Harbinger Down (written and directed by Alec Gillis)
Harbinger Down (written and directed by Alec Gillis)

Interview by RCR Entertainment Reporter, Eddie Villavueva follow him on TwitterFacebook, & Instagram @anticfire

When asked about being a practical effects artist, the late Stan Winston once stated, “Everything about my being is creating characters that tell stories in film.” Winston was a man who created magic with each character in films, leaving his fingerprints for us discover and share with generations to come. Unfortunately, the use of practical effects in films have taken a backseat to CGI, and movies have become more computer-created than tangible fabrication. Thankfully, we still have creative minds in the world, like Alec Gillis.

Gillis, a man whose name has become synonymous in Hollywood for his hand in creating legendary special effects and makeup, has been a part of iconic sci-fi films in cinema history such as AliensTremorsMonster SquadWolfStarship TroopersCastAway, and so many more. Working with big names like Ron Howard, James Cameron, and late great Stan Winston, one can’t even fathom the depths of passion this man holds for his work. A passion so determined, that Alec Gillis, along with an incredible cast that includes Lance Henriksen, Camille Balsamo, and Matt Winston, were able to bring a sense of nostalgia back to the industry, with practical effects that rival that of many CGI effects in cinema, with his directorial debut on the big screen, HarbingerDown.

Harbinger Down is a film about a sci-fi deathmatch pitting man versus alien in an all-out struggle for survival. While on a crab boat, a team of researchers and their professor make the find of a lifetime when, while studying the migration of local whales in the area, discover a Russian spacecraft that crash landed long ago in the icy depths of the Bering Strait. Once aboard, though, the research team and crew of the ship quickly finds that there is more to the spacecraft than what they see, something not from this world, something that will fight for its own survival. With Camille Balsamo and Lance Henriksen at the helm of this thrill ride, the film offers a one-way ticket to a time when monsters in films were terrifying because they were as real as you or I. The ability Gillis has to create a film that pays homage to the movies we grew up with, such as The ThingThey Live, and An American Werewolf in London, and be able to still bring a sense of modernism, just barely hits the tip of the iceberg of the genius that is Alec Gillis. We got a chance to chat with Alec, and talk to him a bit about his film, and what drove him to make a film like this.

