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In the summer of 1978, four massive sound stages at the Shepperton Studio's in England, were under tight security. An ominous looking sign outside each studio read the words, "Strictly NO Access. Authorised Personnel only". For the lucky few that got to glimpse inside, they would bare witness to one of three strange but very futuristic worlds. Firstly a barren wasteland of a desolate planetoid. The second the interior of a spacecraft called the 'Nostromo' and the third and by far the most striking, a dark and very alien interior to what can only be described as a craft of some sort....
It was in 1975 that a young writer named Dan O'Bannon, working in France on adapting the Frank Herbert novel 'Dune', first met with several fantasy artists. One of these men was called Hans Rudi Giger. Dan was amazed by just how strange and unique Giger's work was "Unfortunately the 'Dune' project fell on very bad times and I ended up in Los Angeles with out two pennies to rub together, living on a friends sofa".
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A conceptual drawing showing
the working's of the face-hugger.
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Bed and board were supplied my Ron Shusett, a screenwriter who had been a close friend of O'Bannon's for several years. After a few depressing weeks the two of them started to go through some old scripts and concepts that O'Bannon had filed away over the years. They came across one entitled 'Memory' which was yet to be finished and that O'Bannon had always struggled to think of a expectable conclusion. Shusett remembered that some months previously O'Bannon had pitched an idea about a B-17 bomber during WWII being riddled with little gremlin creatures that cause havoc for the crew. If that were thrown into the story and set in space it might make for a good idea.
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Over the months O'Bannon developed a story with the working title of 'Star Beast'. As Dan slaved away late into one particular night he remembered having a revelation, "I was writing dialogue for one of the stories characters when they say 'what are we going to do about the Alien?' The word came out of the page at me, Alien. I ran into Ron's bedroom and shook him awake to tell him and he said, 'Yeah O.K' and went back to sleep. I knew I had found a really hot title.
Illustrator Ron Cobb was asked by O'Bannon to do some preliminary sketches to help visualise the futuristic environment's and crafts. O'Bannon took these along with the completed script to several major studios to see what reaction they would get. "People started hurling deals at us. The reaction was incomprehensible, but so many things had fallen through in the past that we remained very sceptical" said O'Bannon. It was a production company called Brandywine that turned in the most sincere offer. The contract was drawn up, signed and the project was set underway. Brandywine made a production agreement with Twentieth Century Fox and the budget was set for $8 million.
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The Alien body suit in
all it's glory.
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A early Cobb illustration of what the sleeping quarters might
have looked like.
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Brandywine Producer David Giler and Walter Hill reworked the script, adding an android crewmember and dropping an Alien subplot. Due to previous commitments Hill had to step down as the films Director, this opened the position to a man named Ridley Scott. Scott had only one previous film under his directing belt but was very well thought of in England, as a top commercial's Director. Cobb continued to develop the illustrations for the film and was now assisted by Chris Foss who concentrated their efforts on the design for the 'Nostromo' and it's lifeboat, the 'Narcissus'.
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Still no decision had been made to exactly what the Alien creature would look like, with many early concepts being thrown out as implausible. O'Bannon could still remember the Swiss artist he had met in France and how fantastic his work looked. He paid Ridley Scott a visit armed with a book of H.R Giger's work, "I looked down and saw this stunning picture" recalls Scott, "I have never been so sure of anything in my life". What Scott saw was a picture from Giger's 'Necronomicon' collection, a picture that can best be described as the Alien's second cousin. This, the two men recall, was the starting point in the development of the creature.
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Giger's original remit was the design of a three-phase Alien. The first phase being the Face Hugger, the second the Chest-Burster and the final phase being the fully matured beast. By the end of the project Giger had also designed the Surface of the planetoid, the exterior and interior of the crashed, derelict space craft and it's long dead pilot the space jockey. Originally the Face Hugger was designed to be a lot large in scale but Scott demanded that the creature be smaller and more dextrous. "I was thinking that something that jumps out and holds onto someone's face needs to have fingers", describes Gigier, "Normally if someone sits on your face and you can't breath through your nose you open your mouth.
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The Alien space craft
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Then the monster goes down". Giger sculptured the Face Hugger and larger Alien himself, leaving a team of technicians to work on the complex Chest-Bursting mechanism. Giger started with a plaster cast taken from seven foot two inch tale Bolaji Badejo. Badejo, who was an African Masai member, was cast in the role of the big Alien whilst over in England studying graphic design. Giger then worked in layers with material like plasticine, rubber, bone, tubing and wires to build up the suit that would be worn in shooting. When Giger's first shipment of sculpturing material arrived at his studio, it contained several human skulls, three complete snake skeletons and a rhinoceros skull. God only knows what finally went into the suit that you see in the final movie.
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The Nostromo in flight.
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Les Dilley and Roger Christian had the unenviable task of translating Giger's drawings into pliable, working sets. First they started with the planetoid sketches. Using clay models, they cast and moulded a miniature version, then using this base, multiplied everything by twenty-four and ended up with a larger scale model. The exterior and interior of the stricken alien spacecraft was an entirely different experience. Dilley did working drawings for the exterior piece to be built, sixty foot long by thirty-five feet high and assembled curve-on-curve using huge wooden frames cast in plaster. The interior was even larger, a curved bowl section forty feet high and seventy feet wide made largely from plaster and fibre glass. This piece of set was actually used twice in the film, once in the space jockey section and again in the egg chamber scene.
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The special effects team headed by Brian Johnson and Nick Allder spent thousands of man-hours creating special flooring effects and miniature spacecraft. Working from the designs that Cobb and Foss had fashioned, the models began to take shape. Once the basic design had been made from wood and plastic the team would start to add detail by using several methods. One method involved going to the local model shop and purchasing a whole boot full of model battleships, planes and tanks and using certain pre-formed parts to add to the overall effect of the ship. This would save time and would go undetected at the scale to which they were working. Three Nostromos were created for shooting, the first a twelve inch version, the second a larger forty eight inch version and the third a seven ton rig used for several scenes on the surface of the planetoid.
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Alien was released in the US on 25th May 1979. It grossed over $60 million and in 1980 won a raft of awards including an Oscar for Best Effects /Visual Effects, a BAFTA for Best Production Design and Best Sound Track, a HUGO award for Best Dramatic Presentation and a Silver Seashell for Best Cinematography and Special Effects.
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A typically terrifying
moment from the film.
Some interesting trivia about Alien: -
An early draft of the script had a male Ripley.
Veronica Cartwright was originally to play Ripley, but producers opted for Sigourney Weaver.
In the scene where Dallas, Kane and Lambert are leaving the ship, the actual actors walking past the Nostromo's landing struts are 3 children (two of whom were Scott's children dressed in scaled down spacesuits. This has the effect of making the ship look bigger.
A sex scene between Dallas and Ripley was in the script, but was not filmed.
Scott is reportedly quoted as saying that originally he wanted a much darker ending. He planned on having the alien bite off Ripley's head in the escape shuttle, sit in her chair, and then start speaking with her voice in a message to Earth. Apparently, 20th Century Fox wasn't too pleased with such a dark ending.
The vector graphics that appear on Ripley's screen showing the undocking sequence for the Nostromo was also used for the aircar launch sequence in Blade Runner (1982).
The rumour that the cast, except for John Hurt, did not know what would happen during the "chestburster" scene is partly true. The scene had been explained for them, but they did not know specifics. For example, Veronica Cartwright did not expect to be sprayed with blood.
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