leading from
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| Dan O'Bannon with Ron Cobb in their preproduction art room. |
N.B. INFORMATION IS STILL BEING COLLATED!
a) Looking for a Nostromo
The design of the ship went through so many changes. Ron Cobb and Chris Foss had been busy working on hundreds of designs for the Nostromo in the months of preproduction before Ridley Scott came on board. Ron Cobb who worked in the same studio with him watched Chris with ease creating spacecraft exteriors His mind and imagination seemed to embody the entire history of the industrial revolution. He could conjure up endless spacecraft designs suggesting submarines, diesel locomotives, Mayan interceptors, Mississippi river boats, jumbo space arks, but best of all (ask Dan) were his trademark aero-spacecraft-textures like panels, cowlings, antennae, bulging fuel tanks, vents, graphics etc. As the months passed, along with two or three temporary directors, Chris began to have problems caused by his spectacular creativity. No one, in a position to make a decision seemed to be able to make up their mind and/or choose one of his designs. Ron Cobb's vew was that Chris was turning out spacecraft designs the decision makers found too original which might have meant that those less informed didn't know what they were looking at. He couldn't get much of an opinion from Walter Hill where to go with the design because he was busy working on The Driver. He remembered Walter Hill walking in after months of work and all he said "Yep, roomful of space ships" and then walked out again. Gordon Carroll could never make up his mind as to which design he wanted.
Chris produced design after design after design and soon as they got nearer production, he was hired and taken over to England. Ron Cobb was the only person left behind and although he mentions that he was the only person left in London, we might wonder if he was the only person left in L.A., they asked him to do yet another exterior design for the ship and he did one. Ridley Scott and Gordon Carroll wanted various small changes. Ron kept persisting on a certain design for the lander part of the ship that we see most of all.
b) The Crunch
Ridley Scott, Ron Cobb and Chris Foss had all created sketches of the ship. It was Brian Johnson's job to assess these and decide on the size of the model needed for a particular shot. In the end, he realised that no one had a clue about where the drawing should be going and so he grabbed some drawings and headed back to England. As Chris Foss saw it, Ridley Scott was too involved in discovering all the laser technology that the Who were using since they were there filming which led to the lasers in the egg silo and all the smoke effects to really be that interested in the design of the Nostromo, but Brian Johnson would have said "Right, fuck that!" enraged by the situation and and bodged something together from the bits and pieces of wrecked helicopter. At the time Chris Foss would have been still deeply involved in his concept work with Dan practically looking over his should, and much of his concept work that he continued on with were produced in other films and other books.
The coming of Bill Pearson
Brian Johnson had contacted Bill Pearson for the film while he was Kingston Polytechnic where he was using the 16mm equipment to shoot space films scenes. He had previously employed Bill on The Medusa Touch. This had only been five weeks work, and then the rest of the crew went on to do Revenge of The Pink Panther, which required no miniature work. So Brian contacted Bill nine months later to see if he was interested in the new films he was to work on, he said to him "I've been offered a two picture deal by Fox to do the sequel to Star Wars (which was to become The Empire Strikes Back) and a horror B movie set in space called Alien, are you going to be able to work on these to do miniatures?"
Without hesitation he replied "Yeah! Yeah! I'd love to do it"
Brian then added "well we've got to do the B movie first of all"
Bill was one of the first on Alien, and was brought on board because he knew Brian Johnson, at the time it was a B movie, it was a very small crew to start with. He went to Bray and Ron Hone was there
d ) Simon Deering comes aboard
Simon Deering came aboard when his Dennis Lowe told him that they were looking for people on Alien.
Dennis said to Simon said "See Brian Johnson"
And so Simon did. Brian Johnson took a look at the top two pictures on his pack and said "When can you start?"
Simon replied "Monday week", and then went to Paris to celebrate and then came back to start two weeks later.
So there were three men: Hone, Deering and Pearson doing of the preparatary miniatures.
Bill Pearson being a filmophile actually knew who Ridley Scott as a film maker and had seen The Duellists which he admired and that he had been an art director for the BBC, and it was rumoured that when he came aboard Alien, Ridley had by then directed a thousand commercials, so Bill knew that Ridley knew what he was doing. However everyone else on the set said "Ridley Scott's the guy who did the Hovis advert. He's directing this picture so god help us". Even later during the shoot, there would be someone in the background whistling the Hovis theme tune
Brian's crew constructed a small Nostromo model, just the basic front section, and showed it to Ridley Scott who thought it might be alright but might want to make a few changes. The talk went on and on and Brian was close to his shooting date.
