Saturday, December 29, 1979
Friday, December 28, 1979
leading from
a) Impessions of Ridley
Ridley was a man very approachable and down to Earth. Ridley was always trying to grasp words to describe verbally what he wanted in terms of picture and then he'd get frustrated and just grab a camera to do it himself and Ridley would come out with statements such as "no, I want is er, you know I want these umbilicals, all hanging you know, like you know an aliens 'umbly',"
And then Guy Hudson who was one of the younger production members of staff who liked to poke fun at people and he would start behind doing impressions of Ridley behind his back. "what I want is these umbilicals and the like alien's like fucking you know hanging there, you know". Someone pointed out, "Ridley's right behind you" and Ridley was there and Jon Sorensen saw how he accepted this behaviour without complaining, and so appreciated the way Ridley was able to handle this although Guy knew that he had been caught out.
b) The Umbilical
Asked about the creature's intermediate stage, Ridley talked about the alien's tale being referred to as an "umbilical" but it was not so much a tail in his point of view but a muscle of immense tensile strength and he wanted it to seem to look like an umbilical cord most probably more than a phallus. and it was in the scene where the creature comes down from the inside of the landing leg and kills Brett that he had to make sure it seemed like an umbilical cord for the scene where the alien was suspended in the air in the shaft and the tail needed to hang down if the tail was going to suddenly come down between Brett's legs to pierce his spine. It was here that tale like structure was certainly protruding from the creature's groin area. However we might ask if Ridley kept using the term "Umbilcal" for the tail all the way through the production.
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| Model of 7 month old foetus with umbilical cord and placenta (source; http://www.anatomystuff.co.uk/) |
Quote source:
- Jon Sorenson: But was very quickly that Ridley Scott was a force to be reckoned with, he was so approachable, erm and seemed to be very down to Earth, there was no bluff and bluff, there, this was highlighted by the fact that one day Guy was doing one of his impersonations of him, and he said er, Ridley was, he always trying to grasp and and and and and sort of describe verbally what he wanted in terms of pictures and then he'd get frustrated and he'd just grab the camera, you know do it himself, this is Ridley, and he said "no, I want is er, you know I want these umbilicals, all hanging you know, like you know an aliens 'umbly," anyway this was Guy doing this, he said "what I want is these umbilicals and the aliens like fucking you know, hanging there, you know " and "Ridley's right behind you", and he took it completely on the chin and I thought he was alright, and Guy was like that banished for a bit. (Alien Makers I, (53:00 onwards))
- Fantastic Films: In the alien's intermediate stage, when it kills Brett, how did you plan to show its growth since "birth"?
Ridley Scott: We wanted to show he was big, but we didn't want the audience to know how big. You're not quite sure whether he stands, hangs or what. At that point we wanted the whole interest of the audience to be focused on the head and the "umbilical cord". It's really just a long muscle with immense tensile strength but it looks like an umbilical. (Fantastic Films, #12, p22)
Monday, December 24, 1979
a) The Flying Bedstead was a small vehicle for making manual repairs outside of the Nostromo that would have been used by Brett and Parker, but they never got around to shooting the scene, and so it seems that the vehicle was never actually made. Ron Cobb's design looks roughly inspired However. by the shape of the Nostromo exterior with the engines specifically.
b) Ridley's sketch for thing thing makes the vehicle look very single to the extent it might out to be like a cross between a child's go-cart and foldaway work bench
c) The name is taken from the nickname for a thrust measuring rig in 1954 that was a vertical take off and landing vehicle developed by Rolls Royce that was nothing much more than a machine with a frame
Ridley Scott: The one we were going to use in the sequence where they go outside to make repairs on the ship. (Fantastic Films, #12, p22)
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| Ridley's illustration |
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| Flying Bedstead in flight, 1954 |
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| The original Flying Bedstead from 1954 now in the Science Museum |
Michael Seymour: "We developed this thing called, what we called Greeblies, and greeblies were bits of anything from bits of plastic washing up bottles to wiring, fuse boxes, pipes, anything you can... and they were, dressing crews got very good at this, you, you you'd have this empty corridor and you go to the dressing room and say there would be Greeblies all over that wall and they would set to it, they would do it and they were very good, and they were very creative and when they were all screwed into place with lots of wiring coming out and pipes and so on and then we'd spray it all more or less the same colour, and then put like red signs on something here, bit of lettering there, so we built up this, this it was a texture really, a sort of a high tech texture going on everywhere in the ship" (Alien Makers III, 57:47 - 58:36)
Thursday, December 13, 1979
leading from
Alien
Summoner of the Demon
Pazuzu
Inspired by Von Daniken's concepts?
Galactic Geography:
Space Jockey's origins in "Swiss Family Robinson"
Alien
Summoner of the Demon
Pazuzu
Inspired by Von Daniken's concepts?
