Monday, October 11, 2004
Constantine Sekeris' sketches for Alien facehuggers
Posted on 7:35 AM by thoms
a) Here is a sketch and rough sketch for a proposed facehugger. Each measures 17 x 14 inch. These original pencil designs were by Constantine Sekeris, for Steve Johnson's Edge FX bid to do the creature suits for AVP.
b) Many FX companies presented design concepts for AVP before ADI were hired. Edge FX produced these concepts for the face huggers , created by Constantine Sekeris. The original sketch was scanned and coloured digitially so physical images of this art only exist as printouts. Measures 13 x 19 inch.
Constantine Sekeris' sketches for Alien warriors
Posted on 7:34 AM by thoms
a. This original pencil design was also by Constantine Sekeris for Steve Johnson's Edge FX bid to do the creature suits for AVP. This is another sketch for a proposed Alien Warrior. , measures 17 x 14 inch.
The first sketch here shows a fairly abstract variant on the idea of an alien warrior creature, with this entity's head ending as a sharp point it has no tail but has two long tentacles sprout from his back, the tentacle on the right displays finger like appendages extending from the tip.
AVP concept sketch |
b. For these, pictures by Constantine Sekeris. original sketches was scanned and coloured digitially so physical images of this art only exist as printouts. Measure 13 x 19 inch. The creature in the first completed sketch has strangely elongated middle digits that seem to recall the over sized fingers of the alien warriors in Alien Vs Predator
initial sketch of alien warrior (shared at http://www.therpf.com/) |
completed illustration of alien warrior |
AVP Alien Warrior detail |
AVP Alien warrior concept |
AVP Alien Warrior detail |
Wednesday, October 6, 2004
Constantine Sekeris sketches for an Alien Queen
Posted on 6:35 AM by thoms
Leading from
a) These original pencil designs were done by Constantine Sekeris, for Steve Johnson's Edge FX bid to do the creature suits for AVP, however they lost out and ADI continued to do the creature designs for this part of the Alien franchise. Sketches for a proposed Alien Queen, the first with two extra legs protruding from her shoulders , the second, third and fourth with four legs, the fifth with three legs and the last is an earlier rough sketch which shows the more classic Aliens design. each measures 17 x 14 inch. Source yourprops.com and Steve Johnson FX on Facebook.
b) A thing to note about Constantine's work, he has a penchant for creating monsters with long limbs that end with dagger like tips so entities with these sorts of appendages are likely to turn up in numerous drawings by this artist
Alien Queen with two extra legs protruding from her shoulders |
Alien Queen with thee legs |
Alien Queen with four legs |
Alien Queen with four legs |
Alien Queen with two legs |
Alien Queen with four legs |
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Exorcist: The Beginning / Dominion
Posted on 4:26 AM by thoms
leading from
a) Two Prequels of the Exorcist
As a prequel to The Exorcist, Paul Schrader made the movie Dominion and the studio bosses were not happy with it so they fired him before his film could be finished and Renny Harlin was brought in to make his own version of a prequel called Exorcist: The Beginning, which was a very curious thing to happen in cinema history, and maybe a first, and then it might make one wonder how many other times this had been done, but to add to the oddity of this event, Paul Schrader was eventually allowed to release a near enough finished version of his film. Renny Harlin's movie was released in the cinema in 2005 and Paul Schrader's movie was shown in a limited release the following year, namely at film festivals and then released on DVD by the end of the year. To watch them both, after a while one may become confused about which film is which since they both share the lead actor Stellen Skarsgård as well as a few others cast members and take place in the same environment with the same sets.