They had a drawing by Ron Cobb on a yellow piece of paper on the wall to work from first. They didn't actually get a lot of directions. When it was ready, they showed it to Ridley, Brian Johnson was crossing his fingers hoping that Ridley would like it. He liked it but wanted to modify it.
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| Ron Cobb's Nostromo Lander/Surveyor |
Ron Hone started work on the Nostromo lander. A few drawings came over from Ron Cobb. Bill remembered seeing three quarter views of the Nostromo on the surface of the planet. The first one was white and quite NASA looking, and Ron Hon's prototype for the Nostromo looked was based on this. Ron Hone was trained as a pattern maker. He was not too sure about working with one three quarter view of the Nostromo and so Brian realised this and said to Bill " Bill, can you work with Ron?"
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final Nostromo sketch on yellow paper by Ron Cobb |
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| Bill Pearing's 16 inch long Balsa Nostromo |
Brian came in and had a look at it and said "That's the shape, that is it".
So Ron went ahead to build the large version and when this was complete Brian said "totally encrust it with wiggets"
The finest bits of HMS hood were amongst the parts of the Airfix model kits used as it was being made. Ridley Scott had his plate full over at Shepperton Studios but would come in to Bray now and again to see how the model work was getting along. However the first time Ridley cane over to see them he looked at the Nostromo which had been built in 1/ 35th scale. As Bill Pearson witnessed, using a figure for scale comparison Ridley asked, "Is that the size of a man?" He then said "Hmm, I don't know about that."
They had a box of various scale figures and let him go through it. He eventually chose a 1/100th scale figure which set the new scale. From then on in his visits, as Simon Deering noticed, he would start making sketches on the bench and look at it and utter words such as "Fucking great! Fucking that! How about a few more bits sticking out here and a few more bits sticking out here!' and "can we try something like that?"
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| Nostromo model from below |
They changed the colour for or five times, it gradually got spikier with lots of probes added to it, but the basic shape remained fairly similar. And then he'd go off again, and model team would just play and just make it up, and it was pretty soon that somebody said still "don't bother copying that picture any more !"
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Ron Cobb's first yellow Nostromo |
Simon Deering talked about a cut that went wrong in the carpenters and soon he had to start building a frame (for a smaller one?). He didn't see a drawing plan of what they built and it was very different from the other ones. He never even got to see one of the vague sketches in pencil that Ridley did on the wooden bench
e) Jon Sorensen's arrival
Jon Sorensen arrived Saturday the 24th June 1978 around midday at Bray Studio around mid-day with a small suitcase and £60.00. He was put straight to work. The first section that he was given was the whole detachable back section of the large Nostromo model that was approximately ten feet long, the part containing the rocket motors and engines. The supposed size of the real life Nostromo was 800 feet from nose to rear. The group , Simon Deering, John Pakenham, Ron Hone and Bill Pearson worked alongside each other and were given responsibility for various sections, and out of this the whole grew organically.
f) Ron Cobb's need for realism
Bill Pearson had conversations with Ron Cobb about the design of the Nostromo. Ron was adamant that the vehicles were realistic. He wanted a heat shield on the underside of the Nostromo lander. He wanted a contrast between the smooth underside and the detailed upper surface. However this was not to be. Their instructions was to encurst the whole craft with detailed pieces. One thing to note, when it came down, the audience wasn't seeing a craft come through an atmosphere, there was no re-entry. Ron was concerned that it should be there is that type of action was present, he was very much into the believability of things to the extent that he created wonderful background histories behind all of his designs..
g) Adding a new cockpit
The Nostromo changed dramatically through the course of the film, the first model was about ten feet long and had protruding lobes on the front. Behind these would have the bridge section, with the viewing area/ window behind the lobes. The Nostromo modelling team were over at Bray, while the main unit was based at Shepperton. They asked a runner who was travelling between to two studios , if he had seen the set of the bridge. They asked him how big the set was, using people stretched across the floor as a measurement guide. He responded with " One; one and a half."
This would come out as about ten foot, while the miniature would have been one hundred feet across. So they brought this information to Brian Johnson's attention, and he solved it by designing a new section to plug in at the front of the ship. Brian got Ron Cobb to produce a drawing and then they worked from the new design, Ron Cobb had no control over what they did with his drawing. Bill Pearson personally preferred the original design but, saying that, one never knows how an interior will be featured in a film. He thought that if they had left it as it was, it wouldn't have been a great problem, but, then again, they wouldn't have known how it was going to be edited in the final film and that again can make a difference.