Galactic Geography:
Space Jockey's origins in "Swiss Family Robinson"
Wednesday, December 12, 1979
leading from
a) In the silo, below the jockey's chamber, there are thousands of spores that must surely be as old as the Jockey's remains. They are covered over by a film of blue light that is a laserbeam spread like a thin sheet, and there is a sound as the astronaut penetrates the laser beam's field. It represented the placenta of the eggs
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| (from Alien Anthology blu-ray) |
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| (from Alien Anthology blu-ray) |
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| (from Alien Anthology blu-ray) |
b) Ridley's original idea for the sequence was cut for budget reasons. His storyboard had Kane going down a long tube and then emerging into this massive chambers through a hole in the ceiling. Before he does though, at the bottom of this tube he finds a very thin membrane which he cuts through and this feint breeze drifts upwards as he descends into the blackness. But he can't see anything, so he says "I'm going to light myself up' - and what Ridley wanted were thousands of tiny pea lights stitched into his suit so we could light him up like a Christmas tree and have him hanging there from the roof of this cavern, like some beautiful chandelier. He thought it would be a marvelous image.
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| (from Alien Anthology blu-ray) |
c) But since the whole approach was out, he wanted something to replace the membrane, which he saw as a kind of a biological alarm which triggered a response in the eggs - they all come awake and sit waiting to be touched, basically. They finally settled on a laser which was mounted so it would scan just above the eggs and give us this sheet of blue light. They could have done a lot more with it, but we didn't have the time. As it was, they only had about half a day to test it and then another day and a half to shoot the whole sequence.
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| (from Alien Anthology blu-ray) |
d) It was a fairly strong scanning laser. It belonged to The Who rock group - they use them in pop concerts and such - and it operated at about three thousand cycles per second with a sweeping arc of about fifty or sixty degrees. Basically what's happening is there's a mirror in there that's oscillating three thousand times a second. If you could stop the mirror you'd get a single point of light, but when it's moving it's not dangerous because you's subjected to the power of the laser for shorts bits of time. Since the laser's scanning so fast and you camera's only running at twenty four frames per second, you get quite a number of scans on one image. The light level is very low, though, so everything in there had to be shot absolutely wide open and with the wizardry of Derek Vanlint's cinematography. And they had to use a lot of smoke; otherwise it doesn't show up at all because the beam's only bright when it doesn't show up at all because the beam's only bright when it's actually touching something.
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| (from Alien Anthology blu-ray) |
e) Despite the face that the placenta had now become noticeably like a sheet of laser light which brought people to ask other questions about what it might be since it became much more technological, but for Ridley, it remained as a placenta wall and when Kane broke throught it, Ridley had added a sound to the laser beam which sounded to him like a seal.
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| (from Alien Anthology blu-ray) |
source quotes :
- Ridley Scott: My original idea for the sequence was cut for budget reasons. My storyboard had Kane going down a long tube and then emerging into this massive chambers through a hole in the ceiling. Before he does though, at the bottom of this tube he finds a very thin membrane which he cuts through and this feint breeze drifts upwards as he descends into the blackness. But he can't see anything, so he says "I'm going to light myself up' - and what I wanted were thousands of tiny pea lights stitched into his suit so we could light him up like a Christmas tree and have him hanging there from the roof of this cavern, like some beautiful chandelier. I thought it would be a marvelous image. (Cinefex 1, p65 and Alien Special Effects, p37)
- Ridley Scott: But since the whole approach was out, I wanted something to replace the membrane, which I saw as a kind of a biological alarm which triggered a response in the eggs - they all come awake and sit waiting to be touched, basically. We finally settlied on a laser which was mounted so it would scan just above the eggs and give us this sheet of blue light. We could have done a lot more with it, but we didn't have the time. As it was, we only had about half a day to test it and then another day and a half to shoot the whole bloody sequence
(Cinefex 1, p65 and Alien Special Effects, p37) - Brian Johnson: It was a fairly strong scanning laser. It belonged to The Who rock group - they use them in pop concerts and such - and it operated at about three thousand cycles per second with a sweeping arc of about fifty or sixty degrees. Basically what's happening is there's a mirror in there that's oscillating three thousand times a second. If you could stop the mirror you'd get a single point of light, but when it's moving it's not dangerous because you's subjected to the power of the laser for shorts bits of time. Since your laser's scanning so fast and you camera's only running at twenty four frames per second, you get quite a number of scans on one image. The light level is very low, though, so everything in there had to be shot absolutely wide open. And we had to use a lot of smoke; otherwise it doesn't show up at all because the beam's only bright when it doesn't show up at all because the beam's only bright when it's actually touching something. (Cinefex 1, p65-67 and Alien Special Effects, p337-9)
- Ridley Scott: The sheet as I call it of the laser beam, this is a laser beam spread thin like a thin sheet, but it worked great here and I never thought it would photograph because it's pretty low key, but you know, with the wizardry of, of Derek, we got it. So this is all just handheld lay the sound on as you go through the laser beam, you can here, there's a sound to the laser beam, you can hear it now, like a seal. I always thought of the laser beam as the placenta wall for the, erm, eggs.(Alien 30th Anniversary Edition DVD)
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| (from Alien Anthology blu-ray) |
leading from
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| Dallas cocooned in the glutinous substance |
a) Not talked about is the possibility of alien's life cycle's relationship perhaps to saprophytic fungi. Although the initial idea behind the alien to egg stage is that the human victim is sealed in a silk cocoon hanging from the sealing, and the external cocoon slowly hardens and transforms into an urn like spore or egg while the victim inside is being eaten away, and later the whole process becomes a lot more amorphous and ambigious in nature, and Ridley Scott talked about Dallas being a host for the insect probably causing many people to suddenly think that he has become a victim of the facehugging. (see also: Human to Spore)
b) In the human to egg stage of the life cycle, we find out from Ridley Scott about how the alien larvae are feeding off the human victims, Dallas while he is still alive and Brett while he is dead. Ridley had mostly talked about the alien creature in relation to insects, but the way the egg shell seems to grow around and engulf Brett while it hadn't even formed itself around Dallas when he was discovered, and instead was discovered imbedded in this strange glue like substance that looked as if it was growing around him and perhaps partially eaten away in some manner.