The formerly buried Byzantine Church as seen in Paul Schrader's Dominion |
the idol in the cave as seen Paul Schrader's Dominion |
blown up image of the idol |
b) Drawing Parallels with the Alien mysteries
When the films were both released on DVD, I immediately watched them and noticed that both films featured interesting imagery in the form of a 1500 year old Byzantine church built in the middle of nowhere built to cover over a place of sacrficial worship around a large idol. In Renny's Exorcist: The Beginning it was a definite representation of Pazuzu as seen in The Exoricist, but in Schrader's Dominion a slightly more abstract devil figure and the place of worship complete with sacrificial blood drains. So this reminded me of the relationship between the odd derelict and the silo beneath from Alien, the silo was originally suppose to be a birth temple with sacrificial plinth complete with blood drains. Also in Renny Harlin's movie, in their original exploration they enter through a hole in the roof and then lower themselves down with a rope since at the time the front entrance has been buried and it is only much later that they discover the cave beneath which contains the temple with the idol. It naturally seemed to have something in common with the the exploration of the alien pyramid discovered on the planetoid in the original Alien script by Dan O'Bannon.
Once we got to the point where Prometheus is released, we find a story about archeologists and a strange temple with strange murals, curious idols such as one almost in a crucified pose with perhaps the vague impressions of four wings trailing behind, the building is built in a desolate landscape that also leads into strange caves and tunnels and also houses something rather old and dangerous that transformed people into something rather hostile.
While the original Alien movie was made in the aftermath of the Exorcist and perhaps the Alien creature slight echoes the form of Pazuzu, Prometheus may well be redress the set of where the Exorcist prequels had gone before.
See also Pazuzu
and Dan, Summoner of the demon
Stellen Skarsgård as Father Merrin standing before The Pazuzu from Exorcist The Beginning |
The Pazuzu from Exorcist The Beginning |
strange demon like relief on the wall on the set of the movie Prometheus |
c) Niche within the idol
In Renny Harlin's version, this idol also featured a small niche abstractly cut away into its chest for holding the head of a smaller version of this idol. The place was built perhaps to purify the sight and imprison the evil spirit. In a sketch for the huge idol in the form of the head of an engineer in Prometheus, Ridley had a thought about having a niche within the cheek in which an ampule would be placed. Of course it doesn't take a giant leap of the imagination to want to explore the concept but still it's a peculiar parallel to see
small niche for head of a small Pazuzu idol that had been removed and is later lost in the sand |
Ridley Scott's exploratory sketch for the idea of an ampule niche cut away into the side of the head |
d) Children of Quatermass And The Pit
Another thing that stood out from the movie was it's similarities to Quatermass And The Pit with its unearthing of a buried sight housing an ancient devil and its release drives the people around in a warring murderous state. Although one is on Earth and the other on another planet somewhere across the stars, and they both take inspiration in different ways from Nigel Kneale's Quatermass And The Pit made into a brilliant TV series and a film. Ridley had spoken about his interests in Quatermass And The Pit in the Prometheus director's commentary.
A young boy and Father Merrin walking through the tunnels beneath the Byzantine church |
Wednesday, September 1, 2004
Tatopoulos' concept work for Alien Vs Predator
Posted on 11:53 AM by thoms
Monday, April 26, 2004
AVP: Peter Briggs vs Paul Anderson
Posted on 6:58 AM by thoms
leading from
a) Peter Brigg was working in film companies as a runner and worked his way up becoming a cameraman, and got his union card. However towards the end of the 1980s the British film studios were closing down and it was very tough to get a job. As a cameraman there are 3000 people all vying for one job and he thought to himself, "this is ridiculous"
Peter had been writing scripts for years and he thought to himself "Let's see if I can get some representation, get my career back on track." So he sent them off to various agencies, and so William Morros and ICM both offered to represent him the same day. Those scripts consisted of a few things such as a comedy, an adaptation, and a couple of original dramas, and looking back on them he was not very impressed with the work he had done on them. He wondered "Jesus Christ, why did anybody hire on on the say-so of this?" but still someone must have seen something in them.
