Special effects in the cinema — Space horror in the movie "Alien"
At the very end of the 1970s, a film was released that still scares the audience in a way that no modern "horror movie" can. Like Alfred Hitchcock in thrillers, director Ridley Scott turned the genre of film fiction, which began to play with new, hitherto unseen colors. Colors of horror and despair.
Cold space, deep loneliness and acute tension have become the hallmark of the Alien universe. Do you remember how you fidgeted in the cinema chair and closed your eyes in some episodes? The dark story told about the ship "Nostromo" lost in space was scarier than world cataclysms. Today we will remember how the masterpiece of world cinema was created, which became a landmark event for the entire film industry.
We often mention the budgets of the films in question in the category. As a rule, they are very modest and show well that for relatively little money with a remarkable talent, you can shoot a masterpiece. "Alien" was no exception. The tape cost its creators $ 11 million, or $ 35 million, adjusted for inflation. This is almost four times less than the budget of the recent Prometheus.
It is not surprising that there were practically no special effects in "Alien" as such. Why did people in the cinema feel bad, some ran out of cinemas in horror, some fainted, and others were sick? As always, it's all about skill, dedication and little tricks.
Take, for example, the famous episode with the "birth" of an alien. This scene is considered one of the most impressive in the history of cinema. According to the creators, at the premiere screening, almost half of the audience closed their eyes at the moment when blood began to gush from a torn T-shirt. There are people who still haven't been able to bring themselves to watch this episode in full, and some of those who have watched regret it.
The passage with the Alien cub bursting out of Kane's chest was supposed to be the strongest scene of the film. Many publications wrote that during her shooting, almost all the actors did not know what would happen next, so on the screen — not a game, but a genuine reaction of the performers of the roles to what was happening. In fact, the actors knew perfectly well that a small and evil alien should appear from the chest of their colleague. What they didn't know was that the whole action would be accompanied by mini-explosions and dozens of liters of bull blood pouring on them.
The episode was shot in two takes. In the first, Kane becomes ill, he suffocates and falls on the table. In the second take, we already see an artificial torso on the table with a T-shirt stretched over it. Inside were containers with blood and offal, bought at the nearest slaughterhouse. All this "good" was pumped by pumps under high pressure.
Some problems arose with the shirt, which did not want to break through the efforts of a newborn alien. I had to spray it with acid to make it less durable, and also cut it a little.
Curiously, the actress Veronica Cartwright, who played one of the two female astronauts, was warned that only a little blood would drip on her during the filming of the episode. In fact, she was literally hosed down. The girl was in genuine shock, screaming hysterically and even fell — all this got into the final version of the film.
The embryo itself was initially more like an angry plucked chicken. Then there was a certain little dinosaur, which eventually had its legs "amputated", leaving its head and tail. The table on which the cub escapes from the cabin was divided into two parts, between which there was a gap about 15 centimeters wide. At the bottom, a man on a trolley like a skateboard held a mock-up of a mini Alien on a stick, and another assistant at the right moment abruptly pulled the cart on himself.
By the way, it was Veronica Cartwright who was supposed to play Ripley, until the director was shown the aspiring film actress Sigourney Weaver. She was so happy with the offer that she hid her allergy to the cat, which flashes here and there in the film. The actress was afraid that the director, having learned about the disease, would rather get rid of her than from the cat, whose replacement is much more difficult to find.
In the first versions of the script, the main role was assigned to a man at all. Ripley was turned into a woman purely for commercial reasons — in the late 1970s it was fashionable to make films about women. It was a trend thanks to which any tape won in the eyes of critics only by the very fact of having a female lead.
The name "Alien" also did not appear immediately. There were many other options, such as "Star Beast". However, all this smacked of films of category "B". To "Alien" screenwriter Dan O'Bannon came directly from the text of the dialogues — the characters of the picture often mentioned this word.
None of the famous directors wanted to take up the shooting of the tape. They flipped through the script and saw in it "a stupid movie about a monster coming out of his chest." Ridley Scott was then known as the author of commercials and one full—length picture - "Duelists". He immediately agreed to the offer of Hollywood bosses, seeing a chance to shoot his "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" in the genre of science fiction.
The filming of "Alien" took place in a studio near London. Ridley Scott made storyboards with his own hands, chose lenses, showed where and which camera to shoot (and he controlled the camera himself), invented biographies of their characters for the actors.
The director borrowed many methods from Alfred Hitchcock. He preferred not to show the viewer everything, relying on the play of imagination — it is it that draws the most terrible pictures.
The actors recall that Ridley Scott was very demanding, but he had a great relationship with almost all the actors. The exception was the African-American Japhet Kotto, who so annoyed the director with his advice on how to shoot "correctly" that he hid from him, trying not to meet once again. The actor attacked Ridley Scott with hundreds of ideas every day and even offered to rewrite the scene in which an Alien kills his hero. On the set, Japhet Kotto declared that he would not die today and "kill this alien bastard."
The real star of the tape, albeit behind the scenes, was the Swiss artist-designer Hans Rudolf Giger. It was he who invented and created the image of a creepy xenomorph — not just a scary, but also a beautiful and even sexy humanoid biomechanical insect.
At first Giger's work was not accepted in the studio because of the excessive disgust that repelled people. Ridley Scott insisted that Alien, Facehugger and eggs, which were also invented by the Swiss, still appeared in his film, because he shoots horror, not a thrash comedy.