c) The fact that what grows is an egg containing a living creature within is another matter entirely put down to poetic licence unless a fungus can be found which transforms into an egg with a creature inside
d) We can find out about insects and how their bodies are being eaten away by fungi. One example of a fungus that plays a role in the decomposition of animal matter is the scarlet caterpillar club fungus (Cordyceps militaris). This species grows out of the living pupa or larva of a moth or butterfly, converting the body of its insect host as it dies into the hyphal structure of its fruiting body, which is club-shaped and orange in colour, with a pimply surface.
source quotes
b) In the human to egg stage of the life cycle, we find out from Ridley Scott about how the alien larvae are feeding off the human victims, Dallas while he is still alive and Brett while he is dead. Ridley had mostly talked about the alien creature in relation to insects, but the way the egg shell seems to grow around and engulf Brett while it hadn't even formed itself around Dallas when he was discovered, and instead was discovered imbedded in this strange glue like substance that looked as if it was growing around him and perhaps partially eaten away in some manner.
c) The fact that what grows is an egg containing a living creature within is another matter entirely put down to poetic licence unless a fungus can be found which transforms into an egg with a creature inside
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| Brett becomes an egg |
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| Caterpillars (Hepialidae) infected with different types of parasitic fungi. The caterpillar on the left has been consumed by Cordyceps gunnii. Image: Colin Silvey ( source: Museum Victoria) |
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| Dead spider being devoured by a fungus. (source: www.treesforlife.org.uk/) |
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| Fungus infected dead spider source: bugguide.net/ |
- One example of a fungus that plays a role in the decomposition of animal matter is the scarlet caterpillar club fungus (Cordyceps militaris). This species grows out of the living pupa or larva of a moth or butterfly, converting the body of its insect host as it dies into the hyphal structure of its fruiting body, which is club-shaped and orange in colour, with a pimply surface. (http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/)
Wednesday, December 5, 1979
Martin Bowers: These are the things that go under the railway track to lift it over another track rather like a bridge. A pack contains an assortment of different sizes and there are very evident around the back of the main refinery base platform and also along the top of the large-scale extending arm that pushes the Tug away from the refinery. These same kit parts were used on all the other models needed, not just the refinery.
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| Hornby inclined piers |
Parts from the kit were can be seen used to decorate the inside of the nozzles of the extra engines that Ridley had stuck onto the back of the Nostromo that were originally features of the engine room.
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| Tamiya Schwerer Panzerspahwagen Sd Kfz 232 |
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| Tamiya "Schwerer Panzerspahwagen Sd Kfz 232 contents pt.1 (source: http://www.scaleplasticandrail.com/) |
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| Tamiya "Schwerer Panzerspahwagen Sd Kfz 232 contents pt.2 (source: http://www.scaleplasticandrail.com/) |
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| Tamiya "Schwerer Panzerspahwagen Sd Kfz 232 contents pt.3 (source: http://www.scaleplasticandrail.com/) |
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| Tamiya "Schwerer Panzerspahwagen Sd Kfz 232 contents pt.4 (source: http://www.scaleplasticandrail.com/) |
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| Tamiya "Schwerer Panzerspahwagen Sd Kfz 232 contents pt.5(source: (source: http://www.scaleplasticandrail.com/) |
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Airfix "RAF Recovery Set" kit
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| Airfix RAF Emergency Set |
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| Airfix RAF Emergency Set contents (pt.1) (source: http://www.mojehobby.pl) |
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| Airfix RAF Emergency Set contents (pt.2) (source: http://www.mojehobby.pl) |
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| Airfix RAF Emergency Set contents (pt.3) (source: http://www.mojehobby.pl) |
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