Initially he went with ICM, they represented him for a year but they really didn't help him very much at all. Then he spent a year with Paramount UK helping to develop science fiction projects. The ideas was that he'd develop a bunch of them and then he'd go away and write one and they would make it. However he noticed that they didn't know what they were doing or how to develop the rich vein of genre material. He tried to introduce them to William Gibson cyberpunk but they wanted all these old science fiction projects that were prematurely old. It got to a point where he mentioned that they should get Starships Troopers and that responded "No, nobody wants to see any old Heinlein crap"
He responded" Look, it's a fucking classic! Somebody is going to do this" and then the following week, it was bought up by Tristar for Paul Verhoeven. So it got to that point where he thought to get further on his track "Right, I've got to write myself a decent enough sample to get a re-write or something with Joel Silver, to this this into high gear"
b) He looked around and the very first Alien Vs Predator comic was just about to come out and he thought "That's it" And so he wrote his Alien vs Predator script on an Amstrad computer in a six week period in 1991, to basically get out of a development grind at Paramount UK, in a desperate hope that I could use it as a sample to land a rewrite gig with someone like Joel Silver. He sold it over night to 20th Century Fox. He wrote it, finished it and it was possibly just as the last comic book in the series came out. He thought that the comic book was great and faultless, and it showed that Dark Horse put thought into it, He was a fan of Phil Norwood's art, who did the original artwork for the comic book.
The first version that he wrote as a writing sample would later leaked out. In 1992 he swapped his Amstrad computer for an Apple Mac and ended up loosing his Amstrad disk. Someone had transcribed his script and pirated on the internet years later and he was able to cut and paste this into Final draft and once more have an electronic copy again.. At the time Peter didn't expect it to be taken so serious but he wrote it quickly.
Peter took the bare frame of the story, eject everything from it that didn't work, and put in a whole lot more material. So he thought that there was probably about 70-75% of his own creativity in there. He handed it in to his agent who looked horrified, because he had no idea that Peter was writing it, and assumed rightly it'd be a tough sell. He said to Peter "Well, I've got to go across to LA next week," and so he he went and he took it to Larry Gordon who just so happened to have been asked the week before by Fox to come up with this. Perhaps there seemed something synchronous about this at the time
Joe Roth at Fox was the big champion of the script, he authorized the second draft, which was a tidy up and Peter was really happy with it. Some of the characters disappeared from it, a lot of the dialogue was re-worked, the beginning changed, some of the extra sequences would be different... There was about 70% of my first draft remaining in the second.
The huge stumbling block to the project all along was the producers. There was big resistance mostly from the ALIEN camp, particularly hr heard from David Giler, who he believed went down on print as saying something like, "I'm violently opposed to this, because it dilutes the whole ALIEN franchise." And this was just was Peter thought that ALIEN 3 did to the francise all by itself.
However Joe Roth left, he went off to Disney, someone new came in to fill his place, and the project floundered. There wasn't any one strong person who was going to fight for it, and there was in-fighting among the producers about who would get what percentage of the grosses... It was all muscle-flexing over who would get the credit, and the thing just went into limbo. Peter felt quite sure that if Joe Roth had stayed at Fox, that Alien Resurrection would not have gone ahead and his draft of Alien Vs Predator would have gone into Production although he realised that it would have cost a lot more to make that Paul Anderson's movie which turned out to be sixty million dollars and so Peter Briggs estimated the budget for his own script being somewhere between sixty to eighty million dollars.
c) At the time that Renny Harlin was still about to direct Alien 3, Peter Briggs with his friend the Finnish film journalist Juhani Nurmi concocted to get H R Giger on board as Juhani knew him quite well. (However their attempt to get him involved didn't leave him very happy in the end) Because of the connection with Giger, he was invited down to Pinewood in the summer of 1991 to meet Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff who showed him around their creature shop and told him all kinds of horror stories about the shoot. At the time he was still writing Alien Vs Predator and he told them about this and they look at him as this 25 year old young man that they'd never heard of and responded something to the effect of "well, we can't see how that could possibly work." (It would be 12 years later that Gillis and Woodruff would end up doing the effects for Paul Anderson's Alien vs Predator.)
d) Peter Briggs thought that for Alien Vs Predator movie's budget which he heard from various sources was lower than that which was bandied around, it was an amazing piece of art direction. He enjoyed the icebreaker miniatures. He thought that the aliens had never moved better and the animatronics were wonderful. He also thought that the alien queen was a fabulous piece of work. However he did wish that ADI wouldn't alter the sculpt of the regular Aliens. He briefly enjoyed the first fight between the Alien and the Predator in Anderson's movie, he enjoyed Henrikson's presence in. and found interesting the idea. But was he actually impressed with the Antarctic setting after they turned up in heatwave conditions in the movies.