Eddie Villanueva: So, I got to see the movie. First off, kudos to the film, I have to say. It’s a very, very well done – in my mind – very well done homage to all 80s classic sci-fi film. Especially ones that Stan Winston had a hand in.
Alec Gillis: Yeah, good. I’m glad you see that and appreciate it.
EV: Yeah, there was a lot of great things that I noticed, especially with your opening, just from the very get-go, your opening was pretty much straight on how most of those types a sci-fi movies started, with that panned shot of space moving towards the earth. That was a really good first course appetizer there for people like myself.
AG: Good. I’m glad you liked it. That was a shot we labored over because we didn’t have the– obviously, we’re working under a really minuscule budget, but I wanted to get that vastness, and coming out of nowhere, and shooting past you, and I wanted to do it with a bit of miniature. The spaceship was a miniature, we did use a map– I also did photographs of earth that we used as a matte painting – as a digital matte painting – but it’s based on photographed stuff. Did you notice the date that the spaceship crashes?
EV: It was 1982?
AG: It was June 25, 1982 – that’s the release date of John Carpenter’s The Thing!
AG: So what I thought was fun was what if, on the day that we were all going – I don’t know how old you are, but – on the day that many of us were going to the theater to watch John Carpenter’s The Thing, a Russian spaceship crashes on the other end of the planet with a nasty organism on it.
EV: That’s actually pretty smart. Everybody’s at the theaters and this thing goes down. No wonder nobody heard about it.
AG: Yeah, exactly [laughter]. And you know, Lance is fantastic. He’s so good, but when he says this thing has been frozen since the ’80s. It’s like, “Yeah, that’s good.” The whole sub-genre of practical effects have been frozen since the ’80s.
EV: Yeah, and that’s something I want to ask you about. What drove you to wanting to create a film with such a CGI infused industry now? It’s hard to watch any movie, especially with a lower budget films, it’s hard to watch any film that doesn’t incorporate some type of CGI. And yet this film while holding, I’m assuming, little, if any CGI, it was spectacular as far as effects, as far as the way you had the pieces that were attached to individuals, the actual monster itself, the transitions and everything that you had, they were great. What drove you to wanting to do something like this?
AG: In 2011 my company, Amalgamated Dynamics, worked on The Thing, 2011, and the mandate from the filmmakers and the studio was that they wanted that film to be very connected to John Carpenter’s The Thing. It was a sequel to The Thing. So we were very excited to have the opportunity to carry that mantle, Rob Bottin’s work in Carpenter’s The Thing is still a benchmark of animatronic effects, and we were very excited. It was a plum job. We got it. It was going to be 80% practical and 20% digital, it’s the opposite ratio of most movies these days. We were excited by that. We shot the movie, built a bunch of great stuff. By the time the movie was released, most of our work had been replaced by digital creatures. It was still our design, it’s just that they had gone back and pulled out our animatronics and plunked in digital ones. And there’s a whole bunch of thoughts as to why that sort of thing happens, but it wasn’t the first time it had happened. Rick Baker’s work on The Wolfman, his transformations, they got replaced by digital. He had some stuff in the Men in Black movies that got replaced. So everybody, top of the line animatronics and makeup people, were having their work replaced.
AG: So we were bummed, we were sad. I liked the movie, Thing, 2011, but it just was a bummer to walk out of that screening room and realize that the industry is kicking us out. They’re pushing us out, and in favor of something of a technique that doesn’t necessarily look better. And it certainly is more expensive. So, it’s frustrating and confusing. That movie came and went, and about six months later, we kept getting emails from people over the next six months saying, “What happened? Did you guys screw up? What’s the deal? You promised us.” Because we had done press for the movie that say 20 practical over digital, as if we have control over what the studio ultimately does with their movie. So, we put a video up. And the video showed five minutes of work that we had done – animatronic work, makeup work – and the response was amazing. We got tons of hits, and tons of views in a short order, along with lots of people giving us comments on our YouTube channel, heartbroken. Heartbroken people, sad, bemoaning that movies have changed for the worse. That digital work has turned movies into factory efforts and that the hand crafted quality of pre-digital movies is gone and replaced by something that looks like it belongs more to video games than in a film.
AG: We then immediately put up some other videos showing our work on I Am Legend. In the ’90s we did makeup work for Ridley Scott’s version of that film; it never got off the ground. That got a huge reaction of people preferring our makeup work to what was in the Will Smith movie. We put up a video of The Green Goblin. We did this makeup version of The Green Goblin from the first Spiderman movie. But it was decided to make a hard show mask instead of this organic make up. So, another example of make up and animatronics falling by the way side. We started becoming the poster boys before incredible work that never got seen. And as we listened to fans, we started to realizes these people are telling us we need to do something about it. Instead of just crawling off under a rock and dying because the studio won’t give us any jobs, what if we created our own jobs? And what if we do it in partnership with the fans? How do you do that? Well, crowdfunding. That’s what we did. We did a crowdfunding campaign, where I promised that I would write and direct, and we would create creatures for a film that is truly a practical creature effects film. We would still use digital because it’s a modern film, and certain digital techniques allow you to do things more cost effectively than ever, but we would use digital as a support technique, so we would use it for wire removal, we would use it for compositing, we would use to add camera shake, we would use it if we needed to add snow fall, lighting effects, things like that. But the creatures themselves would be a 100% practical and that’s what we did. And that’s why when you watch it, you go, “I’m not sure what technique I’m seeing here because the practical stuff looks great, but there’s got to be some digital component in it,” but it’s just touches of digital that keep it all rooted in reality.
