Harbinger Down: A Creature FX Film on Kickstarter

Amalgamated Dynamics created the animatronic effects for Alien and many of the effects for the 2011 remake of The Thing which were replaced with CGI before the film was released. ADI also contributed to Tremors, Starship Troopers, and Spider-Man, among many others. Alec Gillis of ADI is now looking to create the kind of Oscar caliber Creature Effects for which ADI is known: Harbinger Down. The crew that will be working on Harbinger Down has ten Oscar nominations between them and has won four. The film will only use practical animatronic and makeup effects to create the film’s creatures and will not use any CGI at all.

The story follows a group of grad students who have booked passage on a fishing trawler called the Harbinger to study the effects of global warming on a pod of Orcas in the Bering Sea. The crew ends up discovering a piece of recently thawed Soviet space wreckage and things turn deadly. Apparently, the Russians experimented with tiny, resilient animals known as tardigrades that are able to withstand the extreme radiation of space and, as a result, have mutated in the ice for decades. And after being locked in ice for three decades, the creatures aren’t about to give up the warmth of human companionship.

To date, the team has raised nearly $100,000 towards their goal of $350,000. A pledge of just $25 gets you a digital download of the finished film; if you pledge $300 or more you also get two tickets to the premiere and after party in L.A.; and if you pledge $4,500 or more you get one of the (small) screen-used creatures from the film!

The Kickstarter campaign ends on June 7.