Behind scenes video of how the special effects in 'Aliens' were created

August 12, 2016 7:41 AM

Stan Winston School of Character Arts celebrates the 30th anniversary of James Cameron's Aliens with fascinating behind the scenes videos of alien creation and animation.
posted by Slithy_Tove (16 comments total)

Aliens 30th Anniversary Q&A @ Comic-Con 2016 (Podcast) - talks a lot about the puppetry of the Alien Queen, which has a complex affair. Per Cameron the hid a lot with smoke and strobes and for every shot they used the frame before and frame after are probably garbage. It was a different time...
posted by Artw at 7:58 AM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

Somebody wake up Hicks.
posted by zarq at 9:25 AM on August 12, 2016 [8 favorites]

The last two clips on the page are from this feature length documentary: The Making of Aliens (1986) There are interviews with Cameron and some of the cast -- it looks really fascinating.
posted by zarq at 9:49 AM on August 12, 2016

Trashbag Alien queen is my favorite clip.
posted by Artw at 10:22 AM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

The 30th Anniversary panel is also up on YouTube.
posted by Artw at 10:24 AM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

There was a 25th Anniversary panel that was pretty good as well, but missing some of the big players.
posted by Artw at 10:35 AM on August 12, 2016

I can also suggest Matt Gourley's wonderful interview podcast "I Was There Too", which did a number of interviews with folks from Aliens:

NOVEMBER 12, 2014: Ricco Ross

MARCH 24, 2015: Jenette Goldstein

MAY 11, 2016: Live Panel w/ Carrie Henn, Ricco Ross, and Jenette Goldstein
posted by Strange Interlude at 12:51 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

I love how Cameron managed to make a fairly low budget film look like an epic just with puppets and rear projection and literal smoke and mirrors. Even the nuclear explosion toward the end was basically a puppet.
posted by octothorpe at 1:48 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Obligatory: the ridicuolously amazing Aliens rap.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 2:52 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

I just watched this movie last night, coincidentally enough. (And Alien^3 and Alien: Resurrection).

Trivia: Joss Whedon wrote the screenplay for A:R and it was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek adventure, and he was incredibly unhappy with how it was turned into a dramatic thriller. However, he found a way to make his vision a reality anyway, at least briefly, because that show was Firefly.
posted by Autumnheart at 4:09 PM on August 12, 2016

There something about the style and/or tone of A:R - I've never been able to put my finger on exactly what - that induces an almost physical queasiness. A3 has that classic Fincherian uneasy-tension-building, but its sequel has its own uniquely visceral...yuckiness.
posted by gottabefunky at 5:12 PM on August 12, 2016

A lot of that is probably Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who was basically making The City of Lost Children, But in Spaaaaace, which didn''t really mesh well with the script which, as noted, was basically Firefly. Then there's the pink bloby alien and I don;t really know who is to blame for that bit.
posted by Artw at 7:10 AM on August 13, 2016

Whedon on Alien Ressurection:

BE: Okay, and I’ve got one final one, and I promise this is it, but my editor’s as big a geek as I am (You wish, Pop Boy – Ed.), and he wanted to know how different was the final version of “Alien Resurrection” when compared to your script? I mean, was it really dramatic...?

JW: Uh...you know, it wasn’t a question of doing everything differently, although they changed the ending, it was mostly a matter of doing everything wrong. They said the lines...mostly...but they said them all wrong. And they cast it wrong. And they designed it wrong. And they scored it wrong. They did everything wrong that they could possibly do. There’s actually a fascinating lesson in filmmaking, because everything that they did reflects back to the script or looks like something from the script, and people assume that, if I hated it, then they’d changed the script...but it wasn’t so much that they’d changed the script; it’s that they just executed it in such a ghastly fashion as to render it almost unwatchable. (Pauses) Good times. (Pauses again) Well, I really must go...
posted by Artw at 7:24 AM on August 13, 2016

I'm a huge fan of Alien and Aliens and like the workprint of Alien^3 but I've never actually forced myself to watch Alien Resurrection. I've got it with the others on the Blu-Ray set so I really should get around to it one of these days.
posted by octothorpe at 7:28 AM on August 13, 2016

Would suggest watching pretty much any other Jeunet movie instead.
posted by Artw at 7:36 AM on August 13, 2016

The only one of his I've seen is Micmacs which was fun but totally forgettable.
posted by octothorpe at 7:39 AM on August 13, 2016