Gremlins on the Wings: Presenting Dead Air: A Puppet Infused Female Led Horror Comedy Short from Award Winning Filmmaker Geoff Harmer

THERE ARE SOME THINGS WORSE THAN AIRLINE FOOD

An all female rock band battle evil little creatures at 30,000 feet - A Proof of Concept short Horror Comedy

Dead Air is a Short Horror Comedy with added Bite!

Dead Air from the team at Fraught is an independent horror comedy film full of blood, fun and mysterious demon creatures, brought lovingly to life as Henson styled puppets, that is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter!

Set on a plane travelling to a final gig, Dead Air tells the story of Monster Kitten, an all female punk rock band who end up on a flight with some nasty little creatures who like to bite and infect their victims to the point of all hell breaking loose at 30,000 feet. With the help of their instruments, a tape recorder and a bottle of piss, the girls try to fend off the evil to get to play their final gig.

Dead Air needs your help to make it fly.

Geoff and his team want to create a kick ass short that is also a shop window for the Feature film of Dead Air. This ambition requires support. That’s why they need to ask for your help – we would very much like you to join us on this journey.

They aim to make a proof of concept short that tells the story that will ultimately be part of the feature.

This concept short will aim to convince sales agents, distributors and a host of others that Dead Air is the next horror comedy hit to come out of the UK. You can help to do that by joining the community and proving there are people out there who want to see original films like this made. We are huge nerds who want to see this made!

Fun, 80’s style creature features. That’s where it was at. Over the top gore, goopy practical effects, Henson styled puppets & Great Genre Actors all wrapped up in a loving splat fest. Now we live in a world of CGI, where nothing is real, not even the filmmakers. However, there are a select few of us left and practical effects with CG blending has always been the best, not bettered since Jurassic Park! We haven’t got dinosaurs, but we have a cracking set up with an all-female punk rock band battling monsters at 30,000ft whilst travelling to their final gig.

Welcome to Dead Air. A hand crafted punk rock splatter movie from the mind of the writer of Scrawl (Starring Star Wars – The Force Awakens Daisy Ridley) and the Director of the award winning festival favourite Selfie.

This film is being brought to life by an amazing team of talent artists on both sides of the camera and shooting at Black Hangar Studios in Hampshire.

Geoff Harmer directed the festival hit ‘Selfie’ (you can watch it below!) and written by Peter Hearn, the writer of ‘Scrawl’ (Which starred Star Wars The Force Awakens Daisy Ridley) to create a balls out horror comedy with added bite. This film takes a band, puts them on a plane, and then terrorises them with little demon creatures, realised by Labyrinth styled Puppets, and full sized monsters.

Dead Air wants to scare your pants off, and then let you put them back on so we can scare them off again.

Dead Air has an amazing cast lined up to play the characters in our film, all of whom will be revealed as the campaign progresses. The one actor we can't reveal (at least not until we are fully funded!) is a Hollywood Genre Legend! They've been in such classics as... shhhhhh... we can't tell you! Not yet anyway!

Here is who the team can reveal so far!

Welcome to the incredibly funny and talented James Hamer-Morton who is on board to play the Co-Pilot of the doomed flight.

James has starred in a number of recent feature films, all of which are getting released in the near future including Liam Regan's festival hit My Bloody Banjo, Andrew Harmer's The Fitzroy and Chris Gallagher's Dead Love.

Next up, we have the amazingly talented Stacy Hart as the Drummer of Monster Kitten!

Stacy was the star of our award winning short film Selfie, previous to which she also appeared in a number of feature films, including the Universal Picture's film Get Real, Things To Do Before You're 30 and the Danny Boyle film The Beach.

The Bassist of Monster Kitten is set to be played by the wonderful Kate Marie Davies.

Kate had a great start to the year with her #ShowreelShareDay Twitter frenzy causing a storm in January this year.

She also stars in the feature film Escape from Cannibal Farm which hits screens next month, with other features currently in post-production.

The Singer of Monster Kitten is being played by the amazing Charlie Bond.

Charlie has had some great roles over the last couple of years in films like Vendetta, The Fall of the Essex Boys and Strippers Vs Werewolves. She has also had success with her stage performance as Lucy Westenra in Dracula at the Leicester Square Theatre, London.

Completing our Band line up is Johanna Stanton as The Guitarist.

Johanna is an award winning actress, having starred in a number of films including Nightmare Box, Grave Tales and the TV Movie Compulsion alongside Ray Winstone. Johanna will be seen later this year in the Geoff Harmer directed short film Smile as well as the feature film Injustice.

Now that we have the Monster Kitten line up, meet their Manager!

Dan Palmer is on board as The Manager of Monster Kitten. Dan is an actor and writer, best known for starring in Stalled, Freak Out and Small Town Folk. He also had a role in My Bloody Banjo alongside James Hamer-Morton.

The final cast member of Dead Air, and one we are really excited to announce, is David Schaal as the Pilot of the ill-fated flight.