Eventually the large Nostromo was completed, artworked, and sprayed the required and agreed yellow and moved to the shooting stage, whereupon they then started constructing the large refinery for the workshop.
They were delegated a specific job, the freedom to get on with it but to look out if they didn't get it done in time. Brian Johnson told "Jon Sorensen, finish and spray it black, NOW!" , Jon was dithering and it was his own fault, he just wanted to add one more detail and then another and Brian had told him three times to finish. The moment came to send the Nostromo over to the shooting stage and still Jon couldn't let go of her.
Experienced with photography, while test shots were being done on the tug, Jon was sent to take large photographs of it plus a collection of 35 millimetre shots from which he was then to spend an additional six weeks painstaking recreating all the detail on a small version about five feet long.
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| Jon Sorensen working on a smaller 'half scale' version of the Nostromo |
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| The smaller 'half scale' Nostromo as seen in the film leaving the refinery |
h) Engine room towers become engines
Ridley came in one day and saw them finishing off the angular engine room towers, and asked them to see what they would look like if we they were to stick them onto the Nostromo lander. He grabbed hold of the two front towers and carried them from the model shop to the stage where the large Nostromo sat on its rig. He offered the towers up the back of the Nostromo. asked a couple of the people there to hold them there and stood back. He liked the way they looked , and so modelling crew were sawing, chiselling, filing, added extra dressing such as flaps to make them look like secondary engines between the three main exhausts and this brought the model up to nearly 9 feet in length This was a fairly common event; it was very much a case of "Let's try that"
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| initial Nostromo engine room miniature (source www.martinbowersmodelworld.co.uk) |
Every single one of the 57 nozzles within the octagonal engine bulkheads, 19 to each main engine, was made from 12 studs from the Horny inclined piers sets, sandwiched between three EMA "exchanger flange rings" (code VX 200, VX 225 and VX 32 in the catalogue). That required 684 studs and 171 rings and that was just for the three main engines.
Once Ridley, had added the one time engine room towers, what had been the base of the tower now shows as another gaping space needing to be filled with detail in order to look like an engine. So the 17 chassis bases from the Tamiya Panzerwagon kit was stuck inside each engine to detail the sides and then EMA cones and tubing clad with "Beam Splices: (code KBJ-10) and yet more studs and rings to form the extra jet nozzles.
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EMA Cones (VC-500) - Sheet of 5 Assorted Shapes |
i) Nostromo's New Engine Room Miniature
j) Credit for the design
Ron Cobb observed that final Nostromo was a combination of two of his own drawings and also noted how he and Chris Foss had both influenced one another. See: Chris Foss inspiration for Nostromo
source quotes
- Starburst: Did you design the exterior of the ship as well?Ron Cobb: Well. it's a conglomerate of many of my drawings, synthesised in a way I had no control of or put together by Brian Johnson, with a fair amount of input by the director, Ridley Scott. it's not that clear cut (Starburst #16)
- Ron Cobb: Creating spacecraft exteriors came easily to Foss. His mind and imagination seemed to embody the entire history of the industrial revolution. He could conjure up endless spacecraft designs suggesting submarines, diesel locomotives, Mayan interceptors, Mississippi river boats, jumbo space arks, but best of all (ask Dan) were his trademark aero-spacecraft-textures like panels, cowlings, antennae, bulging fuel tanks, vents, graphics etc. As the months passed, along with two or three temporary directors, Chris began to have problems caused by his spectacular creativity. No one, in a position to make a decision seemed to be able to make up their mind and/or choose one of his designs. I think Chris was turning out spacecraft designs the decision makers found too original. (Ron Cobb, Den Of Geek.com Interview)
- Chris Foss [Alien producer] Walter Hill was very busy smashing cars up for one of his 'streets' films. He couldn't be arsed - much too busy! He walked in after months of work and just said 'Yep, roomful of spaceships' and just walked out again. So I'd produced design after design after design, and it got nearer production time, so I was hired and taken over to England to do some more designs. Finally what happened was that the bloke who had to make the [Nostromo] model completely lost his rag, scooped up a load of paper...they had a room full of smashed-up bits of helicopter and all-sorts, and he just bodged something together. So the actual spaceship in the film hadn't anything to do with all the days, weeks, months of work that we'd all done. It's as simple as that.
