1
00:00:03,712 --> 00:00:08,424
My name is Terry Rawlings.
I'm the editor of Alien 3.

2
00:00:08,592 --> 00:00:13,054
And it was a thrill to work with
David Fincher on his very first film,

3
00:00:13,222 --> 00:00:17,767
which was a very difficuIt task, in a way.

4
00:00:17,935 --> 00:00:20,436
And it was nothing to do
with David Fincher,

5
00:00:20,604 --> 00:00:22,772
who I think did an incredible job.

6
00:00:22,940 --> 00:00:27,944
And I wish that he had
fought for it harder in pIaces

7
00:00:28,112 --> 00:00:35,451
because it became very difficult handIing
sort of the front office at Fox. (chuckles)

8
00:00:35,619 --> 00:00:40,164
They never Iet us properly complete the film
in Pinewood Studios before we left,

9
00:00:40,332 --> 00:00:43,543
so there were things
outstanding for the film.

10
00:00:43,711 --> 00:00:45,878
So when we first got it all together,

11
00:00:46,046 --> 00:00:52,385
it just didn't quite work
because of the areas that were missing.

12
00:00:59,727 --> 00:01:01,227
My name is Alec Gillis.

13
00:01:01,395 --> 00:01:06,482
I am the codesigner of
the creature effects for Alien 3

14
00:01:06,650 --> 00:01:11,988
of Amalgamated Dynamics Incorporated.

15
00:01:12,156 --> 00:01:13,740
I'm Tom Woodruff, Jr.

16
00:01:13,907 --> 00:01:16,325
I'm Alec's partner
in Amalgamated Dynamics,

17
00:01:16,493 --> 00:01:18,745
cocreator of the Alien effects,

18
00:01:18,912 --> 00:01:22,665
and I was in the rubber monster suit.

19
00:01:22,833 --> 00:01:28,337
I'm Richard Edlund. I was the visual-effects
supervisor on the show.

20
00:01:28,505 --> 00:01:32,300
It's the last movie we ever did
totally photochemicaIly, actually.

21
00:01:32,468 --> 00:01:35,511
(Gillis) Right.
This was on the cusp of the digital age.

22
00:01:35,679 --> 00:01:38,014
(Edlund) We did have some
digital elements.

23
00:01:38,182 --> 00:01:42,727
When the alien's head cracks at the end
it was a digital shot. That was the only one.

24
00:01:42,895 --> 00:01:45,271
- (Gillis) Styrofoam floor.
- (Edlund) Yes.

25
00:01:45,439 --> 00:01:47,690
(Gillis) We had a better
Styrofoam floor for that

26
00:01:47,858 --> 00:01:51,110
where we'd covered it with metallic dust.

27
00:01:51,278 --> 00:01:53,446
It made a more interesting effect.

28
00:01:53,614 --> 00:01:57,825
I've always been a little self-conscious
of those Styrofoam floors.

29
00:01:57,993 --> 00:02:00,870
(Edlund) Plus, that alien juice
is pretty mean stuff.

30
00:02:01,038 --> 00:02:05,708
(Woodruff) I think it's interesting that you
can fly through space in a Styrofoam ship!

31
00:02:05,876 --> 00:02:11,255
(Gillis) Hey, there's a glimpse... Was that it?
That scan, that was a fun scan.

32
00:02:11,423 --> 00:02:14,842
There it is - the multilayered sculpture.

33
00:02:15,010 --> 00:02:18,846
- Are those your star fields too, Richard?
- Yeah.

34
00:02:20,224 --> 00:02:28,189
I'm Alex Thomson. I was the director
of photography on this movie, Alien 3.

35
00:02:28,357 --> 00:02:35,571
I actually got involved because the original
cameraman was Jordan Scott Cronenweth,

36
00:02:35,739 --> 00:02:41,369
who did Blade Runnerfor Ridley Scott,
beautifuIly in my opinion.

37
00:02:41,537 --> 00:02:47,416
But Jordan became ill
in the first four days of shooting

38
00:02:47,584 --> 00:02:51,337
and had to leave the production.

39
00:02:51,505 --> 00:02:53,965
I was asked to take over,

40
00:02:54,132 --> 00:02:59,262
and I was honored to be able to try
and match to his lighting.

41
00:02:59,429 --> 00:03:03,808
(Rawlings) All I heard, and I wouldn't know
if there was any other reason whatsoever,

42
00:03:03,976 --> 00:03:08,104
was the fact that Jordan wasn't welI.

43
00:03:08,272 --> 00:03:12,108
We knew he had got Parkinson's.
We knew he had that.

44
00:03:12,276 --> 00:03:18,197
You could see he wasn't a fit man obviously
when I used to go and talk to him.

45
00:03:18,365 --> 00:03:21,409
He was a great character.
I liked him very much.

46
00:03:21,577 --> 00:03:23,578
I knew him from Blade Runner.

47
00:03:23,745 --> 00:03:27,456
I'd met him on Altered States, too,
cos Stuart cut that, didn't he?

48
00:03:27,624 --> 00:03:29,625
But I'm convinced it was

49
00:03:29,918 --> 00:03:34,380
the fact that he wasn't
well enough to continue.

50
00:03:34,548 --> 00:03:40,094
I know it was a sad loss,
but at the same time, I love Alex's work.

51
00:03:40,262 --> 00:03:43,264
I did Legend with him.

52
00:03:43,432 --> 00:03:47,226
Yeah, and I Iove him anyway.

53
00:03:47,394 --> 00:03:50,313
And I did The Saint with him.

54
00:03:50,480 --> 00:03:55,151
(Gillis) I love this shot,
and I love the fact that it's a model.

55
00:03:55,319 --> 00:04:01,115
I just still feel that these miniatures have a
quality that CGI spaceships just don't have.

56
00:04:01,283 --> 00:04:03,910
Do you think that, Richard,
or is that just me?

57
00:04:04,077 --> 00:04:06,078
Am I being old-fashioned?

58
00:04:06,246 --> 00:04:09,123
(Edlund) Well, it can and it can't.
I mean, it depends.

59
00:04:09,291 --> 00:04:14,253
On Air Force One
I would never have made any models now.

60
00:04:14,421 --> 00:04:17,798
It depends on the kind of stuff.

61
00:04:17,966 --> 00:04:21,010
(Thomson) This is obviously
special effects.

62
00:04:21,178 --> 00:04:24,013
These are models
shot by the second unit,

63
00:04:24,181 --> 00:04:28,017
by Tony Spratling,
up in the north of England.

64
00:05:04,721 --> 00:05:10,226
(Gillis) So, yes, this is the footage
of CharIes Dance's character

65
00:05:10,394 --> 00:05:16,273
approaching, finding the RipIey character
on the beach.

66
00:05:16,441 --> 00:05:22,196
For this scene, we at Amalgamated,
with our U.S. and British crew,

67
00:05:22,364 --> 00:05:25,700
had to build a replica
of Sigourney Weaver.

68
00:05:26,451 --> 00:05:32,331
And it was based on a life cast of her,
a head cast only.

69
00:05:32,499 --> 00:05:36,335
She had just had a baby
when we had a chance to do it.

70
00:05:36,503 --> 00:05:39,338
That's actually-- I believe that
that is an actress,

71
00:05:39,506 --> 00:05:44,176
although I can't tell if that's a stand-in
or our dummy.

72
00:05:44,344 --> 00:05:46,929
But that, of course, is Sigourney Weaver.

73
00:05:47,097 --> 00:05:51,767
But she had told us that she would be
losing weight, so we had to...

74
00:05:51,935 --> 00:05:56,480
She had just had the baby
and we had to extrapolate

75
00:05:56,648 --> 00:06:02,153
what her body would look like, and so you
can see how accurate it Iooks in these shots.

76
00:06:02,320 --> 00:06:04,947
There it is. There.
That looks just like Sigourney.

77
00:06:05,115 --> 00:06:08,617
It's funny, because we really labor
over a lot of these things

78
00:06:08,785 --> 00:06:14,290
and that's the real Sigourney.
So I think that's about it for the dummy.

79
00:06:14,458 --> 00:06:15,791
But it was a beautiful scuIpture.

80
00:06:15,959 --> 00:06:19,420
Gary Pollard,
who is a very taIented British sculptor,

81
00:06:19,588 --> 00:06:24,133
sculpted that and it was used
to save Charles Dance's back.

82
00:06:25,302 --> 00:06:28,471
So that he could carry Sigourney.
Those are all the little lice.

83
00:06:28,638 --> 00:06:33,476
They're actually crickets, I believe,
that ended up in Tom's suit.

84
00:06:33,643 --> 00:06:37,480
Because the crickets were all over the place
and when Tom was wearing the alien suit,

85
00:06:38,190 --> 00:06:42,485
he had them crawling down his neck
and into his briefs and all that.

86
00:06:42,778 --> 00:06:46,447
And in fact, there's a fake ox here,
coming up,

87
00:06:46,615 --> 00:06:49,575
that was covered
with the crickets as well.

88
00:06:49,743 --> 00:06:55,498
And even when we shipped all of our stuff
back to LA months later,

89
00:06:55,665 --> 00:07:02,171
we opened the crate and there were
full-grown crickets in the ox's body.

90
00:07:02,339 --> 00:07:06,842
So they're very hardy and tenacious
little-- Just like the aIien, I guess.

91
00:07:09,846 --> 00:07:12,598
This scene makes me laugh a little bit,

92
00:07:12,766 --> 00:07:16,018
because in the pre-production meetings,
David Fincher was joking

93
00:07:16,186 --> 00:07:17,812
that he didn't want
any miscommunications.

94
00:07:17,979 --> 00:07:21,315
He said, "This is a team of oxen,
not dachshund."

95
00:07:21,483 --> 00:07:24,819
He said, "I don't wanna show up
on the beaches in Northern England

96
00:07:24,986 --> 00:07:28,364
with 12 littIe dachshund. I want oxen."

97
00:07:29,533 --> 00:07:32,368
Of course he tells it better than I do.

98
00:07:33,370 --> 00:07:36,872
Again, Sigourney-- You can telI
how lean she was in this movie.

99
00:07:37,040 --> 00:07:40,626
She had really worked out
and I guess she had just a...

100
00:07:40,794 --> 00:07:44,463
I don't know if it was a few months,
six months maybe,

101
00:07:45,006 --> 00:07:47,383
after having her baby.

102
00:07:47,551 --> 00:07:51,554
So this was what became
of the beloved characters from Aliens.

103
00:07:51,721 --> 00:07:55,474
There's Bishop and the rest of them.

104
00:07:55,892 --> 00:08:00,813
All of which we labored over.
And there's Hicks.

105
00:08:00,981 --> 00:08:03,524
Yeah, that's MichaeI Biehn, that likeness.

106
00:08:03,692 --> 00:08:07,027
A broken jaw and a twisted hand.

107
00:08:07,195 --> 00:08:10,239
I think Fincher kind of liked...

108
00:08:10,907 --> 00:08:13,075
He liked messing with the audience
in that way.

109
00:08:13,243 --> 00:08:16,412
I think it was his way of putting
his stamp on it

110
00:08:16,705 --> 00:08:20,040
by eIiminating the previous
characters except for Ripley.

111
00:08:20,208 --> 00:08:25,337
He wanted to create a world
that did not make you feel safe.

112
00:08:25,505 --> 00:08:30,426
He wanted you to be thrust
right back into danger

113
00:08:30,594 --> 00:08:33,470
and throw your equilibrium off.

114
00:08:33,638 --> 00:08:37,266
Which I think is part of the reason
why fans, when this movie came out,

115
00:08:37,893 --> 00:08:43,147
fans didn't have a great reaction to it,
because they expected something

116
00:08:43,315 --> 00:08:45,566
more along the Iine of Aliens.

117
00:08:45,734 --> 00:08:50,487
And as we know now, as we see
how Fincher's films have developed,

118
00:08:50,655 --> 00:08:55,492
he is a unique filmmaker,
a unique director with his own vision.

119
00:08:55,660 --> 00:09:00,623
And I think that's part of what he wanted
to estabIish with this movie.

120
00:09:00,790 --> 00:09:03,459
And there's the team of dachshund.

121
00:09:03,627 --> 00:09:08,672
And that full scale EEV,
which was a very cool prop,

122
00:09:08,840 --> 00:09:11,759
very nicely detailed.

123
00:09:14,930 --> 00:09:18,140
This is more of Richard Edlund's
beautifuI shots.

124
00:09:18,308 --> 00:09:22,853
All pre-digital. Actually, there were
a few little digital components,

125
00:09:23,021 --> 00:09:24,813
like the debris in the air, and so on.

126
00:09:24,981 --> 00:09:28,609
But this was sort of the end
of the optical era.

127
00:10:16,157 --> 00:10:19,201
(Thomson) You notice
in these sequences,

128
00:10:19,369 --> 00:10:22,579
the camera is near the ground

129
00:10:22,747 --> 00:10:26,292
so the ceiling becomes
more important than the floor

130
00:10:26,459 --> 00:10:31,588
and one is shooting up people's nostrils.

131
00:10:31,756 --> 00:10:35,676
This was an approach
David Fincher wanted,

132
00:10:35,844 --> 00:10:37,720
which I think is terribly effective indeed

133
00:10:37,887 --> 00:10:44,393
and makes it more distinctive
than the other three, rather, in my opinion.

134
00:10:44,561 --> 00:10:50,065
I tried to keep it fairIy shadowy,
so that it looks moody.

135
00:10:50,233 --> 00:10:53,235
Where I could,
I brought the light from the top

136
00:10:53,403 --> 00:10:57,197
because it's unusual
for the light to come from the floor,

137
00:10:57,365 --> 00:11:00,242
but one had to be careful
about it obviously.

138
00:11:00,410 --> 00:11:02,745
The difficulty was getting light
into the eyes

139
00:11:02,912 --> 00:11:06,206
so we could see what
the actors were thinking

140
00:11:06,374 --> 00:11:09,668
but not at the expense of the mood.

141
00:11:10,879 --> 00:11:16,008
(Woodruff) I remember at Pinewood Studios
when the sets were going up,

142
00:11:16,176 --> 00:11:20,387
Fincher would have us walk through
the sets just looking at the scope of them.

143
00:11:20,555 --> 00:11:22,890
It was truly amazing
to see these things go up.

144
00:11:23,058 --> 00:11:27,144
(Edlund) Norman Reynolds is a great
production designer. He builds the world.

145
00:11:27,312 --> 00:11:31,857
It's very difficult to control him
cos George would tell him on Star Wars

146
00:11:32,025 --> 00:11:36,779
"Don't build that. We're gonna paint it",
and the next day - "It's too late. It's built."

147
00:11:36,946 --> 00:11:40,949
(Woodruff) When they sent us over,
we said "Why are we going to London?"

148
00:11:41,117 --> 00:11:46,121
They said "It's the sets, the set design,
the artistry and the craftsmanship."

149
00:11:46,289 --> 00:11:48,290
And it really was very true.

150
00:11:48,458 --> 00:11:51,585
(Edlund) British actors
is another good reason to go there.

151
00:11:51,753 --> 00:11:56,465
Somehow the British accent
does a lot for these movies, I think.

152
00:11:56,633 --> 00:12:01,970
Vincent has had a deep,
abiding interest in Luddite monks,

153
00:12:02,138 --> 00:12:04,765
and had done a great movie
calIed The Navigator,

154
00:12:04,933 --> 00:12:09,144
where these monks dig
their way through the earth,

155
00:12:09,312 --> 00:12:13,190
coming out into the 20th Century.
It was a great movie. But, anyway,

156
00:12:13,525 --> 00:12:17,945
the original idea was that this was
a wooden planet buiIt by the Luddites

157
00:12:18,113 --> 00:12:24,284
and in the bottom of the planet,
symbolically, the reactor was kind of hell.