Most will remember David as Terry Cartwright (Jay's Dad) in The Inbetweeners, but he has done so much more!

David has had roles in classic TV Shows like The Office, The IT Crowd, Grange Hill and Lead Balloon. He most recently appeared on our screens in the TV comedy pilot We The Jury.

David will be appearing on the big screen later this year, alongside James Hamer-Morton in the Dresden Pictures film The Fitzroy.

The sound of Monster Kitten is being provided by the multi-talented artist Erica Nockalls.

Erica Nockalls is an English violinist, vocalist, songwriter and visual artist. She is best known as the violinist in The Wonder Stuff, as one half of the acoustic duo Miles Hunt And Erica Nockalls, and as live fiddle player for The Proclaimers. Nockalls is lead vocalist, violinist and guitarist in her art-rock band, Erica Nockalls. her sound is crucial to the look and feel of the film.

Geoff Harmer said “Without your support this project wouldn’t happen. Without you believing, our ideas would end up tossed into a drawer.

We want to take you on a journey with this mad and wacky project, we want to create a project that makes people as excited as we are, and believe me WE ARE EXCITED!

We want to make something that is fun, but ambitious at the same time. We would like to show you what we can achieve in a proof of concept short film, hopefully tour the festival circuit before coming back with the feature version. That means more puppets, more kick ass women and more bloody goopy special FX. Early Peter Jackson, eat your heart out (preferably with a side order of chips)."

What is the money going to actually be used for?

Everything raised will go towards creating the short film, which is a self contained story.

They’ve secured amazing locations shooting at Black Hangar Studios in Hampshire, but in order to film the short they really need your help. The Kickstarter goal has been set at £20,000 because they really don’t want to have to compromise on the production quality. Geoff and his team really want to make something special that backers can be proud to be a part of.

The main bulk of the budget will be spent on locations, production design, costume and props, the actors, the SFX and the delightful creatures, which are being brought to life as hand and rod puppets as well as animatronics. The aim is to put as much of the money on screen as possible, going for a unique take on the creature features that rocked our worlds back in the 80’s and early 90's.

In addition to a fantastic short film full of practical puppets and creature FX, the Dead Air team have come up with a series of amazing perks for all you wonderful people. Dig deep and you too can say that ‘you were there man, at the beginning, YOU. WERE. THERE'.

They wanted to offer something exciting and uniquely exclusive to supporters that you can only get during this Kickstarter campaign as early backers of the project. Here are some of the cool things you can get with more to come throughout the campaign!

Art and Script Book PDF

This special book will include storyboards, concept art, photos of the band, photos on set, as well as the FIRST draft of the script and the FINAL shooting script to show all the changes that were made and all the crappy dialogue that was removed.

Band T-shirts

Ever wanted a band t-shirt for an ass kicking punk rock band. Well now you can with our Monster Kitten band tees.

Band Music

We have digital copies of the music by Dan Hall, who wrote the music to the Daisy Ridley horror ‘Scrawl’.

Dead Air Poster

Our Official poster is being designed and will be revealed during the campaign. This is your opportunity to get the poster exclusively signed by the artist and as many members of the cast and crew as possible.

Monster Kitten Fanzine

The Dead Air team are producing a physical Monster Kitten fanzine. Created in the style of 1980/90s punk zines, this handcrafted zine will delve into the back story of Monster Kitten, the band within Dead Air.

Unique Photos by Geoff and Tom, the Cast and Crew

As if the Cast and Crew didn’t have enough to do already, we will be handing out a number of disposable cameras for them to take unique, one of a kind photos on set. These will then be developed and sent to the lucky few that choose this perk. Who doesn't want a photo of the director eating a cheese sandwich, or pointing into the distance?

Set visit

Come along and be on set for a day, be bitten by a creature and become one of our monsters…or just eat sandwiches and chat to our lovely and delightful cast and crew (when we aren’t shooting, of course)

Appear in the Film

Ever wanted to have your face appear on the big screen? Now you can! We have a couple of roles going begging. Do you want to take them?

Access to our Private No Holds Barred Snapchat Channel

Get this perk and you will get access to a private and intimate view of the making of a film in the company of the Al B Damned frontman, Joey Draper.

The biggest challenge however (as with any crowd-funding campaign) is that until you secure funding, shooting dates cannot be fully confirmed - and this of course might give way to availability issues with cast, crew and locations. In order to mitigate any potential issues with delays, we have already set provisional shooting dates and are keeping in close contact with all areas regarding availability and campaign updates. This ensures that any potential issues can be dealt with rapidly, meaning when funding is successful, shooting dates can be locked down with the least amount of delay. However this also gives us the flexibility to reschedule quickly if there are any complications with the campaign.

Keep up-to-date with Dead Air on Kickstarter, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the Official Website. Be sure to sign up to the newsletter to stay up to date with all the latest about the film.