He thought that there were some really interesting things in Anderson’s third act of ‘AvP’ that’s up there on the screen,and they looked suspiciously to hom like material in the third act of my first draft.
e) But was he actually impressed? He would not mention what he blurted out when he read the "Bullet-time Facehugger" shot in the script. He came out of the cinema afterwards feeling perhaps empty and depressed. He didn't like the inclusion of the "Alien Finger Blooding" scene from the comic book and there the woman is allowing the Predator to allow blood from the alien finger to mark the woman's forehead. Peter Briggs stayed away from this because it seemed ridiculous. He thought “you know, I’ve been championing this thing for 13 years…and what a sterile letdown. Why did I bother?” Perhaps the answer was to go off somewhere and get very drunk but he just went home to read a book instead
f) Paul Anderson had commented that when he read Peter Briggs' script, he thought that it was like a comic book, but Peter acknowledged that he had used a few elements from the Randy Stradley comic material, such as the captive queen, the hover bokes, and the main female character that he created as a jumping off point. Peter had always been impressed by Giger's original version which was for him the most realistic looking of the beasts to date. However he marveled at the hyper-elongated head of the Takayuki Takeya Japanese model kit of the Alien and this was the look that he would have wanted for his creatures if he had directed this thing. This was an extreme to which Peter would have gone.
g) Paul Anderson claimed that he had been many script drafts at the studio before he came onboard but as far as Peter Briggs remembered, there was his draft and there was the James DeMonaco and Kevin Fox draft and that was all the material that was presented at the WGA arbitration. Afterwards DeMonaco would go on to work on to adapt the Driver computer game for Paul Anderson.
Takayuki Takeya's Alien Pile sculpture by Sideshow Collectibles |
Sources Quotes
- Peter Briggs: I always knew I wanted to direct. It's a familiar story - everyone and their aunt wants to direct. So I figured, I'll go to film school and - bang! - be directing by 23 or 24. Didn't happen that way. I dropped out of college because I'd moved down to London to move in with a girl. I started working in film companies as a runner, worked my way up, became a cameraman, got my union card. Problem was, towards the end of the 1980s, all the studios were closing down over here and it was really tough. As a cameraman, there are 3000 guys behind your back vying for the job, and I just thought, "this is ridiculous."
Anyway. I'd been writing scripts for years and I thought, let's see if I can get some representation, get my career back on track. So I sent them off to various agencies, and William Morris and ICM both offered to represent me the same day. As for the scripts, there was a comedy, an adaptation, a couple of original drama things; not very many. And looking back on them, they were disastrous. I think, Jesus Christ, why did anybody want to hire me on the say-so of this? But, somebody must've seen something in them.
So I initially went with ICM - who after a year of representation managed to do bupkiss for me. But, during that time I spent a year with Paramount UK helping develop science-fiction projects. The idea was, I'd develop a bunch of them, and then I'd go away and write one and they'd make it. The problem was, they didn't actually know what they were doing, how to develop the rich vein of genre material. I was throwing them all this William Gibson cyberpunk bait, and they wanted all these creaking science fiction projects that were past their sell-by date the second they were born.
It sort of reached a head when I said we should get STARSHIP TROOPERS. And they said "No, nobody wants to see any of that old Heinlein crap." And I replied heatedly, "Look, it's a f***ing classic! Somebody is going to do this" - and the next week, it was bought up by Tristar for Paul Verhoeven.
That was it, that's when I thought, right, I've got to write myself a decent enough sample to get a re-write or something with Joel Silver, to kick this into high gear.