So the Nostromo's kind of 'M'-shape was just taken from an aircraft part...?
That's it. Because I've worked on so many other films where the shots are so important and so on, but on this particular one...
Ridley Scott noticed that the Who were down there making a film, and he was fascinated by all the bits and pieces that were going on with that. The Who, of course, had discovered lasers, and that's why you've got all these smoke-effects and swirl-effects, and [Scott] just couldn't be arsed about the spaceship and all that crap. So the poor sod who had to build it said 'Right, fuck that', got himself a whole load of paper, and bodged something together from the bits and pieces of a wrecked helicopter.
Did you do any further elaboration on the design after they showed you this 'M'-shaped construction that they cobbled together?
No, I was happily beavering away on my designs, and Dan, of course, was practically standing over me - he's probably talked about it!...urging this that and the other, and it all came to nought. [laughs] Many of the designs that I did were actually produced in other films and in other books. So the cover of 21st Century Foss started as a spaceship on Dune, and then ended up as a putative Nostromo design at Dan's behest. They decided they didn't want it. Then, in the end, I used it in another book and it made the cover of 21st-century Foss. (Source: www.denofgeek.com/) - Ron Cobb: The design of the ship went through so many changes. Gordon could never make up his mind as to which design he wanted. We did hundreds of designs, Chris and I. Finally out of desperation when I was the only person left in London, they asked me to do yet another exterior design for the ship. I did one and Ridley and Gordon wanted this and that changed a little bit. I kept persisting on a certain design for the lander part of the ship you see most of all. The other part of the ship is this vast platform which seems to be pulling along behind the lander, like a big oil refinery or something(Fantastic Films, July 1979 p30)
- Ron Cobb: I did these drawing, then Brian Johnson came in and he was going to build a model. He made up their minds for them. He just took my drawings and went right out to Bray Studios and built it. (Fantastic Films, July 1979 p30)
- Brian Johnson: We had a whole series of people - Chris Foss, Ron Cobb, and Ridley Scott -created sketches of the ships. It was my job to assess these and decide on the size of the model needed for any particular shot. In the end no one could really make up their minds as to how the Nostromo should look. Ridley is the kind of person who likes to see something in three dimensions before he actually says yes. (Starlog/October 1979, p68)
- Ron Cobb: Finally, Brian Johnson the special effects supervisor under pressure to build the large Nostromo model, went into the deserted art department and, out of frustration, grabbed all the Chris Foss designs off the wall and took them to Bray studios. There he would choose the design himself in order to have enough time to build the damn thing. (source: www.denofgeek.com/)
- Ron Cobb: The crunch came, and Brian (Johnson) just came over from England, grabbed some drawings, and headed back. The final is pretty much patterned after two of my drawings, and the platform is a combination of Ridley's refinery towers some of my little modifications to make it more believable. (Book of Alien, by Scanlon & Gross)
- Bill Pearson: When the film started there were only three of us in the model shop - Simon Deering, Ron Hone and myself. Brian Johnson had contacted me for the film; he had previously employed me on The Medusa Touch. This had only been five weeks work, and then the rest of the crew went on to do Revenge of The Pink Panther, which required no miniature work. Brian contacted me nine months later to see if I was interested in working on the sequel to Star Wars and also a B-movie horror called Alien. We set up the model shop at Bray Studios.
- Bill Pearson: Martin joined us a few months into the production. He turned up a lot of brass to represent probes on the refiner. Ridley decided against this look and they were ripped out and ended up on the Nostromo lander. Others ended up as dressing on the flame throwers. Nicky Alder walked in one day and said, 'Dress these." and Martin got the short straw (Sci-Fi & Fantasy FX #48, p27)
- Geoff Topping: When you were dressing the Nostromo tug, was it a case of just sticking the probes in anywhere or was there a discussion on it?