158
00:12:24,452 --> 00:12:27,621
The technology that kept this thing going

159
00:12:27,789 --> 00:12:33,627
was emanating from
the boweIs of Lucifer.

160
00:12:33,795 --> 00:12:38,715
What drew me to the project first
was that it wasn't a retread kind of sequel.

161
00:12:38,883 --> 00:12:46,765
It was a completely new idea,
and some of it survived in the final script.

162
00:12:48,476 --> 00:12:53,147
(Thomson) David was entirely in control
from the beginning. He put his stamp on it.

163
00:12:53,314 --> 00:12:56,358
He was the director
and nobody ever questioned it.

164
00:12:56,526 --> 00:13:02,781
He was completely in control of the set
and everybody hung on his words.

165
00:13:02,949 --> 00:13:07,619
He was definitely doing it.
There was no weakness in it at alI.

166
00:13:07,787 --> 00:13:13,000
He was very, very confident in what
he was doing and wouldn't be swayed.

167
00:13:13,168 --> 00:13:17,045
He had this vision
and that was what he was going to do.

168
00:13:17,213 --> 00:13:20,799
He came under quite a lot of pressure
from 20th Century Fox

169
00:13:20,967 --> 00:13:27,723
to hurry up or do it the quickest way or the
most expedient way, but he wouldn't listen.

170
00:13:27,891 --> 00:13:31,935
He would do what he wanted to do,
quite rightly, in my opinion.

171
00:13:32,103 --> 00:13:37,065
As I say, his compositions are marvelous
and the use of the frame, and so on.

172
00:13:37,233 --> 00:13:43,238
David had been a cinematographer before
he became a director, so he knew lighting.

173
00:13:43,406 --> 00:13:46,283
He knew what was good
and what was bad.

174
00:13:46,451 --> 00:13:50,245
That's not to take away
from David Worley, the operator.

175
00:13:50,413 --> 00:13:53,373
His contribution was enormous as weIl.

176
00:13:58,880 --> 00:14:05,427
My name is Paul McGann.
I played GoIic in Alien Cubed.

177
00:14:05,595 --> 00:14:09,932
It's fairly standard practice,
particularly on such a big venture,

178
00:14:10,099 --> 00:14:12,768
that things are necessarily
going to change.

179
00:14:12,936 --> 00:14:16,480
Until that point, I'd never worked
on anything on that scale.

180
00:14:16,648 --> 00:14:20,526
But there seemed to be
these characters moving around,

181
00:14:20,693 --> 00:14:26,949
particularly when Fincher was there,
in unison, watching him or watching us.

182
00:14:27,116 --> 00:14:33,205
Any shenanigans or machinations behind
the scenes tend to be kept from the actors,

183
00:14:33,373 --> 00:14:36,416
but we were well aware
of the atmosphere

184
00:14:36,584 --> 00:14:40,337
and the changes coming down
from on high. That said,

185
00:14:40,630 --> 00:14:42,005
the atmosphere was good.

186
00:14:42,173 --> 00:14:47,010
If there were changes in the strands
of the story, then we'd get decent warning.

187
00:14:47,178 --> 00:14:51,473
But it became apparent, even just after
two weeks, that there was a chance that

188
00:14:51,641 --> 00:14:57,813
that sequence we just shot may not make it,
so we're gonna shoot another version of it.

189
00:14:57,981 --> 00:15:01,316
It seemed expensive...

190
00:15:01,651 --> 00:15:03,527
and just unsure.

191
00:15:03,695 --> 00:15:09,992
I remember when I first met Fincher,
Fincher was incredibly energetic.

192
00:15:10,159 --> 00:15:13,537
It was at the start of this
1 2-month process.

193
00:15:13,705 --> 00:15:16,999
I remember seeing him in LA
towards the end of the thing

194
00:15:17,166 --> 00:15:19,334
and he was exhausted, naturally.

195
00:15:19,502 --> 00:15:24,715
But at that time, meeting him,
he was fulI of beans, full of ideas.

196
00:15:24,882 --> 00:15:30,846
Don't forget, Walter HiIl, David Giler, these
people were very experienced filmmakers.

197
00:15:31,014 --> 00:15:33,265
Any of the things that were happening,

198
00:15:33,433 --> 00:15:40,981
obviousIy the advice Fincher was receiving
was from highIy experienced people.

199
00:15:42,483 --> 00:15:44,026
(Thomson) It was a nice idea

200
00:15:44,193 --> 00:15:48,697
that Sigourney's wearing a contact lens
in the left eye.

201
00:15:48,865 --> 00:15:53,702
And the bruising,
I think that's a rather nice touch there.

202
00:15:53,870 --> 00:15:57,748
Most of the sets had ceilings on
because we saw the ceilings so often,

203
00:15:57,915 --> 00:16:05,297
so one used to have to hide the light
where you could to the best effect.

204
00:16:05,465 --> 00:16:12,429
This going in and out of light...
I put a cukaloris on the lamp.

205
00:16:12,597 --> 00:16:17,684
A cukaloris is a shape -
just cutouts on a piece of wood.

206
00:16:17,935 --> 00:16:23,607
It creates patches of light
that she goes in and out of.

207
00:16:23,775 --> 00:16:26,234
Sometimes it doesn't work

208
00:16:26,402 --> 00:16:29,738
because the actors are concentrating
on what they're saying,

209
00:16:29,906 --> 00:16:34,618
and they forget to find a light
on their faces.

210
00:17:31,426 --> 00:17:34,970
(Thomson) The light coming from the top
was a 7K Zenon lamp,

211
00:17:35,138 --> 00:17:40,100
which gives you very straight beams,
which I thought would be quite a good idea.

212
00:17:40,268 --> 00:17:45,605
I shot it up through a mirror because you
can't tiIt them down or the condenser burns.

213
00:17:45,773 --> 00:17:51,570
But we had a mirror above the set and I
shined it from the floor onto the mirror.

214
00:17:51,737 --> 00:17:55,907
(Woodruff) This autopsy scene was a
favorite of Fincher's, too, because we had

215
00:17:56,159 --> 00:17:58,243
created a body of Newt

216
00:17:58,411 --> 00:18:03,957
that had multiple layers of tissue, skin
and musculature that could be cut through,

217
00:18:04,125 --> 00:18:06,126
and the bones opened up.

218
00:18:06,294 --> 00:18:10,338
It's a lot of graphic coverage
that's not in the final movie.

219
00:18:10,506 --> 00:18:13,592
The body of Newt
was actually based on...

220
00:18:13,759 --> 00:18:17,804
Alec and I had done a life cast
of Carrie Henn during Aliens,

221
00:18:17,972 --> 00:18:24,728
and whiIe we were in London Bob Keen's
shop actualIy had a casting of the head.

222
00:18:24,896 --> 00:18:27,564
We were abIe to get that and remold it,

223
00:18:27,732 --> 00:18:31,818
so we were able to duplicate
what the actress had looked like

224
00:18:31,986 --> 00:18:35,655
some five or six years previousIy.

225
00:18:35,823 --> 00:18:41,286
(Gillis) There is intercutting here
with the real girl as well.

226
00:18:43,789 --> 00:18:50,128
- (Edlund) She has a lot of fuzz on her face.
- (Gillis) Yeah. Backlit fuzz.

227
00:18:54,175 --> 00:18:58,845
(McGann) Even for whatever he was,
26, 27, he'd seen a lot of pictures.

228
00:18:59,013 --> 00:19:00,680
He was a cineaste.

229
00:19:00,848 --> 00:19:05,310
He told me about his background, where
he'd come from and how he'd got the gig.

230
00:19:05,478 --> 00:19:08,647
His ideas seemed very cinematic.

231
00:19:08,814 --> 00:19:12,317
Even then he'd joke and say
"This is a Hitchcockian bit."

232
00:19:12,485 --> 00:19:18,281
"Here comes John Ford and here comes
somebody else", so there are littIe nods.

233
00:19:18,449 --> 00:19:25,539
It was the kind of energy of somebody
confident and someone who is a fan.

234
00:19:25,706 --> 00:19:29,918
When we'd work he'd say

235
00:19:30,086 --> 00:19:34,172
"Remember I told you this was
that scene from The Third Man?"

236
00:19:34,340 --> 00:19:37,008
And you'd get it,
whether it was some shots,

237
00:19:37,176 --> 00:19:39,719
some camera angles, some bit of lighting.

238
00:19:39,887 --> 00:19:46,601
It was nice. It was a bit of bravado,
but he was very confident and decisive.

239
00:19:46,769 --> 00:19:53,191
Good to work with,
and he also knew and liked actors.

240
00:20:19,468 --> 00:20:23,388
(Woodruff) When we finished the body
of Newt with that big incision

241
00:20:23,556 --> 00:20:28,476
we took the body outside
and laid it in the snow and took pictures.

242
00:20:28,644 --> 00:20:32,772
And we worked it into
a Christmas card for David Fincher.

243
00:20:32,940 --> 00:20:37,319
It said something like "Merry Christmas
from the victim of a sIedding accident."

244
00:20:37,486 --> 00:20:41,072
We were very clever!
Not like today.

245
00:20:41,240 --> 00:20:45,910
(Gillis) Well, this is much more tasteful
than what the original plan was.

246
00:20:46,078 --> 00:20:49,581
(Edlund) You heard the cracking of bones
and that kind of thing.

247
00:20:52,001 --> 00:20:55,003
(Woodruff) That's a great reaction.

248
00:20:55,171 --> 00:21:01,801
I think that eye looks great, that messed-up
eye on Sigourney is very effective.

249
00:21:03,262 --> 00:21:08,391
(Thomson) Some people think that it takes
longer to light because it's a wide screen.

250
00:21:08,559 --> 00:21:15,106
Because it's Cinemascope, the lenses
are slower than they wouId be normally,

251
00:21:15,274 --> 00:21:18,693
but I don't find it that way at all.

252
00:21:18,861 --> 00:21:24,866
I think it's...
I generally shoot at about f-4 anyway.

253
00:21:25,034 --> 00:21:28,411
A lot of people like to shoot wide open,
but I don't.

254
00:21:28,579 --> 00:21:32,040
I like the depth of focus
that one gets at 4 or 5.6.

255
00:21:32,208 --> 00:21:39,798
And I don't like to see two shots where one
person is sharp and the other one is blunt.

256
00:21:39,965 --> 00:21:45,887
I've never found it a problem
to light to the Cinemascope demands.

257
00:21:48,182 --> 00:21:54,437
I actually found a fitting which they use

258
00:21:54,605 --> 00:21:57,565
in operating theaters
for surgery and so on,

259
00:21:57,733 --> 00:22:01,236
which I liked the shape of,
but unfortunately we don't see it often.

260
00:22:01,404 --> 00:22:04,114
I think there's one shot
where we do see it.

261
00:22:04,281 --> 00:22:11,079
It's a circular thing with,
I think, four or five globes in it.

262
00:22:11,247 --> 00:22:16,751
I thought the shape was terrific,
but, as I say, we only see it once I think.

263
00:22:16,919 --> 00:22:23,007
I never got it in the picture unfortunately
cos they played it against the board.

264
00:22:23,175 --> 00:22:28,388
I think when we cut wider we see it,
whenever that happens...

265
00:22:28,556 --> 00:22:33,476
There you go. There's the old lamp
just for a brief moment.

266
00:22:33,644 --> 00:22:38,022
I wish we could have played it more
cos it's a beautiful shape.

267
00:22:38,190 --> 00:22:41,776
Of course, it's the raison d'être
of the light -

268
00:22:41,944 --> 00:22:46,614
that's where the light's coming from,
so you'd Iike to see it a bit more.

269
00:22:46,782 --> 00:22:52,120
It's always the thing that we're fighting
as cameramen, that we have a light source,

270
00:22:52,288 --> 00:22:55,415
and when you find the film's edited,

271
00:22:55,583 --> 00:22:58,293
you never see where
the light is coming from.

272
00:22:58,461 --> 00:23:04,132
I did a whole sequence on a picture
with firelight, and we never saw the fire.

273
00:23:04,300 --> 00:23:09,721
- (Edlund) Was it 86, his name?
- (Woodruff) 85. His IQ.

274
00:23:09,889 --> 00:23:13,892
- He's a lot of fun to watch in this movie.
- (Edlund) Yeah.

275
00:23:17,229 --> 00:23:23,735
He could get a job
as an airport security guard.

276
00:23:23,903 --> 00:23:26,362
(both laugh)

277
00:23:29,366 --> 00:23:36,831
(Gillis) And the warden -
was that Brian Glover? Is that who that is? -

278
00:23:36,999 --> 00:23:39,667
was a wrestler or something?

279
00:23:39,835 --> 00:23:44,088
Cos I know all the British guys on the crew
were very excited to see him.

280
00:23:44,256 --> 00:23:46,341
They loved him cos he was a wrestler.

281
00:23:46,509 --> 00:23:51,429
(Woodruff) And everybody was excited from
him being in American Werewolfin London,

282
00:23:51,597 --> 00:23:54,015
and doing his lines over and over.

283
00:23:54,183 --> 00:23:56,684
- (Gillis) That's right.
- "That's enough."

284
00:23:56,852 --> 00:23:58,603
(Gillis) "That's enuff."

285
00:23:58,771 --> 00:24:02,607
(Thomson) I think by this time I'd said
"Why can't we see the lamp, guys?"

286
00:24:02,775 --> 00:24:05,693
And we pulled it into the shot.

287
00:24:05,861 --> 00:24:09,739
It had a sort of curious
bluey-green feeI to it,

288
00:24:09,907 --> 00:24:14,619
which I kind of re-echoed
in the close shots.

289
00:24:16,372 --> 00:24:18,957
This is Lance Henriksen.

290
00:24:19,124 --> 00:24:24,379
I bought the big winding staircase
from this movie.

291
00:24:24,672 --> 00:24:26,339
I had it shipped home
and I put it in my house.

292
00:24:26,507 --> 00:24:28,633
That big cast-iron staircase.

293
00:24:28,801 --> 00:24:34,556
(Gillis) The decision to go away
from the ox as a vehicle

294
00:24:34,723 --> 00:24:39,769
for the birth of the aIien
was, as I recall,

295
00:24:39,937 --> 00:24:44,065
in our postproduction phase,
because generally it was felt

296
00:24:44,233 --> 00:24:48,778
that an ox is sort of a cumbersome,
slow, non-threatening animal.

297
00:24:48,946 --> 00:24:53,783
And that a faster-moving four-legged
animal, more aggressive animal

298
00:24:53,951 --> 00:24:57,245
would be a more interesting host
for the alien

299
00:24:57,413 --> 00:25:01,082
and that if it had picked up
any of its host's characteristics

300
00:25:01,584 --> 00:25:04,544
it would be better if it came,
for instance, from a Rottweiler

301
00:25:04,712 --> 00:25:08,423
than from a beast of burden,
which was probably a good move.

302
00:25:08,591 --> 00:25:14,095
Although all of this stuff with the ox

303
00:25:14,263 --> 00:25:17,473
has much more scope to it, which I love.

304
00:25:17,641 --> 00:25:19,475
And there's always something
about the...

305
00:25:19,643 --> 00:25:24,272
When you go back in
and retroactively change a script,

306
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:26,441
it's like a house of cards.