I looked around and the very first ALIEN VS PREDATOR comic was just about to come out, and I thought - "That's it". And I wrote it. I finished it, I think, just as the last comic came out. The comic's great, you can't fault it. Dark Horse, to their credit, thought about putting it together, and I'm a big fan of Phil Norwood's art, who did the original artwork - great guy, great storyboard artist, the guy's a hero in the field. (Peter Briggs Interview by Andy Diggle 13th August 1996 http://www.alienscollection.com/andydiggle.html) - Mr. D: What is your relationship with ‘Alien vs Predator’ for anyone who doesn’t know?
Peter Briggs: Okay. As you’re twisting my arm, let’s pull the corpse out of hypersleep and whack it over the head again…! Well, I wrote that first draft in a 6 week period in 1991, basically to get out of a development grind at Paramount UK that was driving me nuts, in the desperate hope that I could use it as a sample to land a rewrite gig with someone like Joel Silver. Weirdly, I sold it overnight instead to 20th Century Fox, and it set the project along its tortured path. If Joe Roth had stayed at Fox, we could have been spared “Alien Resurrection”, and my draft might have happened. Though it would have cost a whole helluva lot more to make than Paul Anderson’s….er, tale. Probably a 100 mill. At least 60-80. (bloody-disgusting.com/ August 29th 2004) - Peter Briggs: Here’s a fun anecdote: I wrote “A vs P” originally – oh, God…did you hear that? I actually said “A vs P”. I hate that thing…it’s like “T2″ or “LXG”! Anyway, I wrote it on an Amstrad computer, which was about one step above a Univac Room Filler. In ’92 I swapped to an Apple Mac, which I’ve used ever since. And I ended up losing the Amstrad disk, which was some weird, unreadable proprietary brand anyway. It wasn’t until whoever it was transcribed it and pirated it onto the web years later, that I was able to cut-and-paste it into Final Draft and have an electronic copy again. So, thank-you, Internet Leaker, wherever you were! (bloody-disgusting.com/ August 29th 2004)
- Peter Briggs: I have to say that for the budget of “A vs P”, which I’ve actually heard from a couple of sources is lower than what’s been bandied around, it’s a very fine looking piece of art-direction by those guys. Really decent sets. The icebreaker miniatures were nicely done. The Aliens have never moved better, as well — just wonderful animatronics. That Queen was a fabulous piece of work. I do wish that A.D.I. wouldn’t alter the sculpt of the regular Aliens, though. Giger’s original version? Still the most “realistic” looking of the beasts, to date. Have you ever seen that Takayuki Takeya Japanese model kit of the Alien, with the hyper-elongated head? Man, that thing is so cool. That’s what my creatures would have looked like if I had directed this thing. I’d have gone to extremes. (bloody-disgusting.com/ August 29th 2004)
- Peter Briggs: There was a moment, during that first fight with the Alien and the Predator, where I did get goosebumps and a 13-year flashback. But it was fleeting. And it’s always good to see Henrikson. But I don’t know about “impressed”? Can I plead the Fifth? When I first read the thing was set in Antarctica, after diligently setting the ground rules for the Predators turning up in heatwave conditions in the first two movies…and I won’t mention what I blurted out loud when I read that misjudged “Bullet-time Facehugger” shot in the script. (bloody-disgusting.com/ August 29th 2004)
- Mr. D: But, “A vs P”?
Peter Briggs: I came out of the cinema (from “A vs P”) afterwards, and I felt… I don’t know. Empty. Depressed, actually. I thought: “you know, I’ve been championing this thing for 13 years…and what a sterile letdown. Why did I bother?” It was interesting. I thought about going off and getting very drunk, but just went home and read a book instead. There are some really interesting things in Anderson’s third act of ‘AvP’ that’s up there on the screen, that look suspiciously like stuff in the third act of my first draft, don’t you think? (bloody-disgusting.com/ August 29th 2004) - Mr. D: In an interview in Fangoria magazine, Anderson says he’d read your version, and that it was more like the comic book. Would you comment on that?
