mr canavar yarragi

H.R. Giger designed and worked on all of the alien aspects of the film, which he designed to appear organic and biomechanical in contrast to the industrial look of the Nostromo and its human elements.[14][42] For the interior of the derelict spacecraft and egg chamber he used dried bones together with plaster to sculpt much of the scenery and elements.[14][42] Veronica Cartwright described Giger's sets as "so erotic... it's big vaginas and penises... the whole thing is like you're going inside of some sort of womb or whatever... it's sort of visceral".[42] The set with the deceased alien creature, which the production team nicknamed the "space jockey", proved problematic as 20th Century Fox did not want to spend the money for such an expensive set that would only be used for one scene. Ridley Scott described the set as the cockpit or driving deck of the mysterious ship, and the production team was able to convince the studio that the scene was important to impress the audience and make them aware that this was not a B movie.[42][47] To save money only one wall of the set was created, and the "space jockey" sat atop a disc that could be rotated to facilitate shots from different angles in relation to the actors.[14][47] Giger airbrushed the entire set and the "space jockey" by hand.[42][47]

The origin of the jockey creature was not explored in the film, but Scott later theorized that it might have been the ship's pilot, and that the ship might have been a weapons carrier capable of dropping Alien eggs onto a planet so that the Aliens could use the local lifeforms as hosts.[21] In early versions of the script the eggs were to be located in a separate pyramid structure which would be found later by the Nostromo crew and would contain statues and hieroglyphs depicting the Alien reproductive cycle, offering a contrast of the human, Alien, and space jockey cultures.[15] Cobb, Foss, and Giger each created concept artwork for these sequences, but they were eventually discarded due to budgetary concerns and the need to trim the length of the film.[14] Instead the egg chamber was set inside the derelict ship and was filmed on the same set as the space jockey scene; the entire disc piece supporting the jockey and its chair were removed and the set was redressed to create the egg chamber.[14]

Alien originally was to conclude with the destruction of the Nostromo while Ripley escapes in the shuttle Narcissus. However, Ridley Scott conceived of a "fourth act" to the film in which the Alien appears on the shuttle and Ripley is forced to confront it. He pitched the idea to 20th Century Fox and negotiated an increase in the budget in order to film the scene over several extra days.[21][48] Scott had wanted the Alien to bite off Ripley's head and then make the final log entry in her voice, but the producers vetoed this idea as they believed that the Alien had to die at the end of the film.[48]

[edit] Special effects and creature design
[edit] Spaceships and planets

Ridley Scott filming model shots of the Nostromo and its attached ore refinery. He made slow passes filming at 2½ frames per second to give the models the appearance of motion.[14]The spaceships and planets for the film were shot using models and miniatures. These included models of the Nostromo, its attached mineral refinery, the escape shuttle Narcissus, the alien planetoid, and the exterior and interior of the derelict spacecraft. Visual Effects Supervisor Brian Johnson, supervising modelmaker Martin Bower, and their team worked at Bray Studios, roughly 30 miles (48 km) from Shepperton Studios where principal filming was taking place.[49][50] The designs of the Nostromo and its attachments were based on combinations of Ridley Scott's storyboards and Ron Cobb's conceptual drawings.[49] The basic outlines of the models were made of wood and plastic, and most of the fine details were added from model kits of battleships, tanks, and World War II bombers. Three models of the Nostromo were made: a 12-inch (30 cm) version for medium and long shots, a 4-foot (1.2 m) version for rear shots, and a 12-foot (3.7 m), 7-short-ton (6.4 t) rig for the undocking and planetoid surface sequences.[14][50] Scott insisted on numerous changes to the models even as filming was taking place, leading to conflicts with the modeling and filming teams. The Nostromo was originally yellow, and the team filmed shots of the models for six weeks before Johnson left to work on The Empire Strikes Back. Scott then ordered it changed to gray, and the team had to begin shooting again from scratch.[49][50] He ordered more and more pieces added to the model until the final large version with the refinery required a metal framework so that it could be lifted by a forklift. He also took a hammer and chisel to sections of the refinery, knocking off many of its spires which Bower had spent weeks creating. Scott also had disagreements with lighting technician Denny Ayling over how to light the models.[49]