307
00:25:26,609 --> 00:25:29,777
If you can keep the whole thing
from collapsing that's great.

308
00:25:29,945 --> 00:25:35,617
But somehow, sometimes little changes
make it a difference.

309
00:25:35,784 --> 00:25:39,203
And not always for the better.
But it's understandable.

310
00:25:39,371 --> 00:25:43,124
I think that the creature...

311
00:25:43,292 --> 00:25:47,712
You know, an ox... An ox alien...
Eh, you know.

312
00:25:47,880 --> 00:25:49,631
Not very interesting.

313
00:25:50,132 --> 00:25:52,884
But it's actually quite a nice thing
and it was weighted very...

314
00:25:53,052 --> 00:25:57,138
We built it so that it had an armature in it
that we couId just add more weight to it.

315
00:25:57,306 --> 00:25:58,973
Sandbags and what have you.

316
00:25:59,183 --> 00:26:03,936
It really was weighing at probably
about 300 pounds for this scene,

317
00:26:04,104 --> 00:26:08,524
because it had to...
This actor's kicking it.

318
00:26:08,692 --> 00:26:12,779
It can't just bounce around
like a foam teddy bear.

319
00:26:16,158 --> 00:26:18,951
It was a queen facehugger
that was armor-plated

320
00:26:19,119 --> 00:26:21,746
to look like it carried
the embryo of a queen alien,

321
00:26:21,914 --> 00:26:23,998
and we got to redesign it.

322
00:26:24,166 --> 00:26:28,044
I think Gary Pollard sculpted that as well.
Yeah, he did.

323
00:26:28,212 --> 00:26:32,048
That wide shot of it
is the only shot you'll ever see of it.

324
00:26:32,216 --> 00:26:35,843
But once again, a beautiful dispIay piece
in our display room.

325
00:26:36,136 --> 00:26:41,641
(Edlund) There's a miniature
about 40 feet wide.

326
00:26:42,434 --> 00:26:46,854
Well, basically to shoot those
kind of miniatures you smoke the stage,

327
00:26:47,022 --> 00:26:50,525
and then you have lights underneath
to cause that cone of light.

328
00:26:50,693 --> 00:26:53,194
It makes it seem as though it's mighty hot.

329
00:26:53,362 --> 00:26:58,866
It's an awfuI lot of work for that one shot,

330
00:26:59,034 --> 00:27:03,538
but those are the kinds of shots
that give a movie the scale that it...

331
00:27:03,706 --> 00:27:07,875
(Thomson) And there's the pit,
the molten-lead pit.

332
00:27:08,043 --> 00:27:13,548
I had something like 1 ,000 amps
under a large piece of tracing paper.

333
00:27:13,716 --> 00:27:17,885
I don't know how many small units
were under there,

334
00:27:18,053 --> 00:27:20,221
but it's almost 1 ,000 amps

335
00:27:20,389 --> 00:27:24,058
shining under that thing just to try
and make it look really hot,

336
00:27:24,226 --> 00:27:27,395
and aIso to give the effect on the faces

337
00:27:27,563 --> 00:27:33,025
that the light is coming
from that boiling lead.

338
00:27:48,917 --> 00:27:52,503
(Gillis) And then, of course,
the scene with the ox bursting...

339
00:27:52,671 --> 00:27:57,925
I think that for the burst through,
I believe we did 70 takes

340
00:27:58,093 --> 00:28:02,430
where we had a section of ox ribcage
that was rigged to burst open

341
00:28:02,598 --> 00:28:05,641
in a very specific way,
and I think that was the most takes

342
00:28:05,809 --> 00:28:11,105
that we did, our unit did - it was
second unit - on Alien 3 to get it right.

343
00:28:11,273 --> 00:28:13,483
And it's a very quick cut.

344
00:28:13,650 --> 00:28:17,278
You're trying to tell a story
in the briefest possible time

345
00:28:17,446 --> 00:28:19,697
and six frames becomes very important.

346
00:28:19,865 --> 00:28:21,616
You can't just put anything on-screen.

347
00:28:21,784 --> 00:28:24,994
I think that was one of the lessons
from Ridley Scott on the first Alien

348
00:28:25,162 --> 00:28:30,792
is that those quick cuts are almost
subliminaI, but they're so important.

349
00:28:31,126 --> 00:28:37,799
(Thomson) We used anamorphic lenses
and the Cinemascope proportion 2.35:1 ,

350
00:28:37,966 --> 00:28:43,679
which is a constant decision
on the part of 20th Century Fox.

351
00:28:43,847 --> 00:28:48,976
I like it because one can compose very well
with the wide screen.

352
00:28:49,144 --> 00:28:51,479
I love the actual format.

353
00:28:51,647 --> 00:28:54,524
I think the images are quite nice.

354
00:28:54,691 --> 00:29:01,322
Also, when the curtain goes back
in the theater and you see a wide screen,

355
00:29:01,490 --> 00:29:04,992
it means an event picture.
It's not an ordinary picture.

356
00:29:05,160 --> 00:29:08,996
But it's tricky with the alien
cos you can't show too much of it,

357
00:29:09,164 --> 00:29:14,168
otherwise if you see exactly what it is,
it Ioses its shock vaIue reaIly.

358
00:29:14,336 --> 00:29:17,797
Although towards the end of the film
we see the shape more,

359
00:29:17,965 --> 00:29:22,343
but they did a marvelous job
with all that mucus and stuff.

360
00:29:25,681 --> 00:29:30,184
(Gillis) There's some of the flesh,
some of the ox flesh.

361
00:29:33,897 --> 00:29:36,190
Yeah, there's that--
There's aIl those cuts now.

362
00:29:36,358 --> 00:29:41,737
So now we're back into footage
that was shot with the creature in LA.

363
00:29:42,364 --> 00:29:46,492
And this was actually...

364
00:29:46,660 --> 00:29:48,619
We built what we called a teenage alien

365
00:29:48,787 --> 00:29:51,873
and retrofitted it to use in this scene.

366
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:56,043
Originally we built
what we caIl a "Bambi-burster."

367
00:29:56,837 --> 00:30:01,591
That's the teenage alien which spits acid
at one of the guys in the vent shaft

368
00:30:01,758 --> 00:30:06,470
and served us double duty here.
And we built a little rod-puppeted version.

369
00:30:06,638 --> 00:30:10,391
This is a CGI version,
which we had the benefit of the CGI

370
00:30:10,559 --> 00:30:13,477
in the 21 st century here,
which we didn't really.

371
00:30:13,645 --> 00:30:19,066
We built a rod-puppeted version,
and we aIso tried a little dog in a costume.

372
00:30:19,234 --> 00:30:22,904
We tried a whippet in a costume.

373
00:30:23,071 --> 00:30:25,406
And he did pretty good at the audition.

374
00:30:25,574 --> 00:30:27,366
Then once you got him
in front of the camera

375
00:30:27,534 --> 00:30:29,952
with all the rubber on,
he kind of froze up a Iittle bit.

376
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:33,205
It was pretty funny.
He was a nervous little doggy.

377
00:30:35,042 --> 00:30:40,463
And once we got him in situ, with all
those frightening chickens around him

378
00:30:40,631 --> 00:30:45,384
in their cages, he kind of seized up
and couldn't perform.

379
00:30:45,552 --> 00:30:52,141
But we buiIt a Bambi-burster rod puppet,
which was a one-to-one scale rod puppet,

380
00:30:52,309 --> 00:30:55,603
which had some mechanical stuff in it.

381
00:30:55,771 --> 00:31:00,024
I think we may have shot
some elements with it.

382
00:31:00,192 --> 00:31:02,985
But it was never comped,
it was never completed.

383
00:31:03,153 --> 00:31:07,281
The decision came down
that they were going to go...

384
00:31:08,784 --> 00:31:11,494
Use the Rottweiler instead.

385
00:31:11,662 --> 00:31:14,288
And then when we got back to LA,
we started building

386
00:31:14,790 --> 00:31:20,419
Rottweilers and mechanical dog parts
and stuff like that for the scene.

387
00:31:30,222 --> 00:31:34,684
So here we were in London
with no designs of the alien.

388
00:31:34,851 --> 00:31:38,813
Just sort of a partial build list.
We had crewed up

389
00:31:38,981 --> 00:31:44,902
and we had an additional 1 0 weeks
so we spent our time

390
00:31:45,487 --> 00:31:50,616
sculpting dead bodies
and doing the Sigourney dummy.

391
00:31:51,243 --> 00:31:57,039
And in that time, we were working
with Fincher on the design of the alien

392
00:31:57,207 --> 00:32:01,627
and the ideas and testing things
like the idea of a miniature rod puppet.

393
00:32:01,795 --> 00:32:03,713
Could a miniature rod puppet work

394
00:32:03,880 --> 00:32:07,216
to achieve the shots
of the alien running

395
00:32:07,384 --> 00:32:09,677
at high speed down corridors and so on.

396
00:32:09,845 --> 00:32:15,307
So we would do tests like that.
Also, H.R. Giger was involved at that time.

397
00:32:15,767 --> 00:32:20,604
We were all trying to figure out,
what's different about this alien

398
00:32:20,772 --> 00:32:23,524
than was seen in the previous films.

399
00:32:23,692 --> 00:32:28,863
What Giger did design specifically
for the movie was the Bambi-burster.

400
00:32:29,031 --> 00:32:34,702
That one pretty much served
as the bIueprint for the Bambi-burster.

401
00:32:34,870 --> 00:32:37,997
And then Steve Norrington sculpted it.

402
00:32:38,540 --> 00:32:42,043
Also, there's an artist
by the name of Chris Cunningham

403
00:32:42,210 --> 00:32:45,921
who, I think he was about 1 9
when we hired him,

404
00:32:46,089 --> 00:32:52,344
he was just a funny, high-energy kid who
had actually worked for a couple of years

405
00:32:53,388 --> 00:32:58,059
prior in England doing effects
for Bob Keen

406
00:32:58,226 --> 00:33:00,811
and working with Steve Norrington,
and so on.

407
00:33:01,480 --> 00:33:06,025
And we just saw this kid
as a brilliant sculptor and painter

408
00:33:06,193 --> 00:33:10,529
and he was doing mechanical design
and builds and so on.

409
00:33:10,697 --> 00:33:14,158
So we relied a lot upon him.
He did the alien's head

410
00:33:14,326 --> 00:33:16,535
and he sculpted the miniature
rod-puppet alien

411
00:33:16,703 --> 00:33:20,748
that Boss Films then photographed
and puppeteered.

412
00:33:22,125 --> 00:33:26,378
The British crew - we love those guys,
because they're so...

413
00:33:26,546 --> 00:33:31,133
The approach to the work is so different
but they're hilarious peopIe.

414
00:33:31,301 --> 00:33:34,261
They're really practical jokers

415
00:33:35,055 --> 00:33:38,933
and they do great work as well.

416
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:17,031
(Thomson) The commissary or canteen,
whichever you'd like to call it,

417
00:35:17,199 --> 00:35:22,703
is one of the lighter places in this
prison complex because it's lit from the top.

418
00:35:22,871 --> 00:35:28,500
I purposely tried to keep the fluorescent
lights above different colors.

419
00:35:28,668 --> 00:35:35,049
I mixed the tubes so that it looked
more run-down, less maintained,

420
00:35:35,217 --> 00:35:40,387
like they'd just put in
any kind of tube that they had handy.

421
00:35:40,555 --> 00:35:44,308
I think the use of the frame is marvelous
with the close-ups,

422
00:35:44,476 --> 00:35:46,727
and the composition's terrific,

423
00:35:46,895 --> 00:35:51,398
and this is mainIy,
well, entireIy due to David Fincher.

424
00:35:51,566 --> 00:35:55,402
He would position the camera
meticulously on each shot.

425
00:35:55,570 --> 00:36:02,243
Coming onto the production four days late,
most of the questions had been answered,

426
00:36:02,410 --> 00:36:09,625
in that I guess that David Fincher spoke to
Jordan Cronenweth about how he saw it

427
00:36:09,793 --> 00:36:13,921
and aIso to the production designer,
and so on.

428
00:36:14,089 --> 00:36:17,758
But that had been done
before I got onto the production.

429
00:36:17,926 --> 00:36:20,427
They were four days into shooting,

430
00:36:20,595 --> 00:36:26,100
so aIl the decisions had been made.

431
00:36:26,268 --> 00:36:30,229
So I was faced with
just getting on with it, basically,

432
00:36:30,397 --> 00:36:34,775
trying to match to
Jordan's first conception of it.

433
00:36:39,698 --> 00:36:45,119
(McGann) I went up to Pinewood
and was introduced to David Fincher,

434
00:36:45,287 --> 00:36:47,788
who, incidentally, I remember...

435
00:36:47,956 --> 00:36:50,457
We stood outside this office
he was using,

436
00:36:50,625 --> 00:36:53,419
in this little corridor,
and I stood Iooking at him.

437
00:36:53,586 --> 00:36:56,463
I think at the time
I would've been 30 years old,

438
00:36:56,631 --> 00:37:00,301
but he could've been
no more than 25, 26.

439
00:37:00,468 --> 00:37:02,803
And we stood there and chatted
and small-talked,

440
00:37:02,971 --> 00:37:05,014
and I thought "This kid's nice."

441
00:37:05,181 --> 00:37:10,394
And he said to me "Are you waiting for me
to take you in to meet the guy?"

442
00:37:10,562 --> 00:37:11,979
He said "I am the guy."

443
00:37:12,147 --> 00:37:15,941
I was embarrassed, but we laughed
about it, but we got along instantly.

444
00:37:16,109 --> 00:37:18,652
Then he took me into this office,

445
00:37:18,820 --> 00:37:21,989
where I remember on the walls
there were drawings

446
00:37:22,157 --> 00:37:27,453
and there was a model on the desk, a kind
of Chinese puppet theater kind of model,

447
00:37:27,620 --> 00:37:30,164
which he got behind and operated.

448
00:37:30,332 --> 00:37:35,627
He seemed very...
Well, he is very briIliant, very taIented.

449
00:37:44,262 --> 00:37:50,809
(Woodruff) So this is the scene where we get
to see the aIien in its next stage of evolution.

450
00:37:50,977 --> 00:37:53,270
We created a puppet
just from the waist up

451
00:37:53,438 --> 00:37:58,859
because it's only seen inside this air vent
when it spits acid at this guy.

452
00:37:59,027 --> 00:38:02,363
This was the puppet we used
when it first comes out of the dog,

453
00:38:02,530 --> 00:38:06,784
and there's a close-up of the dog
chestburster when he hits the floor.

454
00:38:06,951 --> 00:38:08,869
We got a little extra use out of this.

455
00:38:09,037 --> 00:38:14,917
The difficulty with this one was that we
created a whole transIucent, urethane head.

456
00:38:15,085 --> 00:38:19,880
We wanted to get that feeling of this
translucent, pulpy, alien look to the head,

457
00:38:20,048 --> 00:38:24,676
and we did it with urethane.
Unfortunately it's very heavy.

458
00:38:24,844 --> 00:38:28,472
It's got a good look,
but became an unwieldy,

459
00:38:28,640 --> 00:38:31,725
difficult puppet to maneuver
and operate.

460
00:38:31,893 --> 00:38:37,815
(Thomson) I think this moving fan was
a great idea on Norman Reynolds's part.

461
00:38:37,982 --> 00:38:42,736
A marvelous effect
with the sort of fan shapes going around.

462
00:38:42,904 --> 00:38:49,910
It helps to set the mood and, because
it's moving, it gives excitement, and so on.