The film crew shunned Giger. He was considered strange, compared to Count Dracula and did not want to meet once again. There were even rumors that he was hiding the skeleton of a bride who committed suicide in his basement.
Whatever it was, but Giger managed to create impressive images. By the way, he also worked on the interior design of the ship, the image of the Jockey and the appearance of the planet on which the Nostromo lands.
Before Giger, another artist tried his hand. But his version of the Alien was rejected immediately — the alien looked like a giant cuttlefish and was suitable for second-rate films, but not for what the filmmakers wanted to do.
An actor for the role of an alien was found in a bar. Bolaji Badejo, for whom this experience in cinema was the first and last, was the best fit for a Stranger — he was extremely skinny and very tall (the Nigerian's height reached almost 2 meters and 20 centimeters).
The newly-born alien was immediately sent to do plastic surgery and pantomime to teach how to move slowly and smoothly. A very thin rubber suit was made for Bolaji Badejo. In some scenes, a gymnast suspended on cables is dressed in it.
In addition to latex, the extraterrestrial monster costume included all sorts of things: tubes from an old Rolls-Royce, snake spines, plasticine, a human skull and God knows what else. They even made a mechanical tail, but it never worked, so we had to limit ourselves to a rubber layout.
The most difficult element of the Alien was his head. For close-up shots, a structure was created consisting of 900 movable elements, most of which were used in the mouth mechanism. The actor did not wear this design, they made a lighter alien head for him.
Giger deliberately made it so that the monster did not have eyes. The artist believed that it was much scarier when the viewer did not understand where the Stranger was looking. A lubricant was used to simulate the slime dripping from it.
No less terrible in Giger's performance turned out to be a facehugger. The Swiss drew him long "fingers" because he always believed that imitation of a human hand is very scary. Naturalness in the dissection episode was achieved with the help of oysters, sturgeon, caviar and other fish delicacies bought on the market.
Translucent fiberglass and a hydraulic mechanism for opening the walls were used as the basis for the egg. Inside the tank were the stomach of a cow, lamb intestines and the hands of the director in gloves for washing dishes. He moved them to simulate life inside the egg.
A mock-up of a Jockey became an unacceptable luxury and an example of unjustified waste for producers. Its construction pulled as much as 500 thousand dollars. And this is despite the fact that the dummy is involved only in a small scene and does not carry a special plot load. The management suggested using a miniature puppet model, but the director insisted that the scenery be "real".
Since the team of cinematographers had no money for decent special effects, they had to impress the audience the old-fashioned way. To create a fantastic entourage, you can not do without scenery, so more than 120 people worked on their creation.
Several models of "Nostromo" were built, in which Ridley Scott saw a fantastic embodiment of a Gothic castle. The director wanted to make the exterior of the ship technologically advanced, with flat thin displays, however, due to the limited budget and Giger's persistence, he preferred retrotechnologies. That is why in the cabins, control room and corridors we see unsightly toggle switches and large convex screens.
The largest model of the Nostromo reached a length of several tens of meters. Another one was about 10 meters long, but weighed an impressive 250 kilograms. This structure was lifted with the help of a velvet-covered forklift truck, creating the illusion of smooth movement of the ship. In most episodes, where the surface of the Nostromo is shown at close range, this particular layout is shown. Another lightweight model with a length of about one and a half meters acted as a stand-in.
To hide visual flaws, the play of light and shadow was widely used, as well as fans that dispersed smoke throughout the set. The fog covering a hostile planet is not a "trick" and not the director's handwriting, but a cheap and quick way to hide what the viewer is better not to see.
In a studio near London, a huge decoration was created, the design of which exactly repeated the architecture and design of the premises of "Nostromo". It was not easy to shoot in such conditions, besides, the actors were haunted by claustrophobia.
In order to create the illusion of more extensive spaces than it actually was, we had to resort to very simple, but effective methods. For example, the corridor of a spaceship was made of scrap metal, and at the end of it they put a mirror that visually increased the length of the room.
Animal bones were used in the decoration of the Jockey's ship. There was an attempt to use fresh material from the slaughterhouse, but because of the unbearable smell, this idea was abandoned. Giger had to look for old dry bones and generously smear them with plasticine.
The largest decoration in Europe at that time was a desert planet. To create the right entourage, I had to bring tons of sand.
The spacesuits in which their heroes explore the planet and an extraterrestrial ship became a big test for the actors. The suits turned out to be huge, soft and with hockey gloves included. There were no breathing holes in the spacesuits, so after a while the actors began to suffocate. Because of the heat, one of them was sweating so much that he could not see anything in his helmet and was on the verge of losing consciousness.
In order to emphasize the huge size of the ship and the pilot's seat with a Jockey, Ridley Scott's children dressed in spacesuits were filmed in scenes with a general plan. Once both of them lost consciousness right during the filming. Only after that, fresh air was supplied to the spacesuits.
That's how, with a limited budget, but with invention and ingenuity, Ridley Scott left his name in fiction as the director of one of the scariest films in the history of cinema. It turned out that for naturalistic and frightening scenes, special effects are not needed, there are enough improvised means. Do you remember the impressive episode with the severed head of the robot Ash? An artificial head was created for him, but it turned out to be completely different from the actor Ian Holm. There was no budget for the alteration, so it was simply abundantly filled with milk, "seasoned" with pasta, onions and glass balls. It turned out great!