Bill Pearson: Ridley had an image in mind, and had discussed it with us on the stage. Most were epoxied in after the model had been drilled, though some were taped on with gaffer tape! Two probes were on two small rams, as there was a piece in the dialogue about retracting umbilicals. The probes, which were in a down position, would then come up flush, but, like most things, it never made the final cut (Sci-Fi & Fantasy FX #48, p27) - Bill Pearson: There were only three of us doing the preparatary miniatures, Simon and myself doing the tower. Er, Ron Hone started work on the Nostromo lander, A few drawings came over from Ron Cobb. I can't remember when Ron Cobb came on board and when we started seeing his stuff, but we had three quarter views of the Nostromo on the surface of the planet. Say I remembered about three of them. I believe the first one was white, er, and it was quite NASA looking and that was the one that we... Ron made, ah, the first prototype. Er, Ron was trained as a pattern maker and to be honest, he wasn't too sure of just working with just one view, a three quarter view and so Brian realised this and said "Bill, can you work with Ron" and you know, I'd... I could work in plastics but I had no idea about wood and Ron was going to make this in some Malaysian wood, Jelutong, and you've got to be good with tools in order to do this, for god sake, I was, you know, I er bumbled away with plastic kits at college and I couldn't use a lathe, nothing, erm, so Ron got me some balsa wood and a couple of craft blades and it was, it was that bad, and we didn't even get any balsa cement and so I made up this model it was probably about, pff, at most , maybe 16 inches long, and er, pinned it together with dress making pins. Brian came in , had a look at it and said "That's the shape, that is it". So Ron proceeded then to make my er, my abortion out of real wood, and once that was complete, Brian said "Right, totally encrust it with wiggets" So, it was a lot of Airfix kits, the finest bits from HMS Hood and a lot of plasticard cut into little squares and applied onto the Jelutong model with glue that had just appeared on the market, Superglue, er, and Superglue at that time was incredibly strong, Much stronger than what it is now. So I was constantly sticking myself to other tools and parts of the workbench, But we put the whole thing together.( Alien Makers 1, interview with Bill Pearson)
- Brian Johnson: My crew constructed a small Nostromo model - just the basic front section. I showed it to Ridley, who thought it might be alright, but that he would probably want to make a few changes. The talk went on and on and I was getting close to my shooting date. So I went ahead and built this huge model. When it was ready, we showed it to Ridley. I had my fingers crossed, because he could have turned around and said that he didn't like it. (Starlog/October 1979, p68)
- Brian Johnson: But he did like it... I knew, though, that somewhere along the line he'd want to modify it. He modifies everything as he goes along. We changed the colour about four or five times, it gradually got spikier, but the basic shape was always fairly similar. The rear end was altered slightly, and it had lots of various probes and other things added to it. (Starlog/October 1979, p68)
- Geoff Topping. What about Ron Cobb?
Bill Pearson: When I met Ron, he was very adamant that they were very realistic. He wanted a heat shield on the underside of the Nostromo lander. He wanted a contrast between the smooth underside of the heat shield and the detailed upper surface. However this was not to be. Our instructions was to encrust the whole craft. When it came down, we weren't seeing a craft come through an atmosphere; there was no re-entry. Ron was concerned that it should be there if that type of action was present. Ron is very much into the believability of things. He created wonderful background histories about his designs.(Sci-Fi & Fantasy FX #48, p27) - Bill Pearson: The Nostromo changed dramatically through the course of the film, the first model was about ten feet long and had protruding lobes on the front. Behind these would have the bridge section, with the viewing area/ window behind the lobes. We were over at Bray, while the main unit was based at Shepperton. So we asked a runner who was travelling between to two studios , if he had seen the set of the bridge. We asked him how big the set was, using people stretched across the floor as a measurement guide. He responded with " One; one and a half." This would come out as about ten foot, while the miniature would have been one hundred feet across. So we brought this to Brian Johnson's attention, and he solved it by designing a new section to plug in at the front of the ship. Brian got Ron Cobb to produce a drawing and we worked from the new design. I personally preferred the original design but, saying that, one never knows how an interior will be featured in a film. If we had left it as it was, it wouldn't have been a great problem, but, again, we didn't know how it was going to be edited and that again can make a difference. (Sci-Fi & Fantasy FX #48, p27)
- Bill Pearson: The first time Ridley cane over to see us he looked at our Nostromo which had been built in 1/ 35th scale. Using a figure for scale comparison he asked, "Is that the size of a man?" He then said "Hmm, I don't know about that." We had a box of various scale figures and let him go through it. He eventually chose a 1/100th scale figure which set the new scale.(Sci-Fi & Fantasy FX #48, p27)