A separate model, approximately 40 feet (12 m) long, was created for the Nostromo's underside from which the Narcissus would detach and from which Kane's body would be launched during the funeral scene. Bower carved Kane's burial shroud out of wood and it was launched through the hatch using a small catapult and filmed at high speed, then slowed down in editing.[49][51] Only one shot was filmed using blue screen compositing: that of the shuttle racing past the Nostromo. The other shots were simply filmed against black backdrops, with stars added via double exposure.[50] Though motion control photography technology was available at the time, the film's budget would not allow for it. The team therefore used a camera with wide-angle lenses mounted on a drive mechanism to make slow passes over and around the models filming at 2½ per second,[14] giving them the appearance of motion. Scott added smoke and wind effects to enhance the illusion.[49] For the scene in which the Nostromo detaches from the refinery, a 30-foot (9.1 m) docking arm was created using pieces from model railway kits. The Nostromo was pushed away from the refinery by the forklift, which was covered in black velvet, causing the arm to extend out from the refinery. This created the illusion that the arm was pushing the ship forward.[49][50] Shots from outside the ship in which the characters are seen through windows moving around inside were filmed using larger models which contained projection screens showing pre-recorded footage.[49]

A separate model was created for the exterior of the derelict alien spacecraft. Matte paintings were used to fill in areas of the ship's interior as well as exterior shots of the planetoid's surface.[49] The surface as seen from space during the landing sequence was created by painting a globe white, then mixing chemicals and dyes onto transparencies and projecting them onto it.[14][50] The planetoid was not named in the film, but some drafts of the script gave it the name Acheron[34] after the river which in Greek mythology is described as the "stream of woe", a branch of the river Styx, and which forms the border of Hell in Dante's Inferno. The 1986 sequel Aliens named the planetoid as "LV-426",[45] and both names have been used for it in subsequent expanded universe media such as comic books and video games. In Alien the planetoid is said to be located somewhere in the Zeta2 Reticuli system

Egg and facehugger

The "facehugger" was the first creature Giger designed for the film, giving it human-like fingers and a long tail.[33][43]The scene of Kane inspecting the egg was shot during post-production. A fiberglass egg was used so that actor John Hurt could shine his light on it and see movement inside, which was provided by Ridley Scott fluttering his hands inside the egg while wearing rubber gloves.[47] The top of the egg opened via hydraulics, and the innards were made of a cow's stomach and tripe.[33][47] Initial test shots of the eggs were filmed using hen's eggs, and this footage was used in early teaser trailers. For this reason a hen's egg was used as the primary image for the film's advertising poster, and became a lasting image for the series as a whole rather than the Alien egg that actually appears in the film.[47]

The "facehugger" and its proboscis, which was made of a sheep's intestine, were shot out of the egg using high-pressure air hoses. The shot was acted out and filmed in reverse, then reversed and slowed down in editing to prolong the effect and show more detail.[33][47] The facehugger itself was the first creature that Giger designed for the film, going through several versions in different sizes before deciding on a small creature with humanlike fingers and a long tail.[33][43] Dan O'Bannon drew his own version based on Giger's design, with help from Ron Cobb, which became the final version.[21][43] Cobb came up with the idea that the creature could have a powerful acid for blood, a characteristic that would carry over to the adult Alien and would make it impossible for the crew to kill it by conventional means such as guns or explosives, since the acid would burn through the ship's hull.[15][21] For the scene in which the dead facehugger is examined, Scott used pieces of fish and shellfish to create its viscera.[33][47]

[edit] Chestburster

The "chestburster" was shoved up through the table and false torso by a puppeteer.[33] The scene has been recognized as one of the film's most memorable.The design of the "chestburster" was inspired by Francis Bacon's 1944 painting Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion.[33] Giger's original design resembled a plucked chicken, which was redesigned and refined into the final version seen onscreen.[33] For the filming of the chestburster scene the cast members knew that the creature would be bursting out of Hurt, and had seen the chestburster puppet, but they had not been told that fake blood would also be bursting out in every direction from high-pressure pumps and squibs.[38][53] The scene was shot in one take using an artificial torso filled with blood and viscera, with Hurt's head and arms coming up from underneath the table. The chestburster was shoved up through the torso by a puppeteer who held it on a stick. When the creature burst through the chest a stream of blood shot directly at Veronica Cartwright, shocking her enough that she fell over and went into hysterics.[14][33][38] According to Tom Skerritt: "What you saw on camera was the real response. She had no idea what the hell happened. All of a sudden this thing just came up."[33] The creature then runs off-camera, an effect accomplished by cutting a slit in the table for the puppeteer's stick to go through and passing an air hose through the puppet's tail to make it whip about.[33]

The real-life surprise of the actors gave the scene an intense sense of realism and made it one of the film's most memorable moments. During preview screenings the crew noticed that some viewers would move towards the back of the theater so as not to be too close to the screen during the sequence.[54] In subsequent years the chestburster scene has often been voted as one of the most memorable moments in film.[55] In 2007 the British film magazine Empire named it as the greatest 18-rated moment in film as part of its "18th birthday" issue, ranking it above the decapitation scene in The Omen (1976) and the transformation sequence in An American Werewolf in London (1981).[56]

[edit] The Alien
For more details on the creature, see Alien (Alien franchise).