EV: And I think that’s what makes this film so unique in itself. With so much CGI added to the scene of films nowadays, ultimately there is no practicality to it. Everything is just digital. And like you said, in small amounts it’s okay, but the art form of it, the uniqueness, the artistry of it, what made the ’80s and the early ’90s in film such an outstanding piece of work was the fact that everything that was done on it was done by a team, a group of individuals who were passionate about creating with their hands.
AG: Yeah, and – adding to that thought – I also like the idea that the director does not have full control over what’s in front of a lens – very exciting to me. I think when people watch this is what– why Tom Cruise is going back to doing these outrageous stunts himself in movies, it’s because there’s an element of risk to that, that people find exhilarating. When you watch Mad Max movie, I know there’s tons of support digital effect in that movie, but there’s a ton of practical stuff like real giant vehicles, real explosions. There’s an element of unpredictability about all that imagery that I think is very exciting. As an artist, when I’m sculpting, and I’m building something out of clay, my goal is not to overpower the material that I’m working with, the medium. It’s to shape it into my parameters, to feel what it’s giving back to me, and then respond and utilize that. With animation you tend to have– you certainly have frame by frame control, but now you have pixel by pixel control, which means that it is completely on the digital artist and the director, and also his team or her team to completely control this medium, because there is nothing to begin with. So you’ve got an uphill battle if you’re trying to create photo realism and reality. It can be done; don’t get me wrong. I loved that last Planet of the Apes movie. [Webber?] does exemplary work, as does Image Engine, fantastic digital work. But for me, a film that is infused with real reactions of actors reacting to actual prop monsters, actors in actual environments, I would rather make a movie that is much smaller in scope, but more real than a movie that has a vast canvas as large as a universe, but is completely synthetic.
EV: Yeah, it’s almost like the thumbprint of the practical effects artist’s dream and vision, as far as in the film and unfortunately you don’t see everyday now. And like you did mention, there are a few examples recently like you said with Mad Max, with certain aspects of that one, with certain aspects of what Tom Cruise now does with most of his Mission Impossible films.
AG: Chris Nolan’s movies you know, he likes to have a lot of big set pieces and prop. He uses miniatures very effectively. He’s not a creature guy, but he uses practical effects so that his movies are as believable as possible.
EV: Yeah. As far as the film is concerned itself, how was it working with individuals like Lance Henriksen and the cast you were able to grab for this film?
AG: Well, it was a fantastic learning experience for me because I’ve been around forever, and I’ve done a ton of second unit directing, and I’ve directed a bunch of shots, and I have worked with actors. I’ve sold scripts before, but to say, “Okay, we are funded and we are going to barrel through this with great determination and conviction, and we’re going to pull all these elements of an entire production together, including cast and all that stuff.” It was an experience of a lifetime. And this is what I’m so grateful – if I could give a shout out to the Kickstarter family, the folks who pledged, gave up their hard earned money, and to Sultan Saeed Al Darmaki and his company, Dark Dunes, who brought additional money to the project. It was an absolute dream come true. And for me, you know I’ve done a lot of these aspects of movie making before, but what I had never done was taken my written word and directed an ensemble cast in a feature length, and that was extremely exciting. To be able to have my old friend Lance Henriksen on the shoot there, not only– every time I point the camera at him, that is production value, that is– he is the real deal. Whenever that camera is on him, this is a real movie. You know Lance is your go-to guy to keep you rooted in a quality product.
AG: And also, Lance is just such a giving person. I wrote the part for him because that’s what I know of his character. I know him to be– he’s got a power to him that is– he doesn’t swagger, but he’s got an intensity and a power to him that we see very often in movies, especially when he’s playing a bad guy. But what we don’t get to see often is his mentoring, and he’s a very loving person. I don’t want to sound corny, but the guy is just such a generous and loving person. He’s a potter. He does ceramics and all that stuff. I just happened to read this somewhere: He was traveling and he came upon some little school that was in the middle of nowhere, and they had a broken down old kiln. They had to cancel their pottery classes, because their kiln didn’t work. He bought them a kiln just so that 15 kids could make pottery. But that’s the kind of guy that he is, and that extends to his love of his cast-mates. We had a wide variety of people who had a lot of experience, and people who had very little experience, so he worked with them, he mentored them, and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to work with.
EV: Lance Henriksen has his history in films of sci-fi and films of this type of genre, as far as horror, and in practical effects as well. And so seeing him in this, it really brought that nostalgia feeling back, as far as him battling against some type of alien creature, just like in Aliens, or him battling against some large entity like he did back with Pumpkin Head.
AG: Yep. And I put him through a lot of that shit back in the ’80s. I was in charge of the effect when he played Bishop on Aliens, where the Queen’s tail spears him and then she rips in half. I did all that stuff. Tom and I worked on that particular effect, and I gave Lance – he was spitting milk up – and I gave Lance a cup of milk off the tea trolley and it had been spoiled. And he was up all that night puking. He came in the next day, he wasn’t pissed. He told me what happened and I was like – I felt so bad, and he said, “You know what? I’m going to find a way to use it.” And he did. That was the day that he said, “Not bad for a human.” He’s sick as a dog, but he knows how to use that stuff. And also, on Pumpkin Head, I was in a barn trying to put these giant hard, full scleral contact lenses in his eyeballs; I dropped one of them in the dust, and he’s just rolling with it – “Wash them off, buddy. Wash them off and get them in there.” He’s just a fantastic guy. He’s a trooper. He’s down to earth. There’s a reason why people love his performances, and that’s because they just love him.
