prizes, from t-shirts to appearing in the movie where\u00a0we\u2019ll kill you, and you get to keep your dead body; that\u2019s fun stuff, but we also get to control\u00a0how the money is spent. So if you can get around the money people and the size of these bloated\u00a0Hollywood budgets, you could be much freer to be more experimental and do things that are\u00a0maybe aimed at a narrower niche audience, because you don\u2019t have to make back $150 million. So I\u2019m really excited about that, and I hope we\u2019re helping to create a new business model.<\/p>\n

And the opportunity to show that a good genre film can be made for a relatively modest\u00a0budget?<\/strong><\/p>\n

If Hollywood looks at what we\u2019re doing and says, \u2018Hey, there\u2019s a lesson to be learned here!\u2019 I\u00a0would be thrilled to be part of that reorientation. Tom and I got into this business because we\u00a0wanted to make monsters, which is still our guiding principle. There were times when we took\u00a0jobs to pay the bills- and there\u2019s nothing dishonourable about paying your bills and having\u00a0a bread-and-butter job- but the times we didn\u2019t listen to our gut, the work has never been as\u00a0satisfying, and the relationships formed out of them have never been as long-lasting.<\/p>\n

So I don\u2019t know what the reaction will be to what we do, or whether or not it will be that kind of\u00a0paradigm shift, but we\u2019ve got to try. We can\u2019t just sit around and let it just become the studios\u00a0that are making $300 blockbusters, and then Syfy. There\u2019s got to be\u00a0something else.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fBzpT7VmSaU<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

Unless you\u2019re going to do Sharktopus 2<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

God bless \u2018em if the reason they keep making them is because somebody is watching them. I\u2019m\u00a0not criticising that as a business model, but here\u2019s the thing: I started out at Roger Corman\u2019s. I\u00a0went in for an interview in 1979 and got the job in 1980, and Corman had this big warehouse,\u00a0where he had people like James Cameron, Gale Ann Hurd, Rob Bottin (who was working on\u00a0Humanoids Of The Deep<\/em>), future Oscar winners Robert and Dennis Skotak- and Bill Paxton was a\u00a0carpenter building sets!<\/p>\n

There was a back storage area outside, where Corman had wall flats; it looked like a big\u00a0junkyard, but if you needed a set, you grabbed a bunch of car parts and hot tubs and turned them\u00a0upside down and wired them together to make yourself a set. That\u2019s the kind of ingenuity and\u00a0embracing of limitations where low-budget filmmaking shines, and it\u2019s that kind of passion that\u00a0the fans can see in the final product. Even if your movie is a little rough around the edges, or\u00a0not quite as developed here or there as it could be, the fans see that passion and that\u2019s what they\u00a0respond to.<\/p>\n

Back Harbinger Down<\/em> on Kickstarter<\/a>, and see more gorgeous practical makeup and creature FX on the ADI YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VTAYhO-qkZw&list=UUbhiVDWG8wgg3v9cuH6DqEA&index=2<\/a><\/video><\/div><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ADI founder Alex Gillis launches fully practical FX film Harbinger Down on Kickstarter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":42785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[2615,1718,7,3],"tags":[3205,186,664],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Gillis-headshot-alec.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42780"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}