Bolaji Badejo in costume as the Alien. The suit was made of latex, with the head as a separate piece housing the moving parts which controlled the second mouth. Giger made several conceptual paintings of the adult Alien before crafting the final version. He sculpted the creature's body using plasticine, incorporating pieces such as vertebrae from snakes and cooling tubes from a Rolls-Royce.[33][34] The creature's head was manufactured separately by Carlo Rambaldi, who had worked on the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.[51] Rambaldi followed Giger's designs closely, making some modifications in order to incorporate the moving parts which would animate the jaw and inner mouth.[33] A system of hinges and cables was used to operate the creature's rigid tongue, which protruded from the main mouth and had a second mouth at the tip of it with its own set of movable teeth.[33] The final head had about nine hundred moving parts and points of articulation.[33] Part of a human skull was used as the "face", and was hidden under the smooth, translucent cover of the head.[34] Rambaldi's original Alien jaw is now on display in the Smithsonian Institution,[48] while in April 2007 the original Alien suit was sold at auction.[57] Copious amounts of K-Y Jelly were used to simulate saliva and to give the Alien an overall slimy appearance.[33][43] The creature's vocalizations were provided by Percy Edwards, a voice artist famous for providing bird sounds for British television throughout the 1960s and 1970s as well as the whale sounds for Orca: Killer Whale (1977).[58][59]

For most of the film's scenes the Alien was portrayed by Bolaji Badejo, a Nigerian design student. A latex costume was specifically made to fit Badejo's 7-foot-2-inch (218 cm) slender frame, made by taking a full-body plaster cast of him.[14][33] Scott later commented that "It's a man in a suit, but then it would be, wouldn't it? It takes on elements of the host – in this case, a man."[25] Badejo attended tai chi and mime classes in order to create convincing movements for the Alien.[33][34] For some scenes, such as when the Alien lowers itself from the ceiling to kill Brett, the creature was portrayed by stuntmen Eddie Powell and Roy Scammell;[14][35] in that scene a costumed Powell was suspended on wires and then lowered in an unfurling motion.[33][47]

Veronica Cartwright as Lambert, the Nostromo's navigator. Cartwright had previous experience in horror and science fiction films, having acted in The Birds (1963) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).[36] She originally read for the role of Ripley, and was not informed that she had instead been cast as Lambert until she arrived in London for wardrobe.[29][37] She disliked the character's emotional weakness,[34] but nevertheless accepted the role: "They convinced me that I was the audience's fears; I was a reflection of what the audience is feeling."[29] Cartwright won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.[5][6]
Ian Holm as Ash, the ship's Science Officer who is revealed to be an android under orders to bring the Alien back to the Nostromo's corporate employers. Holm, a character actor who in 1979 had already been in twenty films, was the most experienced actor cast for Alien.[21]
John Hurt as Kane, the Executive Officer who becomes the host for the Alien. Hurt was Scott's first choice for the role but was contracted on a film in South Africa during Alien's filming dates, so Jon Finch was cast as Kane instead.[34] However, Finch became ill during the first day of shooting and was diagnosed with severe diabetes, which had also exacerbated a case of bronchitis.[38] By this point, Hurt was in London, his South African project having fallen through, and he quickly replaced Finch.[29][38] His performance earned him a nomination for a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.[6]
Yaphet Kotto as Parker, the Chief Engineer. Kotto was chosen partly to add diversity to the cast and give the Nostromo crew an international flavor.[29]
Tom Skerritt as Dallas, the Captain of the Nostromo. Skerritt had been approached early in the film's development but declined as it did not yet have a director and had a very low budget. Later, when Scott was attached as director and the budget had been doubled, Skerritt accepted the role of Dallas.[26][29]
Harry Dean Stanton as Brett, the Engineering Technician. Stanton's first words to Scott during his audition were "I don't like sci fi or monster movies."[26] Scott was amused and convinced Stanton to take the role after reassuring him that Alien would actually be a thriller more akin to Ten Little Indians.[26]
Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, the Warrant Officer onboard the Nostromo. The decision to make the lead character a woman was made by Giler and Hill, who felt that this would help Alien stand out in the otherwise male-dominated genre of science fiction.[29] Weaver, who had Broadway experience but was relatively unknown in film, impressed Scott, Giler, and Hill with her audition. She was the last actor to be cast for the film, and performed most of her screen tests in-studio as the sets were being built.[29][34] The role of Ripley was Weaver's first leading role in a motion picture, and earned her nominations for a Saturn Award for Best Actress and a BAFTA award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Role.[6]
To assist the actors in preparing for their roles, Ridley Scott wrote several pages of backstory for each character explaining their histories.[22][39] He filmed many of their rehearsals in order to capture spontaneity and improvisation, and tensions between some of the cast members, particularly towards the less-experienced Weaver, translated convincingly on film as tension between their respective characters.[39]