463
00:38:50,078 --> 00:38:52,121
(Edlund) Don't look too close, now.

464
00:38:52,288 --> 00:38:57,251
(Gillis) There's aIways somebody that
sticks their head in the hoIe, isn't there?

465
00:38:57,419 --> 00:38:59,461
(Edlund) Oh!

466
00:39:02,549 --> 00:39:06,760
(Gillis) There was a makeup
on that guy's face, too.

467
00:39:06,928 --> 00:39:08,762
But it was hard to see.

468
00:39:09,931 --> 00:39:15,060
(Edlund) Well, that's a classic example
of less is more,

469
00:39:15,228 --> 00:39:17,438
like the hugger in the original Alien.

470
00:39:17,605 --> 00:39:20,983
It was a few frames,
but it sticks with everybody forever.

471
00:39:21,151 --> 00:39:24,027
(Woodruff) Yeah, that was great coverage
and editing.

472
00:39:24,195 --> 00:39:26,405
It really makes the puppet work well.

473
00:39:26,573 --> 00:39:33,745
(Edlund) We always depend on editors and
sound-effects people to make us look great.

474
00:39:33,913 --> 00:39:38,417
(Gillis) You watch this stuff in dailies
and you go "How's it ever gonna work?"

475
00:39:38,585 --> 00:39:42,796
And then the sound effects
of whipping tails...

476
00:39:42,964 --> 00:39:49,261
Jim Cameron used to say that as a way
to make us feel better after a shot -

477
00:39:49,429 --> 00:39:51,805
I think he thought
he made us feel better -

478
00:39:51,973 --> 00:39:55,684
"Don't worry.
This is aIl 70% sound effects."

479
00:39:55,852 --> 00:40:00,647
I guess that means
we only accomplished 30%  of our goal!

480
00:40:05,111 --> 00:40:07,779
(Thomson) It was a marvelous cast,
actually.

481
00:40:07,947 --> 00:40:10,324
I'd never worked with Sigourney before,

482
00:40:10,492 --> 00:40:13,827
but she's quite intense
about what she does.

483
00:40:13,995 --> 00:40:16,663
She cares a great deal.

484
00:40:16,831 --> 00:40:21,627
It would be very easy,
having established Ripley,

485
00:40:21,794 --> 00:40:26,673
to just walk through it and say
"Well, RipIey does this and Ripley does that."

486
00:40:27,133 --> 00:40:31,720
But she reaIly searched for
the meaning of what she was doing.

487
00:40:31,888 --> 00:40:35,349
A consummate actress, I must say.

488
00:40:35,517 --> 00:40:42,064
And Charles, of course,
was most beautifuIly cast as the doctor.

489
00:40:42,232 --> 00:40:44,650
He's very accommodating.

490
00:40:44,817 --> 00:40:50,531
He knows filming, he aIways hits his marks
and he's very kind and considerate.

491
00:40:50,698 --> 00:40:57,829
He knows everybody's name on the film,
right down to the girl that gets the tea.

492
00:40:57,997 --> 00:41:01,500
He's very, very nice. AbsoIute gentleman.

493
00:41:03,044 --> 00:41:08,882
Actually, the coIor of the sets helped what
I was trying to do, because they were gray.

494
00:41:09,050 --> 00:41:15,556
White walls are terrible because
they sing back at you, but this gray helped.

495
00:41:15,723 --> 00:41:20,185
I could get light onto it,
and yet it wouIdn't blow back on me.

496
00:41:40,248 --> 00:41:43,917
I think it was very brave
of Sigourney to agree to shave her head.

497
00:41:44,085 --> 00:41:47,921
Not many actresses
would have that kind of courage.

498
00:41:48,089 --> 00:41:52,092
And she still looks good
even with no hair.

499
00:42:25,918 --> 00:42:30,839
Brian Glover is a very strong presence,
I must say. A great actor.

500
00:42:31,007 --> 00:42:37,638
I think he used to be a wrestler or a boxer
at one time before he became an actor.

501
00:42:46,856 --> 00:42:53,445
(McGann) I liked Sigourney Weaver.
She was clever, charming, intelligent.

502
00:42:53,613 --> 00:42:55,822
She seemed, um...

503
00:42:55,990 --> 00:43:01,495
I even liked the impression
that she was, in fact,

504
00:43:01,663 --> 00:43:06,208
rather more for theater in New York
and literature,

505
00:43:06,876 --> 00:43:09,795
than this particuIar lark.

506
00:43:09,962 --> 00:43:14,966
She never said as much, but I always got
the impression it was all, not beneath her,

507
00:43:15,134 --> 00:43:17,135
but, you know...

508
00:43:17,303 --> 00:43:22,391
Movies are OK,
but theater's where it's at. I liked that.

509
00:43:22,558 --> 00:43:27,521
We had some good conversations and she
gave as good as she got, as is well known.

510
00:43:27,689 --> 00:43:32,609
She palpably had power, control, but never
wielded it or made you feel uncomfortable.

511
00:43:34,737 --> 00:43:40,909
No, she seemed charming
and good to work with. A fine actor.

512
00:43:41,786 --> 00:43:44,830
If she didn't like you,
you'd soon find out about it,

513
00:43:44,997 --> 00:43:49,543
but then this is a professional scene,
a professional outfit. I liked her.

514
00:43:49,710 --> 00:43:53,255
She demanded respect, and she got it.

515
00:43:55,842 --> 00:44:00,512
And these changes'd come by,
these script changes,

516
00:44:00,680 --> 00:44:02,806
and we'd hear news from the front,

517
00:44:02,974 --> 00:44:05,142
and you'd take it in your stride.

518
00:44:05,309 --> 00:44:08,311
Where my character
was concerned, Golic,

519
00:44:08,479 --> 00:44:14,901
there was this whole other subplot of the
story for people who may not have seen it.

520
00:44:15,069 --> 00:44:19,906
When we shot the footage,
Golic escapes from the sanatorium,

521
00:44:20,074 --> 00:44:22,075
from the hospital wing.

522
00:44:22,243 --> 00:44:25,412
He kills somebody, breaks out of there

523
00:44:25,746 --> 00:44:29,040
and he goes to where
the monster is incarcerated

524
00:44:29,208 --> 00:44:35,922
and manages to free the monster in order
to appeal to the monster, to join forces.

525
00:44:36,090 --> 00:44:38,592
A "You and me, monster,

526
00:44:38,759 --> 00:44:41,344
can go and kilI them all,
they alI deserve to die" kind of scene.

527
00:44:41,512 --> 00:44:44,014
We shot this scene.

528
00:44:44,182 --> 00:44:48,268
Again, this is nothing unusual
for a picture of this scale.

529
00:44:48,436 --> 00:44:52,898
We shot two or three different endings.

530
00:44:53,065 --> 00:44:57,444
If you were undecided,
you would decide later.

531
00:44:57,612 --> 00:45:00,739
This is fairly standard,
but it kept you on your toes.

532
00:45:00,907 --> 00:45:05,744
And also you could run a sweep
as to which ending they were going to use.

533
00:45:05,912 --> 00:45:12,626
If you were lucky, it might be yours!
It was like a multiple-choice thing.

534
00:45:12,793 --> 00:45:17,297
I worked on a Spielberg picture once,
and it was exactly the same circumstance.

535
00:45:17,465 --> 00:45:20,967
Spielberg is good enough
to call on the telephone and say

536
00:45:21,135 --> 00:45:26,139
"You know I told you I shoot three pictures
at once? You ain't in the final picture."

537
00:45:26,307 --> 00:45:27,724
But what can you say?

538
00:45:27,892 --> 00:45:31,811
You enjoy the experience.
You put it down to experience.

539
00:45:31,979 --> 00:45:37,317
WiIl I be A: in this picture
aggregateIy for 59 minutes,

540
00:45:37,485 --> 00:45:42,489
or will it be B: four and a half?
Most of my footage will end up on the floor.

541
00:45:42,657 --> 00:45:46,576
Same gig. It's just down to Iuck.

542
00:45:47,703 --> 00:45:50,664
The atmosphere was good
and we laughed a lot.

543
00:45:50,831 --> 00:45:54,751
It was Boy's Own stuff - there were
no females, apart from Sigourney.

544
00:45:54,919 --> 00:45:56,962
The atmosphere was very male,

545
00:45:57,129 --> 00:46:00,674
which does drive you nuts
after three or four months of it.

546
00:46:00,841 --> 00:46:06,596
It was like being a kid,
but if you can't generate that kind of vibe...

547
00:46:06,764 --> 00:46:09,015
Fincher understood that absolutely.

548
00:46:09,183 --> 00:46:13,103
That's what makes him a great director -
he understands acting is play.

549
00:46:13,271 --> 00:46:17,357
In the end, you generate this atmosphere
and you shoo the actors out.

550
00:46:17,525 --> 00:46:21,194
You shoo them into it.
That's how it went.

551
00:46:21,362 --> 00:46:29,077
I thought he did fantastically well just to
hang on to his confidence and to his style,

552
00:46:29,245 --> 00:46:32,080
and I think he's been vindicated as well.

553
00:46:32,248 --> 00:46:35,041
The picture,
from what I could see, was good.

554
00:46:35,209 --> 00:46:42,632
I'm gIad as well to see that the opinion of it
amongst viewers and ordinary people

555
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:46,803
in the last ten years
seems to have grown.

556
00:46:46,971 --> 00:46:53,268
People's perception of it, people's regard
for its qualities has actually improved.

557
00:46:53,603 --> 00:46:59,024
It's become a picture that, perhaps,
now is viewed as very underrated.

558
00:46:59,817 --> 00:47:02,861
Years later it's held up, it's held up well.

559
00:49:30,384 --> 00:49:37,724
(Gillis) Tom and I were very interested in
using materials that were more transIucent,

560
00:49:37,892 --> 00:49:43,146
and that led us to create
a Bishop dummy here

561
00:49:43,314 --> 00:49:45,899
that was made out of gelatin.

562
00:49:46,066 --> 00:49:52,447
The only problem was that geIatin
doesn't do weIl in steam and rain,

563
00:49:52,615 --> 00:49:57,577
and if you'll notice there's steam and rain in
this shot, but there wasn't supposed to be.

564
00:49:57,745 --> 00:50:01,247
(Woodruff) Not at first.
We got the go-ahead that it'd be OK.

565
00:50:01,415 --> 00:50:04,542
It was gonna be cooI and dry.

566
00:50:04,710 --> 00:50:07,670
(Gillis) See that little rag
around his wrist?

567
00:50:07,838 --> 00:50:14,761
We had to wrap that around his wrist cos
his wrist just spIit in haIf somewhere in this,

568
00:50:14,929 --> 00:50:17,764
so we had to kind of dress it around.

569
00:50:17,932 --> 00:50:20,141
The whole thing was melting!

570
00:50:20,309 --> 00:50:24,687
(Woodruff) Take after take, he was losing
a layer of skin with each successive take.

571
00:50:24,855 --> 00:50:29,317
(Gillis) We shouId have been warned
because Yuri Everson, one of our main guys,

572
00:50:29,485 --> 00:50:33,947
was working on that modeI in the studio,

573
00:50:34,114 --> 00:50:36,699
doing some meticuIous work
with the gelatin,

574
00:50:36,867 --> 00:50:41,955
and he had a desk lamp
posed right over the head.

575
00:50:42,122 --> 00:50:48,503
When he moved the desk lamp, it was a
little too close to the face and it all sagged,

576
00:50:48,671 --> 00:50:51,589
like it was palsied
from a stroke or something.

577
00:50:51,757 --> 00:50:57,136
So there was a little bit of a history
to that choice of materials.

578
00:51:21,537 --> 00:51:25,164
(Thomson) This is a set
that was built on the 007 stage,

579
00:51:25,332 --> 00:51:29,836
which is metal clad with concrete floors.

580
00:51:30,004 --> 00:51:33,339
It was very cold anyway,
even in summer.

581
00:51:34,049 --> 00:51:39,512
The actors get a sense of how cold it
is because it is cold.

582
00:52:14,757 --> 00:52:19,093
Another great set by Norman Reynolds.
Full of mood.

583
00:52:28,479 --> 00:52:31,022
It's difficult with these magnesium flares.

584
00:52:31,190 --> 00:52:37,153
Obviously, they're so hot that when you pan
onto them, they give you a reflective ring.

585
00:52:37,321 --> 00:52:40,865
In fact, I didn't mind the effect.
I thought it was quite good.

586
00:52:41,033 --> 00:52:44,911
It doesn't light the actors,
but it's effective to see it.

587
00:52:45,079 --> 00:52:48,498
In fact, lens flare is a mistake,

588
00:52:48,666 --> 00:52:53,586
but it's because the lens is
made up of different sections of glass,

589
00:52:53,754 --> 00:52:57,507
some convex, some concave.

590
00:52:57,675 --> 00:53:01,761
Often when you get bright light
on the edge of the frame,

591
00:53:01,929 --> 00:53:05,098
it reflects back through
the elements of the lens

592
00:53:05,265 --> 00:53:07,934
and creates that kind of ring effect.

593
00:53:08,102 --> 00:53:12,814
You sometimes see it when people
pan on exteriors with sunshine.

594
00:53:12,982 --> 00:53:17,735
When they pan across the sun,
you get the same effect back in the Iens.

595
00:53:17,903 --> 00:53:21,072
Generally speaking, I find it unpleasing,

596
00:53:21,240 --> 00:53:26,119
but in certain circumstances
it can work for you, as in this case.

597
00:53:26,286 --> 00:53:32,041
I think it's quite acceptable that we see
these flares, as if the light source moves,

598
00:53:32,209 --> 00:53:36,921
because the reflection comes back
through different parts of the elements.

599
00:53:37,089 --> 00:53:43,845
But I think it's acceptable in this case,
and, in fact, enhances the image.

600
00:53:44,013 --> 00:53:48,808
Normally speaking, on exteriors,
I would do everything to obviate that.

601
00:53:48,976 --> 00:53:52,061
(Gillis) This was the first appearance
of the adult alien.

602
00:53:52,229 --> 00:53:56,983
This was the one where we had Tom
in the suit and on a little teetertotter

603
00:53:57,151 --> 00:53:59,902
so that he could rise high above the guy.

604
00:54:00,070 --> 00:54:03,406
Quick cuts,
as is the usuaI for these films,

605
00:54:03,574 --> 00:54:05,783
but it's nice to get
a sense of scale out of it.

606
00:54:05,951 --> 00:54:09,996
Fincher was interested
in putting the creature in different positions.

607
00:54:10,164 --> 00:54:15,626
In the attack scene, as I recalI, he's on the
floor and something strange goes on here.

608
00:54:15,794 --> 00:54:18,755
There he is, on the teetertotter.

609
00:54:18,922 --> 00:54:21,799
And there he is, sort of,
who knows what he's doing.

610
00:54:21,967 --> 00:54:24,635
Fincher loved the idea
that you couldn't teIl.

611
00:54:24,803 --> 00:54:29,348
The guy was hanging upside down
and Tom was tickIing him or something.

612
00:55:01,840 --> 00:55:05,218
- (Edlund) We had the one on the ceiling?
- (Woodruff) Yeah.

613
00:55:05,385 --> 00:55:12,016
(Edlund) Tom could actually
run through shots in his suit.

614
00:55:12,184 --> 00:55:20,149
I remember you standing there with your
Adidas shoes on, other than the alien suit.

615
00:55:20,317 --> 00:55:24,153
(Woodruff) They were Nikes.
I still get sponsorship money from Nike.

