Beavertown Brewery release short film ‘Flightmare’: a story of turbulence, tentacles, and terror this Halloween
This Halloween, Beavertown Brewery is taking Halloween to new heights with the launch of ‘Flightmare’, a three-minute animated short film and graphic novel that takes viewers on a dimension bending visual trip. Inspired by strange happenings in the Bermuda Triangle, the story which is hand-illustrated by Beavertown’s creative director, Nick Dwyer and animated by Black Dog Film’s Alice Bloomfield, continues to push the brewery’s unique, visually driven creative approach to Halloween.
Inspired by the likes of Futurama, Goosebumps and Alien, the script, written by author Helen Mullane, draws on vintage horror, sci-fi and Tales of the Unexpected. The audience follows the protagonist, ‘Sonny’, while he sets off on his intrepid journey through the skies. Viewers are encouraged to look out for a number of written and visual easter eggs hidden in the film and novel.
‘Flightmare’ is Beavertown’s second foray into Halloween campaigns , following the brewery’s 2022 short film ‘Rime of The Ancient Mariner’. The brewery continues their unique creative approach by creating chilling and captivating content that fans eagerly anticipate in the lead up to spooky season.
Nick Dwyer, Creative Director of Beavertown Brewery, said: “Animations have become a great way for us to bring even more energy and life to the characters from the weird worlds of our beer cans and a natural fit for our art style. Storytelling is much more fun when you have the way a character moves and makes faces, sounds and emotes to play with, as opposed to a single beer can canvas – not that this isn’t fun. The main intent for both the short film and graphic novel was to take our drinkers and fans on a psychedelic, colour-spectrum-bending, TERRIFYING journey where we are laughing along with them at the ridiculous antics of Sonny, whilst also thinking ‘wait… maybe…’”.
This is the third time that Beavertown Brewery has collaborated with Alice Bloomfield, an animator, illustrator and director at Black Dog Films. Alice Bloomfield has previously animated Beavertown’s debut short film Rime of The Ancient Mariner, which was released on Halloween back in 2022 and the music video for Queens of the Stone Age’s recent single, ‘Paper Machete.’
Alice Bloomfield, Director and Animator at Black Dog Films, said: “This was the first project where the characters have voices. I had a lot of fun figuring out their mannerisms and the way they move when they talk, giving them as much character as possible and really bringing the audience along on their spine-chilling journey. The visuals of this project were really important, we wanted to create something retro inspired and beautifully colourful to lull the viewer into a sense of calm — before taking them on a hair-raising, trippy journey full of twists and turns.’
The full film was released on Friday the 20th of October and you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/
