rare A L I E N studio model pics

The Nostromo was actually YELLOW?

Sometimes they paint a model yellow if their is a problem with the bluescreen lighting reflecting off a white surface. I beleive it was done to the Concord model from the old Airport movie series as well.
 
Models were sometimes painted yellow to prevent reflections from the bluescreen,
sometimes yellow fill light was also used. But I'm not aware of bluescreen being used
for Alien. If I remember right the ship was filmed with a black backing and the mattes
were drawn by hand. The yellow may be primer, the ship appears white/gray in some
of the other pics. I've seen other color pics where it looked white/gray.
 
They initially had the Nostromo painted yellow. Ridley Scott then made a change (as he has a habit of doing) and had it painted the gray we see in the film.
 
I was told by someone who actualy worked on the film that the Nostromo was first intended to be yellow in order to follow Ron Cobb's (& Chris Foss) concept designs...

A few of Cobb's concept illustrations featured a yellow Nostromo, go check if you have a copy of Cobb's book COLORVISION on your shelves !
:love

The Nostromo was repainted 3 times, IIRC this is mentioned in the ALIEN QUADRILOGY documentaries...

Fred
 
Lots of cans of aviation Zinc Chromate primer I used to use when doing structural rebuilds of aircraft years ago....
 
I think I still prefer the gray, but I do like the registration number on the side. I wish they left that on.
 
I think I still prefer the gray, but I do like the registration number on the side. I wish they left that on.

that was pretty cool. They had kind of an interlocked nacelle skin pattern on the ship, with the registry number, then it was ordered that more detail would be added and the number was painted over 'cos the camera was not picking up enough texture of the studio model to give it the needed illusion of size. I really wish some of the artists who did these models and those who made the decisions on this movie could be present in the RPF, there are so many cool members here who have so many great and intuitive questions about this Movie..
 
Those are some terrific shots; what great models. That shot of the underside of the refinery JTParker helps answer that question you had the other week on what it looked like.
 
I think I like the colored version better.

Like some big trucks or cargo ships.

Yeah, I had this idea myself for a space station design...it was supposed to be a waste disposal station, so I thought dirty yellow would give the impression of a garabage truck.

However, waht the Nostromo yellow reminded me of was they way they used to paint models on THUNDERBIRDS...Martin Bower used to do this kind of thing, I suppose to give the model some visual pop.
 
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