616
00:55:24,321 --> 00:55:26,072
(Edlund laughs)

617
00:55:26,240 --> 00:55:31,953
(Edlund) But we buiIt at one-third scale.

618
00:55:32,121 --> 00:55:34,455
There it is.

619
00:55:34,623 --> 00:55:36,707
(Gillis) That's the suit still.

620
00:55:36,875 --> 00:55:39,669
(Woodruff) This was a fun shot
where you can see

621
00:55:39,837 --> 00:55:43,756
the alien up on top tearing into this guy.

622
00:55:43,924 --> 00:55:49,095
We were up there for a good part of the day
because I had to have leg extensions on

623
00:55:49,263 --> 00:55:51,973
because there's one leg
hanging over the wall.

624
00:55:52,141 --> 00:55:56,269
We got to a lunch break, and I stayed
up there in costume during lunch.

625
00:55:56,436 --> 00:56:02,984
(Gillis) And this is the mechanical Bishop.
This is one we built animatronically.

626
00:56:03,152 --> 00:56:07,780
We talked with Fincher and decided to go
animatronic on this, as opposed to makeup,

627
00:56:07,948 --> 00:56:11,033
so that we could really crush the head in.

628
00:56:11,201 --> 00:56:17,540
The idea was that she jump-starts him
by hooking him up to some battery devices.

629
00:56:17,708 --> 00:56:21,127
Parts of this are...
That's our geIatin guy again, a dummy guy.

630
00:56:21,295 --> 00:56:23,504
(Woodruff) That's my hand, right there.

631
00:56:23,672 --> 00:56:28,217
(Gillis) We built one in London
for these connecting shots,

632
00:56:28,385 --> 00:56:32,597
but we didn't feel that we would have
the opportunity, the resources

633
00:56:32,764 --> 00:56:39,228
to build it quite the way it needed to be to
do lip-synch and this kind of facial emotion,

634
00:56:39,396 --> 00:56:42,315
so when we got back to LA we built one.

635
00:56:42,482 --> 00:56:44,817
Dave Nelson was the mechanical designer.

636
00:56:44,985 --> 00:56:48,821
David Anderson did a sculpture
of the Bishop character,

637
00:56:48,989 --> 00:56:53,242
basically working from reference
from an old head cast,

638
00:56:53,410 --> 00:56:56,621
but it's got about, I think,
25 servo motors in it.

639
00:56:57,331 --> 00:57:02,543
Fincher really wanted you
to feel reaI pathos for him,

640
00:57:03,420 --> 00:57:07,048
he kept saying like Robert Kennedy
when he was shot.

641
00:57:07,215 --> 00:57:11,218
We had all the white blood pumping out.

642
00:57:11,386 --> 00:57:18,851
- (Edlund) It was a great sequence, guys.
- (Gillis) Real hand in the foreground, um...

643
00:57:21,605 --> 00:57:23,522
Again, translucent skin materials.

644
00:57:23,690 --> 00:57:27,693
This was urethane.
This was before silicones.

645
00:57:27,861 --> 00:57:33,199
We really started using silicones with
animatronic skins on Death Becomes Her,

646
00:57:33,367 --> 00:57:38,162
which was about six months after this.

647
00:57:38,330 --> 00:57:42,291
So this was urethane. It was stiffer,
but still had some translucence.

648
00:57:42,459 --> 00:57:47,588
There was a beautiful profile shot of this
that Fincher opted not to cut into the film,

649
00:57:47,756 --> 00:57:53,010
but it really showed
the translucence of the skin.

650
00:57:55,013 --> 00:57:59,642
(Henriksen) There's a scene in here
where the Bishop doll is aIl trashed up.

651
00:57:59,810 --> 00:58:03,562
I did that voice for the doll.

652
00:58:05,524 --> 00:58:08,985
(Thomson) I was quite pleased
with this practicaI lamp,

653
00:58:09,152 --> 00:58:13,364
which is creating
the source of light on Sigourney's face,

654
00:58:13,532 --> 00:58:19,078
as you can see by the moving shadow on
her forehead, created by the practical Iamp.

655
00:58:19,246 --> 00:58:24,250
I'm pIeased because normalIy
you'd like to film a scene

656
00:58:24,418 --> 00:58:31,924
with the lamp itself but the source
becomes so bright it flares out the lens

657
00:58:32,092 --> 00:58:34,510
and doesn't give you the effect required,

658
00:58:34,678 --> 00:58:38,889
so you have to augment it
with another kind of lamp.

659
00:58:39,057 --> 00:58:43,102
But you reaIly get the feeling
that she's lit by this lamp.

660
00:58:43,270 --> 00:58:48,274
The separation between
the shadow side of her head is created

661
00:58:48,442 --> 00:58:54,613
by just lighting a bit on the wall behind her,
so that you see the shape of the head.

662
00:58:54,781 --> 00:58:57,533
I think it's quite an effective shot.

663
00:58:57,701 --> 00:58:59,702
Not on this particular picture,

664
00:58:59,870 --> 00:59:06,459
but when you have actors with
false hairpieces, often you can see the join.

665
00:59:06,626 --> 00:59:10,296
You have to help it with the lighting
by just shading it a bit

666
00:59:10,464 --> 00:59:14,425
or changing the angle of the light
so that you can't see

667
00:59:14,593 --> 00:59:17,678
the neck join, in a wig for exampIe.

668
00:59:17,846 --> 00:59:21,682
And quite often
contact lenses are quite noticeable.

669
00:59:21,850 --> 00:59:26,228
If the light's at an acute angle,
you see the edges of the contact lens,

670
00:59:26,396 --> 00:59:30,274
so you've got to help that as welI.
Those little things, you know.

671
00:59:30,442 --> 00:59:33,194
You have to keep your eye
on the actors

672
00:59:33,487 --> 00:59:36,655
all the time because they're
not aware of how they look,

673
00:59:36,823 --> 00:59:39,950
and aIso they get so absorbed
in playing the part

674
00:59:40,118 --> 00:59:44,914
that they forget quite often
their instructions about lighting.

675
00:59:45,082 --> 00:59:47,708
You can only suggest it,
you can't tell them what to do

676
00:59:47,876 --> 00:59:51,754
because you're there to help them.

677
01:00:06,144 --> 01:00:09,855
It's part of the artistry
of a cinematographer,

678
01:00:10,023 --> 01:00:15,361
if you have a leading lady
who's probably getting on in years,

679
01:00:15,529 --> 01:00:19,281
you have to put the light
where they'd look their best,

680
01:00:19,449 --> 01:00:22,868
unless, of course, they are playing a part
where they have to look bad,

681
01:00:23,036 --> 01:00:25,538
but that's rare.

682
01:00:25,705 --> 01:00:33,129
You have to kind of iron out the wrinkles
if you can, make them look their best.

683
01:00:33,296 --> 01:00:40,344
This is not confined, of course,
to female actors, but male actors as well

684
01:00:40,512 --> 01:00:43,889
cos they get old
in the same way that anybody else does.

685
01:02:12,979 --> 01:02:17,441
Outside the window, of course,
is a backing, a painted backing.

686
01:02:17,609 --> 01:02:20,069
It's not actually a set.

687
01:02:22,322 --> 01:02:26,492
It's quite nice because the window
beyond that you can see

688
01:02:26,743 --> 01:02:28,994
has got silver paper on it,

689
01:02:29,162 --> 01:02:33,582
which we Iight to make
it Iook as if it's a lit window.

690
01:02:37,671 --> 01:02:42,174
Also, you have to balance
the practical lamps on set.

691
01:02:42,342 --> 01:02:45,594
If they're too bright, they flare back

692
01:02:45,762 --> 01:02:49,848
on the lens so you have to get them
to a spot where they look

693
01:02:50,016 --> 01:02:53,894
as if they're lighting something,
but they're not actually.

694
01:03:07,075 --> 01:03:09,702
Also, you have to know

695
01:03:10,996 --> 01:03:15,541
how deep the shadows can be
and stiIl see detail in them.

696
01:03:15,709 --> 01:03:20,504
It's nice to have deep shadow, but you've
still got to be able to see the eyes.

697
01:03:20,672 --> 01:03:24,383
And I think the balance here
is quite nice.

698
01:03:24,551 --> 01:03:29,388
It's a nice sort of soft crosslit thing,

699
01:03:29,556 --> 01:03:33,976
but you can still see the other eye
and you know what they're thinking.

700
01:03:37,647 --> 01:03:40,524
And also, of course,
the continuity of sequence...

701
01:03:40,692 --> 01:03:44,236
You show it through each shot separately,

702
01:03:44,404 --> 01:03:51,535
but you have to maintain the feel and
continuity of light in each different shot.

703
01:03:54,205 --> 01:03:58,792
(Woodruff) So this scene has some
great overlapping imagery of effects.

704
01:03:58,960 --> 01:04:04,423
The first thing we'll see is the alien creature
as it makes its way into the hospital room.

705
01:04:04,591 --> 01:04:09,762
It's done by seeing reflections
and distorted angles of it

706
01:04:09,929 --> 01:04:13,098
through the different medical instruments.

707
01:04:13,266 --> 01:04:15,601
And it was a...

708
01:04:15,769 --> 01:04:21,106
This was a stunt man
coming down on wires for part of it.

709
01:04:21,983 --> 01:04:23,776
Then he would invert,

710
01:04:23,943 --> 01:04:30,657
and then I was in the suit doing the actual
attack through the plastic curtain.

711
01:04:35,914 --> 01:04:38,999
(Edlund) There's a miniature shot
of the alien running up,

712
01:04:39,167 --> 01:04:43,212
then it cuts to a close-up of Tom.

713
01:04:44,923 --> 01:04:49,134
(Gillis) We did do a fake head of CharIes
Dance - it's coming up here in a minute -

714
01:04:49,302 --> 01:04:51,428
where the creature punches a hole
in his head.

715
01:04:51,596 --> 01:04:56,100
And we had to do a head cast
of CharIes in an extreme expression.

716
01:04:56,267 --> 01:04:58,894
And as I recall, he was great about it.

717
01:04:59,062 --> 01:05:04,108
He's actualIy, for as serious as this
character is, he was a very jovial guy.

718
01:05:06,569 --> 01:05:11,156
(Edlund) Yeah, I guess it was like
an animatronic head, dripping.

719
01:05:13,952 --> 01:05:20,332
In order to do this movie, we built
a complete siIent motion-control dolly

720
01:05:20,500 --> 01:05:24,962
that couId go at running speed,
which we wound up never needing to use.

721
01:05:25,130 --> 01:05:29,425
You could actually run with it
at high speed and it would repeat,

722
01:05:31,177 --> 01:05:34,388
and it was quiet enough to shoot sound.

723
01:05:34,556 --> 01:05:39,935
Of course, when we got to England
to set it up for the first shot,

724
01:05:40,103 --> 01:05:42,104
nothing worked.

725
01:05:42,272 --> 01:05:46,275
We were tearing our hair out
and found out the system wasn't grounded

726
01:05:46,443 --> 01:05:50,070
because they had run
an extension cord into the hallway.

727
01:05:50,238 --> 01:05:55,701
But then, once we found that,
we didn't have any problems.

728
01:05:57,871 --> 01:06:01,707
But that was in order to enable us
to shoot scenes with pans and tilts,

729
01:06:01,875 --> 01:06:06,378
and then scaIe those moves to shoot

730
01:06:06,546 --> 01:06:11,633
the scenes back at the studio

731
01:06:11,801 --> 01:06:15,596
with a rod-puppet alien one-third scale...

732
01:06:17,098 --> 01:06:22,519
with a moving camera,
so it wouldn't skate around in the scene.

733
01:06:22,687 --> 01:06:26,940
(Gillis) I think this rod-puppet technique
is very interesting.

734
01:06:27,108 --> 01:06:31,737
I think it still has some validity now,
even in the digital era.

735
01:06:31,905 --> 01:06:35,407
- (Edlund) Yeah.
- And probably now, I don't know...

736
01:06:35,575 --> 01:06:40,787
Well, I guess you'd stiIl have to do
the motion-control stuff to match moves.

737
01:06:40,955 --> 01:06:45,250
(Edlund) Or track it now. If you're gonna do
a CG character, you can track it.

738
01:06:45,418 --> 01:06:47,961
(Gillis) But you wouldn't be able
to track like that

739
01:06:48,129 --> 01:06:52,591
with a miniature puppet, would you?

740
01:06:52,759 --> 01:06:57,137
(Edlund) You'd have to use motion control.
It's a real mechanical lollapaIooza.

741
01:06:57,305 --> 01:07:01,767
(Gillis) But there is a nice presence to it
that reaIly looks like a physical thing.

742
01:07:01,935 --> 01:07:09,608
It gets around some of the difficult issues
of CGI, in that the lighting is pIaying on it.

743
01:07:09,776 --> 01:07:11,568
(Edlund) And the director can direct it.

744
01:07:11,736 --> 01:07:14,780
Fincher could come by
and direct the puppet.

745
01:07:14,948 --> 01:07:23,121
Five guys, you know, operating
this character against bluescreen,

746
01:07:23,289 --> 01:07:28,961
there were some pretty bizarre mountains
of equipment to get these shots working.

747
01:07:29,128 --> 01:07:33,966
And flags, and stands,
and wires everywhere.

748
01:07:52,652 --> 01:07:55,070
Nothing like the old needle
to make your skin crawI.

749
01:07:55,238 --> 01:07:57,823
(Gillis) Swiss-made, too.

750
01:07:58,575 --> 01:08:01,285
Something's happening.

751
01:08:01,828 --> 01:08:04,746
- (Edlund) Here he comes.
- (Gillis) So there's the alien.

752
01:08:08,167 --> 01:08:10,669
Here comes Clemens' head.

753
01:08:10,837 --> 01:08:14,423
We had a pneumatically operated
attack tongue.

754
01:08:14,924 --> 01:08:17,426
There it is.

755
01:08:18,344 --> 01:08:21,346
And here comes the shot
of the first rod puppet.

756
01:08:21,514 --> 01:08:24,266
(Edlund) Right. It was quick.

757
01:08:24,434 --> 01:08:29,313
(Gillis) It was.
And then into the animatronic head.

758
01:08:29,480 --> 01:08:33,859
That's that shot that they used
so much in the advertising.

759
01:08:34,027 --> 01:08:36,445
(Edlund) Right.

760
01:08:36,613 --> 01:08:37,821
Mm.

761
01:08:49,208 --> 01:08:54,630
(Gillis) I think that quick cutting
works very welI. I like that.

762
01:08:54,797 --> 01:08:58,508
(Edlund) If you leave the audience
with not having seen enough,

763
01:08:58,676 --> 01:09:01,887
then their own imagination
fills in what you want them to.

764
01:09:02,055 --> 01:09:06,183
If you show 'em too much,
they get tired of it.

765
01:09:55,566 --> 01:09:59,611
(Gillis) This attack was actually
the first thing we shot - wasn't it, Tom? -

766
01:09:59,779 --> 01:10:01,780
with the alien,

767
01:10:01,948 --> 01:10:08,829
and as I recalI the paint
didn't quite match the arms.

768
01:10:08,996 --> 01:10:15,293
I'm aIways feeIing like I'm seeing
paler hands than arms on this shot.

769
01:10:15,461 --> 01:10:18,755
I think this was a stunt man,
on wires, reaching down...

770
01:10:18,923 --> 01:10:21,591
(Woodruff) Hanging down, upside down.