Peter Briggs: Well, inasmuch as I used a few elements from the Randy Stradley comic material — the captive queen, the hoverbikes, and the main female character he created, as a jumping-off point…but my “A vs P” wasn’t an adaptation of the comic book. If you put the two side by side, they were disparately different stories. I mean, look at Anderson’s draft. He’s gone back into the comic-books and quite calculatedly pinched the Predator “Alien Finger Blooding”, for example, from there, which I deliberately didn’t use. Would YOU let someone come near you with something hissing with Alien blood? I sure as hell wouldn’t!
You know, I did read that Fangoria piece. Anderson made a couple of nutty comments in there: that there’d been many drafts at the studio before he came onboard? Uh…no. There was me, and then there was the DeMonaco & Fox draft. And that was it. All this material was presented to the WGA arbitration, so I can tell you that for a fact. I find it a bit curious that after all this, DeMonaco’s now doing an adaptation of the “Driver” videogame for Paul Anderson, though…
(bloody-disgusting.com/ August 29th 2004) - Mr. D: In an interview in Fangoria magazine, Anderson says he’d read your version, and that it was more like the comic book. Would you comment on that?
Peter Briggs: Well, in as much as I used a few elements from the Randy Stradley comic material — the captive queen, the hoverbikes, and the main female character he created, as a jumping-off point…but my “A vs P” wasn’t an adaptation of the comic book. If you put the two side by side, they were disparately different stories. I mean, look at Anderson’s draft. He’s gone back into the comic-books and quite calculatedly pinched the Predator “Alien Finger Blooding”, for example, from there, which I deliberately didn’t use. Would YOU let someone come near you with something hissing with Alien blood? I sure as hell wouldn’t!
You know, I did read that Fangoria piece. Anderson made a couple of nutty comments in there: that there’d been many drafts at the studio before he came onboard? Uh…no. There was me, and then there was the DeMonaco & Fox draft. And that was it. All this material was presented to the WGA arbitration, so I can tell you that for a fact. I find it a bit curious that after all this, DeMonaco’s now doing an adaptation of the “Driver” videogame for Paul Anderson, though…
(bloody-disgusting.com/ August 29th 2004) - IGN: What do you feel has been your most important professional accomplishment to date? Peter Briggs: Depending on the way you interpret that question, there are a couple. Finally learning to keep my mouth shut would be one. I'm brutally honest, which gets me into trouble, especially working in a business where nepotism is endemic, and idiocy prevails. My dad used to tell me that as a kid, my favorite phrase was: "but, why?" I'm a hothead, which people often misinterpret as arrogance. But I'm trying to get better.
In terms of what I've written, "accomplishment" would be deciding initially to write Alien vs. Predator on spec, despite various people telling me it'd be a pointless exercise. It got me noticed, and I couldn't ask more than that. Although given its ultimate fate... (http://uk.ign.com, 6th December 2004) - IGN: Which project do you feel didn't live up to what you envisioned?
Peter Briggs: All of them, which is primarily the reason I'm striving hard to direct my next project. It's demoralizing seeing your work get strained through the filter of moronic executives, and directors that oughtn't ever be attached. The one that really makes me want to screech like Godzilla and stomp buildings to rubble, is Alien vs. Predator. I don't even want to start on that... (http://uk.ign.com, 6th December 2004)
Tuesday, March 9, 2004
Aliens In A Puzzle Box Pyramid
Posted on 2:09 PM by thoms
a scene from Cube |
a. Magazines published statements that Vincenzo Natali was being offered Alien 5. However Vincenzo Natali was famous for directing a movie called Cube which is about a group of people who are trapped inside a giant deadly puzzle box with chambers that move around almost like a Rubik's cube. If we go along with the idea that the director brings something from their own creative past into the movie story to leave their mark, the thing that I would jokingly think would be that the characters of the film visiting the alien derelict, become trapped inside and then it's interior turns into a puzzle box and here they encounter the aliens and must escape from them. It sounds like a ridiculous idea but soon Aliens Vs Predator was soon made by Paul WS Anderson and it showed that someone else out there was having such an idea.