Film critic Roger Ebert has noted that the actors in Alien were older than was typical in thriller films at the time, and that this helped make the characters more convincing:

[N]one of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 29 and Weaver at 30 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, Alien achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth.[10]

David McIntee, author of Beautiful Monsters: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Alien and Predator Films, has praised the acting and characterizations in Alien. He notes that part of the film's effectiveness in frightening viewers "comes from the fact that the audience can all identify with the characters... Everyone aboard the Nostromo is a normal, everyday, working Joe just like the rest of us. They just happen to live and work in the future."[40]

[edit] Set design and filming
Alien was filmed over fourteen weeks from July 5 to October 21, 1978. Principal photography took place at Shepperton Studios in London, while model and miniature filming was done at Bray Studios in Water Oakley.[30] Production time was short due to the film's low budget and pressure from 20th Century Fox to finish on schedule.[39] A crew of over 200 workmen and technicians constructed the three principal sets: The surface of the alien planetoid and the interiors of the Nostromo and derelict spacecraft.[14] Art Director Les Dilley created 1/24th scale miniatures of the planetoid's surface and derelict spacecraft based on Giger's designs, then made moulds and casts and scaled them up as diagrams for the wood and fiberglass forms of the sets.[26] Tons of sand, plaster, fiberglass, rock, and gravel were shipped into the studio to sculpt a desert landscape for the planetoid's surface, which the actors would walk across wearing space suit costumes.[14] The suits themselves were thick, bulky, and lined with nylon, had no cooling systems and, initially, no venting for their exhaled carbon dioxide to escape.[41] Combined with a heat wave, these conditions nearly caused the actors to pass out and nurses had to be kept on-hand with oxygen tanks to help keep them going.[39][41] For scenes showing the exterior of the Nostromo a 58-foot (18 m) landing leg was constructed to give a sense of the ship's size. Ridley Scott still did not think that it looked large enough, so he had his two sons and the son of one of the cameramen stand in for the regular actors, wearing smaller space suits in order to make the set pieces seem larger.[41][42] The same technique was used for the scene in which the crew members encounter the dead alien creature in the derelict spacecraft. The children nearly collapsed due to the heat of the suits, and eventually oxygen systems were added to assist the actors in breathing.[39][41]

The sets of the Nostromo's three decks were each created almost entirely in one piece, with each deck occupying a separate stage and the various rooms connected via corridors. To move around the sets the actors had to navigate through the hallways of the ship, adding to the film's sense of claustrophobia and realism.[14][39][43] The sets used large transistors and low-resolution computer screens to give the ship a "used", industrial look and make it appear as though it was constructed of "retrofitted old technology".[42] Ron Cobb created industrial-style symbols and color-coded signs for various areas and aspects of the ship.[42] The company that owns the Nostromo is not named in the film, and is referred to by the characters as "the company". However, the name and logo of "Weylan-Yutani" appears on several set pieces and props such as computer monitors and beer cans.[28] Cobb created the name to imply a business alliance between Britain and Japan, deriving "Weylan" from the British Leyland Motor Corporation and "Yutani" from the name of his Japanese neighbor.[27][44] The 1986 sequel Aliens named the company as "Weyland-Yutani",[27][45] and it has remained a central aspect of the film franchise.

Art Director Roger Christian used scrap metal and parts to create set pieces and props in order to save money, a technique he had used while working on Star Wars.[42][46] Some of the Nostromo's corridors were created from portions of scrapped bomber aircraft, and a mirror was used to create the illusion of longer corridors in the below-deck area.[42] Special effects supervisors Brian Johnson and Nick Allder made many of the set pieces and props actually function, including moving chairs, computer monitors, motion trackers, and flamethrowers.[14][38] Four matching cats were used to portray Jones, the Nostromo crew's pet.[30] During filming Sigourney Weaver discovered that she was allergic to the combination of cat hair and the glycerin placed on the actors' skin to make them appear sweaty. By removing the glycerin she was able to continue working with the cats.[38][39]