771
01:10:21,759 --> 01:10:26,138
(Gillis) So, you can
freeze-frame it on DVD,

772
01:10:26,305 --> 01:10:32,310
and I think you'Il see a clear demarcation
between glove and suit.

773
01:10:49,620 --> 01:10:53,957
Or maybe you won't see it.
Maybe I only saw it.

774
01:10:55,168 --> 01:10:57,377
(Woodruff) You worried about nothin'.
(Gillis) I guess so.

775
01:10:57,545 --> 01:10:59,296
I was given not enough information.

776
01:10:59,464 --> 01:11:01,840
My mind filled in the gaps.

777
01:11:51,557 --> 01:11:55,393
(McGann) Ten days in.
Things became slightIy problematic.

778
01:11:55,561 --> 01:12:00,148
Maybe problematic because, maybe
I was doing a hammy American accent, or...

779
01:12:00,316 --> 01:12:02,400
I remember there was something.

780
01:12:02,568 --> 01:12:07,364
I can't remember the exact circumstances,
but we had to stop for half a day.

781
01:12:07,532 --> 01:12:14,454
And I got the impression that Fincher
was too kind to say it, but it was my fault.

782
01:12:14,622 --> 01:12:18,041
I was sent to the dressing room
for a lie down.

783
01:12:19,168 --> 01:12:22,963
We'd already shot some footage
of Golic in a straitjacket

784
01:12:23,130 --> 01:12:29,052
and I'm doing the thing with the teeth,
and the Charles Manson accent, as I saw it.

785
01:12:29,220 --> 01:12:31,930
But anyway he said
"Paul, there's a problem."

786
01:12:32,098 --> 01:12:36,726
"There are problems" and then he said,
"Can you do it like a Brit?"

787
01:12:36,894 --> 01:12:41,106
I remember he said "Drop the accent."
The accent was obviously awful.

788
01:12:41,274 --> 01:12:44,484
But I remember he said to me
"We've got a problem."

789
01:12:44,652 --> 01:12:52,450
"Americans have a problem with this image
of... this Mansonesque thing, if you will."

790
01:12:52,618 --> 01:12:55,287
He said "You don't wanna
relish it too much."

791
01:12:55,454 --> 01:13:03,128
"It's a little bit... It's this fine line,
all the time, of entertainment laced with..."

792
01:13:03,296 --> 01:13:05,714
"You don't wanna make things too real."

793
01:13:05,881 --> 01:13:09,467
I think he was being very kind.
He said "You're playing it too well."

794
01:13:09,635 --> 01:13:13,597
"But we wanted to play it
for laughs slightly more."

795
01:13:13,764 --> 01:13:20,353
But these are pretty standard things
between directors and actors, say,

796
01:13:20,521 --> 01:13:24,482
when things are slightly problematic.

797
01:15:01,831 --> 01:15:04,999
(Gillis) This movie seems to have...

798
01:15:05,167 --> 01:15:09,379
My take on it was it was more popular
in England and Europe

799
01:15:09,547 --> 01:15:15,427
than perhaps the second one was,
or that at least they admire it more.

800
01:15:15,594 --> 01:15:19,514
And it is the movie that
seems to grow on people.

801
01:15:19,682 --> 01:15:25,645
It's not what people expected,
but they can't deny the quality of it,

802
01:15:25,813 --> 01:15:29,649
and that it is really
a pretty uncompromising vision.

803
01:15:29,817 --> 01:15:36,114
It's just relentlessly grim,
which is exactly what Fincher wanted.

804
01:15:37,575 --> 01:15:42,287
- (Edlund) And it was gonna be the last.
- (Gillis) Yeah. Yeah.

805
01:15:43,372 --> 01:15:46,916
Which was why
the whole suicide thing at the end.

806
01:15:47,084 --> 01:15:49,127
(Edlund) Right.

807
01:15:51,213 --> 01:15:57,969
(Gillis) Which I thought was a very bold
idea from the studio - to give them credit -

808
01:15:58,137 --> 01:16:03,767
to say yes to that,
Fincher and Sigourney, you know.

809
01:16:03,934 --> 01:16:07,437
I thought it was very brave of everybody.

810
01:16:12,109 --> 01:16:15,445
(Edlund) And she was
the harbinger of the new look.

811
01:16:15,613 --> 01:16:18,490
You know, the skull head.

812
01:16:18,657 --> 01:16:21,159
(Gillis) That's right.

813
01:16:21,327 --> 01:16:23,828
(Edlund) And when they had to reshoot
the scenes at the end,

814
01:16:23,996 --> 01:16:26,498
she had to wear a skullcap.

815
01:16:26,665 --> 01:16:28,833
She wasn't gonna do that again.

816
01:16:29,001 --> 01:16:30,835
(Gillis) Right.

817
01:20:11,515 --> 01:20:15,309
(Gillis) Richard, you enhanced
some of this stuff, didn't you?

818
01:20:15,477 --> 01:20:22,567
(Edlund) Yeah. We built the whole thing in
black armature and now it's gonna blow up.

819
01:20:27,030 --> 01:20:30,742
(Thomson) Here we have
the beginning of the fire sequence,

820
01:20:30,909 --> 01:20:34,871
which was quite an operation, really.

821
01:20:35,038 --> 01:20:40,626
It was actualIy quite dangerous because one
time we had a backdraft, I think they call it.

822
01:20:40,794 --> 01:20:44,756
And a couple of the guys got burnt,
incIuding one of the firemen.

823
01:20:44,923 --> 01:20:48,718
So these stunts were all shot
by the second unit,

824
01:20:48,886 --> 01:20:52,597
in the capable hands
of my dear friend Tony Spratling,

825
01:20:52,765 --> 01:20:55,224
who did a beautiful job here.

826
01:20:55,392 --> 01:20:58,603
Obviously, we shot the stuff
with the main artists,

827
01:20:58,771 --> 01:21:03,608
but Tony matched my images
beautifuIly, I thought.

828
01:21:04,443 --> 01:21:11,282
Tony Spratling, of course, had done two or
three second units for me on other pictures,

829
01:21:11,450 --> 01:21:14,118
so we know exactly
what each other's thinking.

830
01:21:14,286 --> 01:21:18,247
So our colIaboration
is always quite successful.

831
01:21:18,415 --> 01:21:21,584
We don't have to speak too much
about what we're going to do.

832
01:21:21,752 --> 01:21:23,461
He's a very good man.

833
01:21:23,629 --> 01:21:26,631
(Gillis) Yeah, we were there for
the set-up of it, and we thought

834
01:21:26,799 --> 01:21:30,259
maybe it would be better to watch
this from behind the video monitors.

835
01:21:30,427 --> 01:21:33,304
But there were some huge explosions.

836
01:21:33,472 --> 01:21:36,808
They're aIso really seamlessly embellished
by Richard Edlund

837
01:21:36,975 --> 01:21:41,479
and his guys at Boss FiIms, where they
were shooting some miniature explosions

838
01:21:41,647 --> 01:21:46,776
and comping them in over the existing
explosions. Really beautiful work.

839
01:21:47,319 --> 01:21:49,987
(Thomson) It was quite a sequence, this.

840
01:21:50,155 --> 01:21:55,117
And obviously, you know,
as I say, difficult to shoot.

841
01:21:55,285 --> 01:22:00,164
Well, I mean, you can't underexpose flame.

842
01:22:00,332 --> 01:22:02,667
Flame is always going to be very bright.

843
01:22:02,835 --> 01:22:09,715
But the thing is to get the surrounding
colors to match the firelight, so to speak,

844
01:22:09,883 --> 01:22:14,345
to suggest that the light
is coming from the fire.

845
01:22:14,513 --> 01:22:21,352
Cos you do have to augment it.
You can't just Iet firelight do the job.

846
01:22:21,520 --> 01:22:27,149
You have to also... Cos it's so bright
that it just flares out everything.

847
01:22:27,317 --> 01:22:31,529
So you have to color the Iamps,
make them warmer,

848
01:22:31,697 --> 01:22:35,241
more orange to match the firelight.

849
01:22:35,409 --> 01:22:41,831
And the thing is to go for
a deep exposure, if you can,

850
01:22:41,999 --> 01:22:45,042
to bring the light levels up,

851
01:22:45,210 --> 01:22:47,712
so that the flame is more orange.

852
01:22:47,880 --> 01:22:53,509
Because if you shoot it wide open,
the flame is so bright that it just flares out,

853
01:22:53,677 --> 01:22:58,222
becomes so white it doesn't
look like firelight, you know.

854
01:22:58,390 --> 01:23:03,060
So you have to color the Iamps
and get a good exposure

855
01:23:03,228 --> 01:23:10,359
so that you bring the Ievel of the flame
down to make it look natural.

856
01:23:21,872 --> 01:23:24,874
(Gillis) This really was the last time
not working with digital.

857
01:23:25,042 --> 01:23:28,085
This was for the most part,
a practicaI movie.

858
01:23:28,253 --> 01:23:31,255
Even the shots of the alien
running around,

859
01:23:31,423 --> 01:23:35,092
which would normally be done
digitally now,

860
01:23:35,260 --> 01:23:39,513
were all rod puppets
photographed against a blue screen

861
01:23:39,681 --> 01:23:41,766
and composited optically in.

862
01:23:41,934 --> 01:23:46,771
Things Iike the alien shadow,
or earlier in the beginning of the film

863
01:23:46,939 --> 01:23:50,274
the debris bits flying through the air,
those were added digitally.

864
01:23:50,442 --> 01:23:53,486
So it was little touches
of digital work starting,

865
01:23:53,654 --> 01:23:58,282
but remember this was before
Jurassic Park, this was even before T2.

866
01:23:58,450 --> 01:24:04,330
We were working concurrently to T2. So
the digital revolution had really not hit yet.

867
01:24:04,498 --> 01:24:08,960
And a lot of people have assumed
that the creature is digital.

868
01:24:09,127 --> 01:24:12,296
But a lot of people were disappointed
to discover it wasn't.

869
01:24:12,464 --> 01:24:15,716
Even though there are many shots
of the miniature creature

870
01:24:15,884 --> 01:24:20,471
that look every bit as convincing
as the best of the digital stuff.

871
01:24:20,639 --> 01:24:25,142
Since then, obviously, we work a lot
with digital companies overlapping.

872
01:24:25,310 --> 01:24:31,232
But I still believe that
it's the mixed bag is the best way to go.

873
01:24:31,400 --> 01:24:35,403
When you have something practical, when
you have an animatronic performing on set,

874
01:24:35,570 --> 01:24:37,905
you set the bar for the digital artists.

875
01:24:38,073 --> 01:24:40,408
They are now not working
in a vacuum,

876
01:24:40,575 --> 01:24:43,285
they're now not imagining
what the lighting would be like

877
01:24:43,453 --> 01:24:48,833
or trying to duplicate by looking
at images of silver and gray balls

878
01:24:49,001 --> 01:24:50,793
photographed on set.

879
01:24:50,961 --> 01:24:53,629
You've got it right there.
You know what the slime looks like,

880
01:24:53,797 --> 01:24:57,800
you know what the weight of a creature
looks like as it moves through space.

881
01:24:57,968 --> 01:25:01,053
You can see it contacting actors
and interacting

882
01:25:01,221 --> 01:25:06,559
and the digital work always looks better
when there is a practical piece to refer to.

883
01:25:06,727 --> 01:25:10,479
That's not a popular thing to say in a room
when you're bidding on a project,

884
01:25:10,647 --> 01:25:14,025
when you're talking with the creatives,
because, unfortunateIy,

885
01:25:14,192 --> 01:25:19,697
the industry in digital effects is huge
and there's a lot of overhead to pay for.

886
01:25:19,865 --> 01:25:24,201
And there's a lot of people who promote
exclusively the digital approach

887
01:25:24,369 --> 01:25:27,038
because they have a lot
of expensive equipment

888
01:25:27,205 --> 01:25:31,000
that they get rid of every two years,
because the next piece comes along.

889
01:25:31,168 --> 01:25:35,379
And they gotta pay for it. I don't think
that's a good way to make films.

890
01:25:35,547 --> 01:25:40,593
I think that what you need to do is you sit
around with the director and creative team

891
01:25:40,761 --> 01:25:46,223
and you decide on a shot-by-shot basis
what the best approach for the movie is.

892
01:25:46,391 --> 01:25:51,270
Not for your company,
not for promoting a technique.

893
01:25:51,438 --> 01:25:55,566
And that's why Aliens to me
still holds up.

894
01:25:55,734 --> 01:25:59,403
Because that's exactly what the process
was there. It's what's the best technique

895
01:25:59,571 --> 01:26:04,116
for this shot.
Aliens is a completeIy practical movie.

896
01:26:04,284 --> 01:26:07,870
And there's a lot of great stuff. Not that it
couldn't benefit nowadays by digital,

897
01:26:08,038 --> 01:26:11,749
but it certainly is dynamic and holds up.

898
01:26:11,917 --> 01:26:14,585
But then we are--
Tom and I have a company

899
01:26:14,753 --> 01:26:18,422
that we have intentionally stayed
at a certain scale.

900
01:26:19,591 --> 01:26:23,511
We are intimately involved with every detail
of the work that's produced here.

901
01:26:23,678 --> 01:26:28,224
So I kind of have a little bit
of a anti-corporate mentality.

902
01:26:28,391 --> 01:26:31,102
But unfortunately that's what
the effects world has become.

903
01:26:31,269 --> 01:26:32,978
It is corporatized.

904
01:26:33,146 --> 01:26:36,107
And it is... They are dream factories.

905
01:26:36,274 --> 01:26:40,111
That's the term that people love to use

906
01:26:40,278 --> 01:26:45,116
and to me it has a kind of
rotten undertone to it.

907
01:26:45,283 --> 01:26:48,202
So we're going to stay here
as long as we can

908
01:26:48,370 --> 01:26:51,956
doing high-quality practical work,
real work.

909
01:26:52,124 --> 01:26:58,921
And as long as peopIe see a value to it,
we will be here to contribute to it.

910
01:26:59,089 --> 01:27:05,302
And hopefully not sink in
to this conventional wisdom necessarily

911
01:27:05,470 --> 01:27:08,973
that does seem to pervade effects
these days.

912
01:28:41,483 --> 01:28:45,611
(Gillis) So these in this extended cut,
I do think you get a better sense

913
01:28:45,779 --> 01:28:48,948
of who these characters are.

914
01:28:49,950 --> 01:28:54,078
I think one of the problems
with the film is that,

915
01:28:54,246 --> 01:28:56,497
by the time the third act
is coming around,

916
01:28:56,665 --> 01:28:59,375
you see a lot
of bald-headed guys getting killed.

917
01:28:59,542 --> 01:29:03,712
But they're fun characters.
They each did have an identity.

918
01:29:03,880 --> 01:29:05,839
And particularly, I think, Golic.

919
01:29:06,007 --> 01:29:11,428
The little crazy guy got some of his stuff
excised a Iittle bit much.

920
01:29:11,596 --> 01:29:15,766
When he releases the creature,
you see that he's nuts.

921
01:29:15,934 --> 01:29:19,353
And his experience in meeting
the creature,

922
01:29:19,521 --> 01:29:22,439
he has sort of interpreted it
a littIe differently

923
01:29:22,607 --> 01:29:25,567
than someone
who's not quite as bent might,

924
01:29:25,735 --> 01:29:30,155
and so therefore he feels it's his duty
to release the creature.

925
01:29:30,323 --> 01:29:38,289
Sort of like a Renfield and Dracula
kind of relationship,

926
01:29:38,456 --> 01:29:40,666
which I thought was interesting.