EV: So as far as the film is concerned, are there any possibilities of any sequels to this film in the future?
AG: This is is an interesting movie, because I think that it’s a movie that’s made for a niche group of people. It’s primarily made for the people, the fans of PFX – practical effects – who laid out their hard earned money to get this movie made. The Kickstarter pledgers, right? And there are also a lot of other people who came late to it, who were really bummed that they couldn’t contribute because they didn’t discover the campaign, because it went for 30 days. There is a worldwide network of creature effect fans – practical creature effect fans. I’m very confident that those people are going to really be happy with this movie. Radiating out from that, you have the next level of people who are just general horror fans. Now, will they embrace this retro 1980s thing? Or will they say, “No, this isn’t an homage; it’s a cheap ripoff.” And I understand that point of view. The movie wasn’t made with that in mind, so as long as I’m pleasing my core group of pledgers, I’m most happen with. But yeah, as a film maker, I want to reach as many people as I possibly can, and I hope that people see that this was done as a– I call it 1980s comfort food.
AG: You come into a restaurant, and you’re like, “I’m tired of all of the stuff that I’ve been eating– it’s not filet mignon, it’s not a delicious beef bourguignon.” This is meat loaf. This is like what you’ve been missing. This is what you haven’t had in a long time, and I’m good with that, and I think that our core fans are good with it too. And then, even if it’s not your cup of tea, hopefully you can appreciate the hand crafted aspect of the film and see that all of these creatures are actually built, they actually exist. As you say, there’re artifacts after the movie that are left over that people can look at, and some of them are miniatures, performed in miniature sets. Some of them are whole scale, one-to-one. Even the little beluga whales are puppets. So we pulled out every trick. Miniature ships, right? We have three stacked footage shots in the movie, to sort of establish people with crab pots and the big crab cages and everything. But everything else is absolutely handmade. I hope, as you say, I hope people respond to the care and the love that went into the movie
EV: When you put it that way, it is like that. Because ultimately, this is a movie that when  you saw it, it brought you back to the days when you would come home on a Friday night after a crazy week, and you would be able to sit with your family, and wanted to watch a really good movie, so you threw in a movie like The Thing, or They Live, a movie that has that down home feeling of where you realized that you were going to be passionate about film. It was movies like this that created that sense of desire, that flame. And I think this movie definitely puts people back into that mindset as far as realizing that there has been something missing for a good amount of time now in cinema, and it’s the ability to look at a movie and say, “That is something that somebody put their hands to, and put hours and hours of work into, so much planning, so much processing, so much sculpting, so much puppeteering, so much wiring,” and you realize that that’s somebody’s lovechild right there. And it reminds you of that. This is what it’s all about.
AG: That is the highest compliment that I could be paid, and I thank you for that. When you put me in a category with They Live – and I am serious – that is an honor. Because that is the kind — They Live is the kind of movie that when you watched it – remember watching the movie and feeling like there’s something funky and clunky about this movie, but it is great. It’s fun, it’s unpretentious, and that is a big part of what has been missing in movies these days. There’s a kind of cynicism that runs through movies these days, or a coolness. There’s a lack of connection, like camaraderie between the cast members. Like in Alien, as hardcore as that movie gets, when they first come out of cryosleep and they’re all bullshitting together, feel like this is a bunch of coworkers. Even though there’s a moment where Yaphet Kotto – Parker – he makes a sex joke, and Veronica Cartwright kind of laughs, but is sort of thinking, “You dick. You asshole.” But it’s so real and so charming. And I’m not putting myself in a category of that, or this movie in exactly that category, but that’s what we’re going for. We’re going for– we want to put you in an environment with a bunch of people that like each other, and hate each other, and have conflicts, and that it’s all– everything’s on a human scale, and then disaster strikes.
EV: Exactly.
AG: They’re getting chewed up in the meat grinder. It’s fun, and that’s what it’s all about. Yeah, I totally agree with you.
EV: I hope there’s more in the future for you and your creative genius that you have.
AG: We have a great team here in place. This has been a fantastic evolution for us, and we do have other projects, and I want to do something next time that is forward looking rather than fondly backwards looking. But yeah, and hopefully there’s people like you that will be out there to support us.
EV: Most definitely. Thank you again Alex. You have a good one.
AG: Okay. Take care.

More about Harbinger Down

Alec Gillis’s HARBINGER DOWN, starring Lance Henriksen, is the all Practical Effects (PFX) creature film the fans have asked for. Funded through Kickstarter and Dark Dunes Productions, Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. of StudioADI present an alternative to big studio CGI-driven genre films. Please help us spread the word. Let the revolution begin.

Also starring Camille Balsamo, Matt Winston, Reid Collums, Milla Bjorn, Winston Francis, Mike Estime, Giovonnie Samuels, Edwin Bravo, Jason Speer, Kraig Sturtz, and Mick Ignis. Special thanks to our supporters worldwide!

Harbinger Down on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HarbingerDownOfficial
Harbinger Down on Twitter: https://twitter.com/harbinger_down
Harbinger Down on Instagram: @harbinger_down