Direction and design

H. R. Giger designed and worked on the Alien and its accompanying elements.O'Bannon had originally assumed that he would direct Alien, but 20th Century Fox instead asked Hill to direct.[22][23] Hill declined due to other film commitments as well as not being comfortable with the level of visual effects that would be required.[24] Peter Yates, Jack Clayton, and Robert Aldrich were considered for the task, but O'Bannon, Shusett, and the Brandywine team felt that these directors would not take the film seriously and would instead treat it as a B monster movie.[23][25] Giler, Hill, and Carroll had been impressed by Ridley Scott's debut feature film The Duellists (1977) and made an offer to him to direct Alien, which Scott quickly accepted.[14][25] Scott created detailed storyboards for the film in London, which impressed 20th Century Fox enough to double the film's budget from $4.2 million to $8.4 million.[23][26] His storyboards included designs for the spaceship and space suits, drawing influences from films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars.[26] However, he was keen on emphasizing horror in Alien rather than fantasy, describing the film as "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre of science fiction".[23][25]

O'Bannon introduced Scott to the artwork of H. R. Giger; both of them felt that his painting Necronom IV was the type of representation they wanted for the film's antagonist and began asking the studio to hire him as a designer.[23][25] 20th Century Fox initially believed Giger's work was too ghastly for audiences, but the Brandywine team were persistent and eventually won out.[25] According to Gordon Carroll: "The first second that Ridley saw Giger's work, he knew that the biggest single design problem, maybe the biggest problem in the film, had been solved."[23] Scott flew to Zürich to meet Giger and recruited him to work on all aspects of the Alien and its environment including the surface of the planetoid, the derelict spacecraft, and all four forms of the Alien from the egg to the adult.[23][25]

I resent films that are so shallow they rely entirely on their visual effects, and of course science fiction films are notorious for this. I've always felt that there's another way to do it: a lot of effort should be expended toward rendering the environment of the spaceship, or space travel, whatever the fantastic setting of your story should be–as convincingly as possible, but always in the background. That way the story and the characters emerge and they become more real.[14]

–Ron Cobb on his designs for Alien.O'Bannon brought in artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss (with whom he had worked on Dark Star and Dune, respectively) to work on designs for the human aspects of the film such as the spaceship and space suits.[23][27] Cobb created hundreds of preliminary sketches of the interiors and exteriors of the ship, which went through many design concepts and possible names such as Leviathan and Snark as the script continued to develop. The final name of the ship was derived from the title of Joseph Conrad's 1904 novel Nostromo, while the escape shuttle, called Narcissus in the script, was named after Conrad's 1897 novella The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'.[28] The production team particularly praised Cobb's ability to depict the interior settings of the ship in a realistic and believable manner. Under Ridley Scott's direction the design of the Nostromo shifted towards an 800-foot (240 m)-long tug towing a refining platform 2 miles (3.2 km) long and 1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide.[14] Cobb also created some conceptual drawings of the Alien, but these were not used.[23][27] Moebius was attached to the project for a few days as well, and his costume renderings served as the basis for the final space suits created by costume designer John Mollo.[14][27]

[edit] Casting
For more details on individual characters, see List of characters in the Alien series.
Casting calls and auditions for Alien were held in both New York and London.[26] With only seven human characters in the story, Scott sought to hire strong actors so that he could focus most of his energy on the film's visual style.[26] He employed casting director Mary Selway, who had worked with him on The Duellists, to head the casting in the United Kingdom, while Mary Goldberg handled casting in the United States.[29][30] In developing the story O'Bannon had focused on writing the Alien first, putting off developing the characters for a later draft.[23] He and Shusett had therefore written all of the roles as generic males with a note in the script explicitly stating that "The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women."[29][31] This left Scott, Selway, and Goldberg free to interpret the characters as they liked and to cast accordingly. They wanted the Nostromo's crew to resemble working astronauts in a realistic environment, a concept summed up as "truckers in space".[26][29] Scott has stated that this concept was inspired partly by Star Wars, which deviated from the pristine future often depicted in science fiction films of the time.[32]


The principal cast members of Alien. Left to right: Holm, Stanton, Weaver, Kotto, Skerritt, Cartwright, and Hurt.The principal cast members of Alien were:

Bolaji Badejo as The Alien. A Nigerian design student, Badejo was discovered in a bar by a member of the casting team, who put him in touch with Ridley Scott.[33][34] Scott believed that Badejo, at 7 feet 2 inches (218 cm) and with a slender frame, could portray the Alien and look as if his arms and legs were too long to be real, creating the illusion that there could not possibly be a human being inside the costume.[14][33][34] Stuntmen Eddie Powell and Roy Scammell also portrayed the Alien in some scenes.[14][35]