927
01:29:40,834 --> 01:29:47,798
And it added a little bit of cIarity
to this whole scene here.

928
01:29:49,926 --> 01:29:52,970
This is, again...
Look how beautifulIy this stuff is shot.

929
01:29:53,138 --> 01:29:57,725
Fincher was very much
into these browns and sepias.

930
01:29:59,978 --> 01:30:03,188
Well, the alien in Alien 3

931
01:30:03,356 --> 01:30:07,776
was stilI more of the blackish...

932
01:30:08,486 --> 01:30:12,656
The black, black alien.

933
01:30:12,824 --> 01:30:16,076
But because of the Iighting
and the color timing and so on,

934
01:30:16,244 --> 01:30:20,331
he does pick up this sort of
overall sepia tone

935
01:30:20,498 --> 01:30:24,335
of the color scheme of the film.

936
01:30:25,670 --> 01:30:30,049
Whereas in the second film,
even though there were browns

937
01:30:30,216 --> 01:30:34,511
in the body of the alien,
there was a lot of blue light

938
01:30:34,679 --> 01:30:38,307
that was being used,
and that reflects off the glistening slime.

939
01:30:38,475 --> 01:30:41,477
So they feel more blue-black.

940
01:30:41,644 --> 01:30:43,520
And this one feels a Iittle more sepia.

941
01:30:43,688 --> 01:30:47,358
And actually, in Giger's work,
if you look through Necronomicon,

942
01:30:47,525 --> 01:30:49,276
you really do see two different tones.

943
01:30:49,444 --> 01:30:52,488
You can see the blue-black
and the brown-black.

944
01:30:53,198 --> 01:30:57,534
And so we opted more towards
the brown-bIack.

945
01:30:57,702 --> 01:31:00,829
And, again, every one of these films...

946
01:31:00,997 --> 01:31:04,041
What's great about the Alien series
is that every one of the films

947
01:31:04,209 --> 01:31:07,461
has the stamp of each director on it.

948
01:31:07,629 --> 01:31:11,548
No matter how you interpret that,
or whether you like that or not,

949
01:31:11,716 --> 01:31:15,761
each movie is stylistically its own film.

950
01:31:15,929 --> 01:31:22,726
All owing to the original, but still
maintaining some of its own quality.

951
01:31:26,523 --> 01:31:31,402
Alien 3 is one of the few movies
in my career

952
01:31:31,569 --> 01:31:36,073
that peopIe keep coming back to.
I keep hearing that.

953
01:31:36,241 --> 01:31:39,910
When we bring peopIe through the studio
or talk about what we've done,

954
01:31:40,078 --> 01:31:45,916
very often people will say, "You know,
Alien 3, I didn't like it when it came out,

955
01:31:46,084 --> 01:31:49,336
but I saw it again recently
and that is a great movie."

956
01:31:49,504 --> 01:31:54,925
And I think it's true. After Aliens peopIe
were expecting a very different film.

957
01:31:55,093 --> 01:31:57,928
They were expecting something
that was maybe more action,

958
01:31:58,096 --> 01:32:02,224
kind of a fun rollercoaster ride.

959
01:32:02,392 --> 01:32:05,102
And they made some very bold choices,
I thought.

960
01:32:05,270 --> 01:32:08,188
Like, welI, hiring Fincher for one thing,

961
01:32:08,356 --> 01:32:12,025
who had not directed a feature film
prior to this.

962
01:32:12,193 --> 01:32:17,239
Killing Ripley, that was pretty daring.

963
01:32:17,407 --> 01:32:22,119
And I think once you can evaluate it
on its own terms,

964
01:32:22,287 --> 01:32:24,246
as opposed to what
your expectations were,

965
01:32:24,414 --> 01:32:28,125
people do realize
that it is a strong film.

966
01:32:28,293 --> 01:32:33,213
Not that it doesn't have its problems,
but it's got a lot of great things going for it.

967
01:32:33,381 --> 01:32:39,803
And we have a real deep connection
to this movie and we're very proud of it.

968
01:34:54,647 --> 01:34:59,443
This scene has a glimpse of an effect

969
01:34:59,611 --> 01:35:04,197
that we did to show
an interior body scan.

970
01:35:04,365 --> 01:35:09,369
And the idea was that it would show
a queen alien chestburster

971
01:35:09,537 --> 01:35:11,246
nestIed right next to
Sigourney's heart.

972
01:35:11,539 --> 01:35:15,959
And its heart is beating
as her heart is beating,

973
01:35:16,127 --> 01:35:20,839
and we built a little interior body.

974
01:35:21,007 --> 01:35:24,635
There's some of the interior
down by the pelvis.

975
01:35:25,595 --> 01:35:29,139
And we actually hand-puppeted
the beating of the heart,

976
01:35:29,307 --> 01:35:35,812
and then we had a littIe bladder
inside a transparent alien puppet.

977
01:35:35,980 --> 01:35:38,690
That's her intestines, I think.

978
01:35:42,820 --> 01:35:49,117
But it was used on a monitor and
it becomes a little harder to make out.

979
01:35:52,330 --> 01:35:55,874
I think Jeremy Hunt sculpted
the body parts,

980
01:35:56,042 --> 01:35:59,628
and Gino Acevedo
sculpted the little alien.

981
01:35:59,796 --> 01:36:03,340
Let's see if you can really tell what it is.

982
01:36:04,801 --> 01:36:10,222
There's the beating heart.
There's the upside-down little alien.

983
01:36:10,390 --> 01:36:14,976
I don't think you can see its heart beating
in the way the film was processed,

984
01:36:15,144 --> 01:36:17,688
to give it a negative kind of look.

985
01:36:17,855 --> 01:36:21,358
But it was fun.
I think Richard Hollander

986
01:36:22,568 --> 01:36:28,365
at Video Image photographed it and...

987
01:36:28,533 --> 01:36:32,536
- (Edlund) Processed it.
- Double exposed it to create the layers.

988
01:36:32,829 --> 01:36:39,501
(Edlund) I think it camouflaged it
so you can't reaIize what it is.

989
01:36:39,669 --> 01:36:42,629
(Gillis) But it gives it an interesting look.

990
01:36:42,797 --> 01:36:52,973
(Edlund) Mm-hm.

991
01:39:36,178 --> 01:39:42,225
(Rawlings) You can see the tribute
to Alien 1

992
01:39:42,393 --> 01:39:44,352
when you see the way this was shot.

993
01:39:44,520 --> 01:39:48,565
It was like the time
you took over everything.

994
01:39:48,733 --> 01:39:54,821
But we've moved forward to
a different time, and they'd had Alien 2,

995
01:39:54,989 --> 01:39:58,074
which was a completely different movie.

996
01:39:58,242 --> 01:40:02,037
A great movie, I think,
but a completely different styIe.

997
01:40:02,204 --> 01:40:06,917
And to revert back to the original style
that we had for the first one,

998
01:40:07,084 --> 01:40:11,004
I don't think was acceptabIe at the time,
and that was the problem.

999
01:40:14,759 --> 01:40:21,014
David often said to me it was one of his
favorite films and Ridley was his hero.

1000
01:40:21,182 --> 01:40:24,601
And when we started work on the fiIm,

1001
01:40:25,102 --> 01:40:29,105
I could tell that he wanted it
to be as Alien was.

1002
01:40:29,273 --> 01:40:33,443
I mean, obviously a different story,
but with the same sort of tension,

1003
01:40:33,611 --> 01:40:35,612
the same sort of pace about it.

1004
01:40:35,780 --> 01:40:38,907
And that's what we tried to achieve.

1005
01:40:39,951 --> 01:40:44,663
Cos wasn't it gonna be
directed by Vincent Ward?

1006
01:40:44,830 --> 01:40:47,582
Yeah. Cos I met with him about it,

1007
01:40:47,750 --> 01:40:52,379
then I didn't hear any more about it and then
they said this young man's gonna direct it.

1008
01:40:52,546 --> 01:40:58,969
I got phoned up to meet with
this director of Alien,

1009
01:40:59,136 --> 01:41:02,639
but through him I got a phone call
to meet with Vincent Ward.

1010
01:41:03,057 --> 01:41:06,935
He was in London. I met him
and we talked about the first one,

1011
01:41:07,103 --> 01:41:09,854
and generally about work.

1012
01:41:10,022 --> 01:41:13,483
And I left him.

1013
01:41:13,651 --> 01:41:18,154
It seemed very amicable
between the two of us,

1014
01:41:18,322 --> 01:41:20,490
then I didn't hear any more for ages,

1015
01:41:20,658 --> 01:41:26,037
and I finally got a call to say
that the directors had been changed.

1016
01:41:26,205 --> 01:41:31,209
It was now going to be David Fincher,
and I'd meet with him at Pinewood Studios.

1017
01:41:31,377 --> 01:41:34,212
And I liked him as soon as I met him.

1018
01:41:35,965 --> 01:41:38,508
Then after we'd been going
for a short while,

1019
01:41:38,676 --> 01:41:43,304
the line producer was changed
and Ezra Swerdlow came in.

1020
01:41:43,472 --> 01:41:46,933
I cannot remember who the first one was.

1021
01:42:29,852 --> 01:42:32,771
(Edlund) The Sulaco was left
from the last movie.

1022
01:42:32,938 --> 01:42:36,024
We had one shot of it to remember it.

1023
01:42:36,192 --> 01:42:42,489
It had to be modernized and tricked out
for this show,

1024
01:42:42,656 --> 01:42:44,282
and there it is.

1025
01:42:44,450 --> 01:42:49,078
(Gillis) You borrowed that back from
Bob Burns, who had been given it?

1026
01:42:49,246 --> 01:42:53,833
- (Edlund) I think you're right.
- (Gillis) Burns really helped this series out

1027
01:42:54,001 --> 01:42:57,170
cos on Resurrection we also got
the queen-alien head

1028
01:42:57,338 --> 01:42:59,547
that Jim Cameron gave him,

1029
01:42:59,715 --> 01:43:01,758
and refurbished that.

1030
01:43:01,926 --> 01:43:05,929
Thank God he's around.
He saved Fox a lot of money.

1031
01:43:06,096 --> 01:43:08,264
(Edlund) That was nice of him.

1032
01:43:08,432 --> 01:43:12,977
At Fox there's some wonderful people,
and good that they saved a few bucks.

1033
01:43:13,145 --> 01:43:16,856
(Thomson) When you're setting up a shot,
sometimes you get an accident.

1034
01:43:17,024 --> 01:43:20,610
Somebody wrecks something
and you think "Oh, let's do that."

1035
01:43:20,778 --> 01:43:25,865
That's a Iovely thing about filmmaking -
you have the ability to change your mind.

1036
01:43:26,033 --> 01:43:30,161
And there's certain things
that happen by accident

1037
01:43:30,788 --> 01:43:34,123
that are just magic.

1038
01:43:34,291 --> 01:43:40,588
I'll always remember Conrad Hall talking
about putting a Iight through a window,

1039
01:43:40,840 --> 01:43:46,302
and this guy's in a room,
and it's raining outside and it created tears,

1040
01:43:46,470 --> 01:43:51,140
shadows of the rain
dripping like tears on the man's face.

1041
01:43:51,308 --> 01:43:54,143
Purely by accident.

1042
01:43:55,187 --> 01:43:59,148
(Woodruff) There were elements here
that were shot months and months apart.

1043
01:43:59,316 --> 01:44:03,820
She sees, or she thinks she sees,

1044
01:44:03,988 --> 01:44:09,701
the alien tucked up here
among the ductwork and pipes.

1045
01:44:09,869 --> 01:44:14,831
It was a miserabIe sequence.
I had to be in this suit, completeIy still,

1046
01:44:14,999 --> 01:44:19,002
while David shot her POV.

1047
01:44:20,504 --> 01:44:24,007
But, again, we had dumped
these crickets aIl over the suit.

1048
01:44:24,174 --> 01:44:26,759
This is the scene I remember most vividly.

1049
01:44:26,927 --> 01:44:31,431
The crickets had crawled down through
the neck in the suit and I could feel them.

1050
01:44:31,599 --> 01:44:35,351
It's like they were moving
between my skin and the suit.

1051
01:44:35,519 --> 01:44:41,566
I know these things weren't biting me,
but you could feel their little claws digging.

1052
01:44:41,734 --> 01:44:46,696
- (Edlund) Their evil intent.
- (Woodruff) I knew they were after me.

1053
01:44:46,864 --> 01:44:49,741
(Gillis) There was some
oxygen deprivation too,

1054
01:44:49,909 --> 01:44:54,454
cos he couldn't really breathe as well as
he should have. He was all crammed up...

1055
01:44:54,622 --> 01:44:57,874
(Woodruff) All this stuff of Sigourney,
shot in London,

1056
01:44:58,042 --> 01:45:00,668
I'm up on top of that ledge overhead,

1057
01:45:00,836 --> 01:45:05,757
waiting for this moment to crawl out
and fall on her.

1058
01:45:05,925 --> 01:45:08,968
This is the cricket shot.

1059
01:45:09,136 --> 01:45:12,513
(Gillis) So this is a mislead here, right?

1060
01:45:13,724 --> 01:45:18,561
(Woodruff) I was crying,
I was weeping inside that suit.

1061
01:45:19,897 --> 01:45:23,399
These lines, I remember hearing
them over and over during each take,

1062
01:45:23,567 --> 01:45:25,818
and I was wedged up in this Iedge.

1063
01:45:25,986 --> 01:45:29,739
And Alec was behind me,
giving me something to push off against

1064
01:45:29,907 --> 01:45:33,493
so I could crawl down
and drop off in front of her.

1065
01:45:33,661 --> 01:45:37,121
(Gillis) Yeah, but the cue came, right?

1066
01:45:37,748 --> 01:45:42,001
And you, Tom, I couldn't believe it,
you were asleep, weren't you?

1067
01:45:42,169 --> 01:45:47,799
(Woodruff) It wasn't sIeep as much as I had
gone unconscious from the lack of oxygen.

1068
01:45:47,967 --> 01:45:50,426
(Gillis) It was oxygen-deprivation
apoplexy.

1069
01:45:50,594 --> 01:45:54,472
- (Woodruff) It was amazing because...
- (Gillis) He was asleep back there.

1070
01:45:54,640 --> 01:45:57,100
(Woodruff) Look how motionless I am.

1071
01:45:57,267 --> 01:46:01,729
(Gillis) The only reason he gets up to make
his cue is that I pounded him on the foot.

1072
01:46:01,981 --> 01:46:03,606
His foot was hanging over.

1073
01:46:03,774 --> 01:46:10,238
(Woodruff) I'd hear "Action",
and Sigourney,

1074
01:46:10,406 --> 01:46:14,283
and I would just pass out,
take after take.

1075
01:46:14,618 --> 01:46:18,621
(Gillis) Well, that's what
good dialogue does, Tom.

1076
01:46:18,789 --> 01:46:23,626
(Edlund) There a masochistic aspect
to this.

1077
01:46:23,794 --> 01:46:28,965
But it's so worth it when you sit
in the theater and see the audience crawl.

1078
01:46:29,133 --> 01:46:32,010
(Gillis) You make them squirm
like the crickets did you.

1079
01:46:32,177 --> 01:46:34,679
(Woodruff) I am the cricket on their skin.

1080
01:46:34,847 --> 01:46:38,266
(Gillis) Wasn't that the song
from Beaches?

1081
01:46:38,434 --> 01:46:42,186
(Edlund) But it is amazing how much stuff
goes on behind the scenes,

1082
01:46:42,354 --> 01:46:45,023
that nobody's aware of at all,

1083
01:46:45,190 --> 01:46:47,900
that's required to get
all this stuff to happen.