- Vincenzo Natali is now rumoured to have been offered / asked about taking the directors chair for Alien 5, according to the Spanish press. He directed the acclaimed 'Cube' and also 'Elevated.' (http://www.planetavp.com/amr/html/films/alien5.html, November 12, 1998, (original source still to be found))
Vincenzo Natali |
In the background, a block that makes up the pyramid interior begins to move |
Charles Weyland becomes trapped by doors within doors shifting and locking together to shut him in |
b1. "Vincenzo Natali will direct NECROPOLIS, written by Paul W.S. Anderson (RESIDENT EVIL), for Dimension Films and Impact Pictures." ( Elston Gunn's WEEKLY RECAP, TAKEN FROM VARIETY AND HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, http://www.aintitcool.com/node/16047, Sep 10, 2003 2:07:40 PM CDT )
c. However when interviewed and while doing the commentary for AVP, the actor Lance Henriksen who played Charles Bishop Weyland, compared the pyramid to a rubik's cube when it changed shape inside.
- Lance Henriksen: "Now this is like being in a rubik's cube, now it really was the way you set this up, it is really like er... there is no escaping." (Alien Vs Predator commentary, 45mins in)
- L'Ecran Fantastique: "Dans le film, Bishop et les autres personnages sont emprisonnés dans une pyramide sou l'Antarctique..."
Lance Henriksen: "L'ambiance dans ce film est en partie agencee pour qu'il soit assez angoissant. Cela est notamment dû à la claustraphobie engendrée par cette pyramide qui change de forme, tel un Rubik's cube" (L'Ecran Fantastique Hors -Serie No 7 Automne 2004, p40)
Google Translation:
- L'Ecran Fantastique: "In the film, Bishop and the other characters are often trapped in a pyramid in Antarctica ..."
Lance Henriksen:"The atmosphere in this film is arranged so that part is pretty scary. This is partly due to the claustraphobie generated by this pyramid which is changing shape, like a Rubik's cube"
a Rubik's cube |
d. The pyramid idea was inspired by the pyramid encountered on the alien planetoid in the original Alien script by Dan O'Bannon which housed the alien spores, and Paul Anderson talked openly about this.
- See also: 6. The Pyramid from Borrowed from the Alien saga for further information about what Paul Anderson said
The Underground Pyramid in AvP |
Title Sequence
Posted on 1:17 PM by thoms
leading from
- This logo and this title that we did as a kind of homage to Alien and Predator, the AVP was patent after Ridley Scott's designs for the way he spelt out Alien in the first movie. (DVD commentary)
Silhouette of the Alien Queen
Posted on 1:07 PM by thoms
leading from:
The satellite that resembles the Alien Queen's head |
i) Paul Anderson, Lance Henriksen and Paul Anderson discuss the alien queen / satellite double image
Lance Henriksen: This was great
Sanaa Lathan: This looks like it's in the ocean
Lance Henriksen: I, I, I thought I didn't know what I was seeing
Sanaa Lathan: I know
Lance Henriksen:And it becomes the satellite
The Alien Queen |
Paul Anderson: Yuh,
Lance Henriksen: It's just great
Sanaa Lathan: It looks like some kind of big creature
Lance Henriksen: yes it does, like the queen
Sanaa Lathan: Like some kind of space ship
Lance Henriksen: right
Paul Anderson: It's supposed to be the alien queen and we built a, we built a satellite that when you look at it at a certain angle, it...it looks like the queen.
Lance Henriksen: wow
Paul Anderson: and then actually, we morphed bits of the CG queen onto it to kind of like enhance the shape. (Aliens vs Predator DVD commentary)
ii)
John Bruno (special effects): I'm going to talk about this opening shot here. We wanted to relate back to Aliens when the queen goes flying out the dock of the ship out into space. we wanted to sort of reiterate that in the opening where you think you're seeing the queen in space, but what we're seeing is a six foot miniature satellite with some animation moves in it which were added over the top. This starts out , you think it's a queen.
Tom Woodruff(?) : Now that's a different model from what you're about to reveal
John Bruno: No, it's the model
Tom Woodruff(?): Really, the same one?
John Bruno: It's just CG, we erased and tracked and made the arms open.
(Aliens vs Predator DVD commentary)
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