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This is Part 2 of a 5 Part Series. If you missed the previous parts, click the links below to catch up!
NOSTROMO: A LEGEND BORN AND BORN AGAIN: Part 1
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Check out our next installment of this 5 part series!
NOSTROMO: A LEGEND BORN AND BORN AGAIN: Part 3
NOSTROMO: A LEGEND BORN AND BORN AGAIN: Part 1
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As the design team likely suspected, the Nostromo’s evolution was not over. During production, Steven Spielberg’s CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND was released to much fanfare. Upon seeing the breathtaking shot of the alien ship landing on Earth, Ridley was said to have declared, “We need more lights!”
There was already a bird’s nest worth of (glass) fiber-optics that electronics whiz John Stevens snaked through the Nostromo to create dozens of tiny lights that could be lit from a single source. But even with all that work, there was still nowhere near the amount of lights seen in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS. Rather than setting back production by gutting the Nostromo and re-lighting it, a supplemental “belly” was built for the ship. This one with a massive amount of lights that could be attached to the existing model. The belly was cobbled together with wheat grain bulbs and whatever else the visual effects team could find lying around Bray Studios. It wasn’t a refined process, but if the film itself is suitable evidence, the effect ended up working seamlessly. This bit of movie magic can be seen in all its brilliant, hazy glory when the Nostromo comes in for a landing on the rocky, desolate planet where Kane picked up his little friend.
Also built to augment this surface sequence was a large-scale landing leg. Though still a miniature compared to the full-scale, twenty-five-foot tall leg built at Shepperton studios, this insert leg was big, over seven feet tall, making it comparable itself in size to the entire Nostromo miniature. This filming insert was given the task of providing a more dramatic entrance for the Nostromo by crushing a rock during the ship’s landing on the alien planet. Ridley was obsessed with the scale of the Nostromo, always wanting it to appear vast and cavernous. So much so that even with a full-scale, twenty-five-foot tall landing leg built, Ridley dressed small children (one of them his own) in space-suits to make the leg—and therefore the ship—seem twice as large as it physically was.
Despite the challenges of production, the reminiscing effects team looks back fondly on the experience and are all clearly quite proud of what came of it. The Nostromo has left an indelible mark on model-making and science-fiction art direction. The model itself now survives as both a monument to filmmaking history and an objet d’art that instantly evokes the noir-ish, industrialized future that Dan O’Bannon had envisioned. But when studying the history of sci-fi filmmaking with the very artisans who shaped its history and talking about the glory days of physical builds and motion-control cameras, it’s only a matter of time before the dreaded initials “C.G.” make their way into the conversation.
Some are practical about it, saying that there are great cost-savings that come into play with computer-generated models and that the “virtual” ships can be made to move in a way that’s still not possible even for top of the line motion-control rigs and modern filmmaking techniques.
But there’s a flip side of this coin that perhaps tarnishes the benefit.
"Computer generated aircraft don’t fly properly,” one of the original ALIEN visual effects team members said. It appears that, for all the algorithms, study, and technology, computers still have not figured out the physics of the real world. There is a great nostalgia present for the “good old days,” and maybe even a sadness that a stunning filming miniature like the Nostromo may never be built again. But others were more blunt in their assessment of the modern techniques.
"I hate this computer-generated crap.”
Wherever the science fiction film genre may have ended up after the last thirty years, it got there in large part due to the May 25, 1979 release of ALIEN. The film, though initially experiencing a “mixed” reception from critics, was a major commercial success. It raked in over 80 million dollars in the United States alone, nearly ten times its production budget. Audiences were thrilled and horrified, and many couldn’t stop going back to the theater to experience it all again. Religious zealots so reviled ALIEN’s “demonic” imagery that they set fire to the space jockey model when it was put on display at Grauman’s Egyptian theater in Los Angeles to promote the film.
Ridley Scott’s coming out party was a reckoning.