- Simon Deering: Yeah, I remember the first er, the first instructions were, we had this yellow piece of paper, we had the Ron Cobb drawing I believe it was on the wall and we , we didn't get a lot of direction to start with, which was interesting and fun, you know. we used to have er, my favourite memory of it was Ridley Scott, who'd just come in every now and again, look at what we were doing, he'd start making sketches on the bench and look at it and go "fucking great! Fucking that! How about a few more bits sticking out here and a few more bits sticking out there", and "can we try something like this?' And then he'd go off again, and we'd just play and just make it up, and it was pretty soon that somebody said still "don't bother copying that picture any more" and then it was er, I believe that's when the cut went wrong in the carpenters, and I started building a frame, I'm not sure there were ever a drawing erm, of exactly what they built because because it was very different to the er, the other, the other ones as I remember, yeah, (Alien Makers I documentary by Dennis Lowe)
- Bill Pearson: Ridley came in one day and saw us finishing off the angular engine room towers, and asked us to see what they would look like if we were to stick them onto the Nostromo lander. He liked the way they looked , and so we added extra dressing such as flaps to make them look like secondary engines. This was a fairly common event; it was very much a case of "Let's try that"(Sci-Fi & Fantasy FX #48, p27)
- Jon Sorensen: I was put straight to work. The first section I was given was the whole detachable back section of the large NOSTROMO model, the part containing the rocket motors and engines. We were subsequently all given responsibility for sections and out of this the whole grew organically. I found myself working alongside Simon Deering, John Pakenham, Ron Hone and Bill Pearson on these tasks. Eventually the large NOSTROMO was completed, artworked and sprayed the required and agreed yellow and moved to the shooting stage, whereupon we then started constructing the large refinery in the workshop. While tests were being shot on the tug, I was sent to take large plate photographs of it plus a collection of 35mm reference shots from which I was then to spend an additional 6 weeks painstakingly recreating all the detail on a smaller version, about 5 feet long, (the large version was easily 10 feet long, the given supposed real life size of NOSTROMO being 800 feet from nose to rear engine).(source: alienseries.wordpress.com)
- Dennis Lowe: The thing I remember well was the ability to delegate a specific job and you were left to get on with it, look out if it wasn't ready on time though!!....... (Re: ALIEN Makers Documentary June 23rd 2009 )
- Jon Sorenson: Absolutely right, Dennis. I got Brian telling me one day, "Jon Sorensen, finish and spray it black, NOW!!" I was dithering and it was my own fault. Just one more detail, and then one more...this was on the back end of the big Nostromo. Brian got exasperated. And right he was too. He had told me three times to finish. I never made that mistake twice. The Nostromo then went over to the shooting stage and I wanted to follow her, which I did soon after for the remainder of the schedule. It was love and I was pining. (Re: ALIEN Makers Documentary June 23rd 2009 )
- Martin Bower: We has also built a miniature set of an engine room. No, not the one with the shuttle parts, that came later. Ridley too one look at the first engine room and said he didn't like that... He grabbed hold of the two front towers and carried them from the model shop to the stage where the large Nostromo sat on its rig. He offered the towers up the back of the Nostromo, asked a couple of us to hold them there and stood back. Next thing we knew we were sawing and chiselling, and filling and filing and we had these two former towers now added as extra engines between the three main exhausts and bringing the model up to nearly 9 feet in length. (Sci-fi and fantasy models, No.?, Alien: The Models, the definitive story part 1, p30)
- Martin Bower: I've often been asked what the multiple nozzles within the octagonal engine bulkheads were made from. "Were they aircraft rotary engine kits?" one person asked. "No" is the short answer. Every single one of the 57 nozzels, 19 to each main engine, was made individually from 12 studs from the afore mentioned "Hornby" inclined piers, sandwiched between three EMA "exchanger flange rings" (code VX 200, VX 225 and VX 32 in the catalogue). So for those alone it doesn't take much maths to tell you that required 684 studs and 171 rings! And those were only for the three main engines! However , once Ridley had added the one time engine room towers, what had been the base of the tower now showed as another gaping space needing to be filled with detail in order to look like an engine. So the 17 chassis bases from the unpronouncable Tamiya Panzerwagon kit were stuck inside each engine to detail the sides and then EMA cones and tubing were clad with EMA "Beam Splices" (code KBJ-10) and yet more studs and rings to form the extra jet nozzles. It also meant we needed to build a new engine room, hence the use of all those Airfix Shuttle parts! But the odd bits we didn't use did not get wasted either. We kept seeing this strangely familiar face peering round the workshop door. Terry Gilliam was his name and he needed a few bits for a space sequence he was doing next door for a film called Life of Brian (Sci-fi and fantasy models, No.?, Alien: The Models, the definitive story part 1, p30 and 51)
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