ALIEN took two genres that critics looked down their noses at—sci-fi and horror—and turned it into intellectually provocative, adult, elevated fare. The film won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, thanks in large part to the work of Brian Johnson’s team and the visionary design of H.R. Giger. Many films that came after would mimic ALIEN (and benefit from riding its coattails), but few since, even thirty years later, can be rightfully held up beside it.
Some are practical about it, saying that there are great cost-savings that come into play with computer-generated models and that the “virtual” ships can be made to move in a way that’s still not possible even for top of the line motion-control rigs and modern filmmaking techniques.
But there’s a flip side of this coin that perhaps tarnishes the benefit.
"Computer generated aircraft don’t fly properly,” one of the original ALIEN visual effects team members said. It appears that, for all the algorithms, study, and technology, computers still have not figured out the physics of the real world. There is a great nostalgia present for the “good old days,” and maybe even a sadness that a stunning filming miniature like the Nostromo may never be built again. But others were more blunt in their assessment of the modern techniques.
"I hate this computer-generated crap.”
Wherever the science fiction film genre may have ended up after the last thirty years, it got there in large part due to the May 25, 1979 release of ALIEN. The film, though initially experiencing a “mixed” reception from critics, was a major commercial success. It raked in over 80 million dollars in the United States alone, nearly ten times its production budget. Audiences were thrilled and horrified, and many couldn’t stop going back to the theater to experience it all again. Religious zealots so reviled ALIEN’s “demonic” imagery that they set fire to the space jockey model when it was put on display at Grauman’s Egyptian theater in Los Angeles to promote the film.
Ridley Scott’s coming out party was a reckoning.
ALIEN took two genres that critics looked down their noses at—sci-fi and horror—and turned it into intellectually provocative, adult, elevated fare. The film won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, thanks in large part to the work of Brian Johnson’s team and the visionary design of H.R. Giger. Many films that came after would mimic ALIEN (and benefit from riding its coattails), but few since, even thirty years later, can be rightfully held up beside it.
But, all was not guaranteed. Brian Johnson recalls approaching the commercial director’s hire onto ALIEN with trepidation. “When I first started on Alien, Walter Hill was going to direct. I had no idea that instead of an accomplished screenplay writer who had also directed HARD TIMES and THE DRIVER… a [British] TV commercials director of repute and director of THE DUELLISTS... would take ALIEN to the heights that few directors would have equaled.” Johnson maintains a warm place in his heart for Ridley Scott, who he compares favorably to the visionary Stanley Kubrick for his shot composition. “Ridley had a massive influence on every effects shot and in my view [is] an equal to Stanley Kubrick in terms of composition of each image. Unlike Kubrick, who claimed the effects Oscar® for 2001 [A SPACE ODYSSEY]… Ridley did not claim to have title to the Alien effects Oscar. For that I am personally very grateful!”
And so the ALIEN production was then broken down, the sets were struck and the writer, director, producers, and crew carried on with their careers. But what about the Nostromo? What does one do with a spaceship that takes up seventy-seven square feet of space and that takes a team of men just to move it from room to room?
Any suggestions from you or Mother?
No, we're still collating.
Next week, in our third installment, the Nostromo makes its voyage West, across the Atlantic, the Mississippi and the Rockies to land in the most famous driveway in prop collecting history.
And so the ALIEN production was then broken down, the sets were struck and the writer, director, producers, and crew carried on with their careers. But what about the Nostromo? What does one do with a spaceship that takes up seventy-seven square feet of space and that takes a team of men just to move it from room to room?
Any suggestions from you or Mother?
No, we're still collating.
Next week, in our third installment, the Nostromo makes its voyage West, across the Atlantic, the Mississippi and the Rockies to land in the most famous driveway in prop collecting history.
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Check out our next installment of this 5 part series!
NOSTROMO: A LEGEND BORN AND BORN AGAIN: Part 3
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