1084
01:46:48,068 --> 01:46:51,988
And it just fleets by,
but sticks in the mind.

1085
01:46:52,156 --> 01:46:53,573
(Woodruff) Sometimes.

1086
01:46:53,741 --> 01:46:56,034
(Gillis) It's good that people
aren't aware of it.

1087
01:46:56,201 --> 01:46:58,494
(Edlund) Oh, no. Of course not.

1088
01:46:58,662 --> 01:47:00,997
But that's what
we're talking about today.

1089
01:47:01,165 --> 01:47:05,918
- AIl the nightmares that we...
- (Gillis) Yeah, right.

1090
01:47:21,685 --> 01:47:26,564
(Rawlings) We couldn't get them to give us
permission to shoot what we needed for it.

1091
01:47:26,732 --> 01:47:29,692
Then they said
"What do you need to make this work?"

1092
01:47:29,860 --> 01:47:34,739
And we sat down and discussed this,
obviousIy, David and myself.

1093
01:47:34,907 --> 01:47:41,079
We knew the things that they hadn't let him
complete when we were shooting originally.

1094
01:47:41,246 --> 01:47:46,542
So we said
"What we need is A, B, C, D, E."

1095
01:47:46,710 --> 01:47:49,212
We need to shoot these sequences.

1096
01:47:49,379 --> 01:47:52,131
So they had a meeting,
and they said "Fine."

1097
01:47:52,299 --> 01:47:57,595
"You can shoot A, C and F,
but you can't shoot the others."

1098
01:47:57,763 --> 01:48:01,474
So, of course, what do you do?
You start up, you shoot those.

1099
01:48:01,642 --> 01:48:03,726
Then when you put that together,

1100
01:48:03,894 --> 01:48:05,978
you needed the ones
they wouldn't let you shoot.

1101
01:48:06,146 --> 01:48:09,357
So it just went on and on and on.

1102
01:48:11,401 --> 01:48:15,738
It's always disappointing when
you put so much effort into these films.

1103
01:48:15,906 --> 01:48:20,910
Every film you do
you put a lot into it, a lot of yourself.

1104
01:48:21,078 --> 01:48:27,917
And when it's jeopardized
by people other than yourselves...

1105
01:48:28,085 --> 01:48:31,420
If you've shot it wrong,
or you've cut it wrong,

1106
01:48:31,588 --> 01:48:33,798
you got no one else to blame.

1107
01:48:33,966 --> 01:48:39,929
But when you're in the hands of others,
you cannot change their point of view.

1108
01:48:40,097 --> 01:48:42,932
They have the cIout
to do what they want with it.

1109
01:48:43,100 --> 01:48:46,602
It's just tragic when you see
what they can do to so many films.

1110
01:48:46,770 --> 01:48:48,938
When you see films that failed, you think

1111
01:48:49,106 --> 01:48:52,441
"I'd love to see what
their originaI concept was",

1112
01:48:52,609 --> 01:48:55,611
because you'll never know.

1113
01:49:58,300 --> 01:50:03,304
When Golic cuts the guy's throat,
and goes in and Iets it out,

1114
01:50:03,472 --> 01:50:05,723
you never see him let out.

1115
01:50:05,891 --> 01:50:09,435
They cut that out and I cannot remember
why they didn't want that in.

1116
01:50:09,603 --> 01:50:14,398
I wish I could remember
who suggested it should come out.

1117
01:50:14,566 --> 01:50:19,195
It must have been insisted upon
by the front office.

1118
01:50:19,363 --> 01:50:23,282
And they kept on having us
try things and do things,

1119
01:50:23,450 --> 01:50:28,371
and it became a fight between
the office and the cutting room.

1120
01:51:04,658 --> 01:51:07,576
I thought it was a very happy set.

1121
01:51:08,996 --> 01:51:13,332
I didn't hear of anything
that was going wrong.

1122
01:51:15,002 --> 01:51:20,756
These films are difficult.
They're difficult to shoot,

1123
01:51:20,924 --> 01:51:25,386
and then, to work on them, you need
time to make these things work.

1124
01:51:25,554 --> 01:51:32,059
It's not like a dialogue film where
it either works on the words or it doesn't.

1125
01:51:32,227 --> 01:51:35,646
It's far more compIicated
to get this mood across.

1126
01:53:08,615 --> 01:53:11,992
(Gillis) We also had to do a replica
of CharIes Dutton

1127
01:53:12,160 --> 01:53:15,955
for a scene where originally you were
gonna see his head get bitten by the alien,

1128
01:53:16,123 --> 01:53:19,875
but Fincher changed the approach on that
and you see him in the wide high shot

1129
01:53:20,043 --> 01:53:23,087
getting attacked by the alien
in the lead mold.

1130
01:54:12,596 --> 01:54:16,056
(Rawlings) It was great.
I liked working with him.

1131
01:54:16,224 --> 01:54:21,228
I think, I mean, he would have to say,
but I thought we worked together very well.

1132
01:54:21,396 --> 01:54:26,525
I was thrilled to be working with him, and...

1133
01:54:28,278 --> 01:54:32,448
Yeah, he never pressurized me to do it,

1134
01:54:32,616 --> 01:54:38,120
and we didn't, we didn't fall out ever.

1135
01:54:38,288 --> 01:54:40,289
No, I think it worked very well.

1136
01:54:40,457 --> 01:54:46,462
He obviousIy had his ideas,
which I tried to translate and make work.

1137
01:54:46,630 --> 01:54:51,967
And he listened. He was very good
at listening to what you would suggest,

1138
01:54:52,135 --> 01:54:56,472
and "Show me",
not "This is the way it's gonna be."

1139
01:54:56,640 --> 01:55:00,309
He'd say "Show me your idea."

1140
01:55:00,477 --> 01:55:03,479
I thought we became good friends.

1141
01:55:03,980 --> 01:55:09,860
We used to spend lots of time together
when it got to visual-effects stage,

1142
01:55:10,028 --> 01:55:13,155
going through this Alien stuff.

1143
01:55:13,323 --> 01:55:15,407
And...

1144
01:55:16,576 --> 01:55:19,995
I don't know. It's just sad that...

1145
01:55:21,331 --> 01:55:26,085
Well, it was sad then,
but this is great to see this now.

1146
01:56:36,072 --> 01:56:39,116
(Edlund) For the running alien shots
we received

1147
01:56:40,493 --> 01:56:44,496
a one-third-scale model of the alien,

1148
01:56:44,664 --> 01:56:47,082
which you'll see here.

1149
01:56:47,250 --> 01:56:50,002
(Gillis) That's a great shot.
It's really creepy.

1150
01:56:50,170 --> 01:56:53,839
(Edlund) That's one of the first shots
we did in motion control.

1151
01:56:54,007 --> 01:56:59,345
(Gillis) Five of your guys were puppeteering
that. Rods came off of the limbs, right?

1152
01:56:59,512 --> 01:57:05,100
And you guys would shoot it at high speed,
like 40 frames or something?

1153
01:57:05,268 --> 01:57:12,024
(Edlund) We shot some at less than
normal speed, some at higher speed.

1154
01:57:12,192 --> 01:57:16,612
But we had to control...
We had to have depth of field, and...

1155
01:57:18,490 --> 01:57:23,827
Because we were close to the thing...

1156
01:57:23,995 --> 01:57:27,331
But before all that, we had to
figure out how to make it move,

1157
01:57:27,499 --> 01:57:31,502
and we'd done all kinds of studies
of gazelles running,

1158
01:57:31,670 --> 01:57:34,755
and aIl kinds of animals
running and walking,

1159
01:57:34,923 --> 01:57:41,762
because it had an extra knee
like a camel leg, right?

1160
01:57:41,930 --> 01:57:43,472
So...

1161
01:57:54,275 --> 01:58:00,155
(Gillis) There's Tom. There's a beautiful
shot where the doors close behind it.

1162
01:58:00,323 --> 01:58:03,617
It just has a beautiful fluid move
- this one.

1163
01:58:03,785 --> 01:58:07,037
That's gorgeous.
That's one of my favorites.

1164
01:58:38,194 --> 01:58:41,864
(Rawlings) I loved that Steadicam stuff
down the tunnels,

1165
01:58:42,031 --> 01:58:45,200
and the points of view
of the actuaI creature.

1166
01:58:45,368 --> 01:58:49,455
And the way they worked it so they
could switch from 24 frames to three,

1167
01:58:49,622 --> 01:58:51,749
just like that.

1168
01:58:51,916 --> 01:58:56,628
Incredible. Yeah, and it'd spin round.

1169
01:59:01,509 --> 01:59:04,928
(Edlund) The other shot of the Sulaco.

1170
01:59:05,930 --> 01:59:08,724
There's a painting with the radar dish

1171
01:59:08,892 --> 01:59:11,185
as a miniature in the foreground.

1172
01:59:18,651 --> 01:59:22,404
(Gillis) This is another nice shot
with the torches...

1173
01:59:22,572 --> 01:59:27,701
(Edlund) This is the one where
he's hanging on the ceiling.

1174
01:59:29,704 --> 01:59:32,080
(Gillis) Interactive light and stuff.

1175
01:59:32,248 --> 01:59:37,211
(Edlund) That was...
Matching all that... That was really...

1176
01:59:38,505 --> 01:59:43,759
- (Gillis) And all that's optically printed, right?
- (Edlund) Right.

1177
01:59:44,969 --> 01:59:48,931
Here we'd pushed the photographic
process about as far as it could go,

1178
01:59:49,098 --> 01:59:54,978
and we were having problems
that we'd continualIy had,

1179
01:59:55,146 --> 01:59:59,942
and I was praying
for the digitaI revoIution to...

1180
02:00:03,780 --> 02:00:08,784
(Gillis) That one's
one of the less effective shots.

1181
02:00:16,960 --> 02:00:20,462
Was Fincher on set
when you puppeteered those shots?

1182
02:00:20,630 --> 02:00:23,674
(Edlund) For some of it, not aIl of it.

1183
02:00:23,841 --> 02:00:28,387
But Laine Liska and his four cronies,
Bill Hedge and...

1184
02:00:28,555 --> 02:00:30,514
Forgotten the other guys' names now.

1185
02:00:30,682 --> 02:00:35,686
Rick Fichter was
my cosupervisor on the show.

1186
02:00:35,853 --> 02:00:38,480
Did real good work.

1187
02:00:40,525 --> 02:00:43,986
(Gillis) There's another good shot comin' up
here where it runs across

1188
02:00:46,239 --> 02:00:48,115
the raiIroad tracks.

1189
02:00:48,283 --> 02:00:52,536
(Woodruff) For some of these,
you had plates shot,

1190
02:00:52,704 --> 02:00:57,457
where I would run through the scene
in the alien suit, for Iighting reference.

1191
02:00:57,625 --> 02:01:00,627
And I remember this one,
running through, and I had to...

1192
02:01:00,795 --> 02:01:04,339
I was almost blind in the costume,
looking out through holes in the neck.

1193
02:01:04,507 --> 02:01:08,218
And I had to run over the tracks,
and aIso make it through the doorway,

1194
02:01:08,386 --> 02:01:12,347
and there was at least one take,
where I slammed into the side of the door.

1195
02:01:12,515 --> 02:01:14,308
I was bruised for weeks.

1196
02:01:14,475 --> 02:01:16,935
My whole shoulder.
Slammed into it at full speed.

1197
02:01:17,103 --> 02:01:22,024
In the take I bounce back, take a couple
steps, and then run through the door.

1198
02:01:22,191 --> 02:01:28,030
(Edlund) Here he comes.
This shot is over in about... It's comin' up.

1199
02:01:28,197 --> 02:01:34,036
(Woodruff) I was disappointed you didn't
have the model alien bounce off the wall.

1200
02:01:34,787 --> 02:01:36,705
(Gillis) There he goes.

1201
02:01:36,873 --> 02:01:41,168
- (Edlund) 20 frames.
- (Gillis) If that, huh?

1202
02:01:41,336 --> 02:01:45,339
(Thomson) The very warm light
at the far end of the set,

1203
02:01:45,506 --> 02:01:50,052
I had red filters on the lamps
to try and suggest heat

1204
02:01:50,219 --> 02:01:55,223
cos they're trying to induce
the alien into that pit

1205
02:01:55,391 --> 02:01:58,560
so they can destroy it
with the molten lead.

1206
02:01:58,728 --> 02:02:03,899
So I was trying to give the feeling
of terrific heat in there.

1207
02:02:09,113 --> 02:02:12,574
(Gillis) That's digital debris flying in the...
Is that right?

1208
02:02:12,742 --> 02:02:16,578
(Edlund) Yeah, I think it was
actually digital debris.

1209
02:02:16,746 --> 02:02:20,290
Looks kind of funky actually, to me, now.

1210
02:02:20,458 --> 02:02:23,293
(Thomson) And also cIaustrophobic.

1211
02:02:23,461 --> 02:02:30,133
After a couple of weeks in these corridors,
we were all getting a bit fed up with them.

1212
02:02:30,301 --> 02:02:33,512
(Gillis) How many shots of
the miniature alien did you do?

1213
02:02:33,680 --> 02:02:37,557
(Edlund) There must be 40 shots
or something like that.

1214
02:02:43,898 --> 02:02:48,777
This stuff is pretty effective. Fincher just
puts the anamorphic lens on sideways

1215
02:02:48,945 --> 02:02:54,157
on the camera and you get
that strange wide-angle look.

1216
02:03:00,873 --> 02:03:03,333
(McGann) When you work
as an actor on pictures,

1217
02:03:03,501 --> 02:03:06,336
for those that don't do it,
it might be interesting:

1218
02:03:06,504 --> 02:03:09,631
an actor comes in
in the middle of the process.

1219
02:03:09,799 --> 02:03:15,595
A film might take three years
from its inception to when it's screened.

1220
02:03:15,763 --> 02:03:19,933
An actor might come in for six weeks,
in the middle of that three years.

1221
02:03:20,101 --> 02:03:21,643
And there's your contribution.

1222
02:03:21,811 --> 02:03:26,148
What happens before and after
is not in your control.

1223
02:03:26,315 --> 02:03:30,569
By the time this picture came out,
I was working on something else.

1224
02:03:30,737 --> 02:03:35,198
It's well known that performances and
pictures are really made in the editing.

1225
02:03:35,366 --> 02:03:38,910
In the editing suite, in the editing process.

1226
02:03:48,504 --> 02:03:54,468
(Edlund) Claustrophobic shooting,
in all those tunnels for weeks.

1227
02:03:55,344 --> 02:04:00,682
(Thomson) This alien point of view
was shot with a prime 1 0-millimeter Iens,

1228
02:04:00,850 --> 02:04:07,647
which is distorting,
and we did a bit of Steadicam.

1229
02:04:07,815 --> 02:04:13,320
The Steadicam operator was running down
the corridors to get a sense of speed.

1230
02:04:13,488 --> 02:04:16,531
He did a marvelous thing,
which I thought was very cIever,

1231
02:04:16,699 --> 02:04:20,035
that he flipped the camera over
whilst he was running,

1232
02:04:20,203 --> 02:04:22,412
which I had never seen before.

1233
02:04:22,580 --> 02:04:26,500
A very effective move, and,
of course, with the running,

1234
02:04:26,667 --> 02:04:31,004
sometimes the lamps were kicked
by the actors or by the crew running.

1235
02:04:31,172 --> 02:04:33,882
It was quite a difficult operation.

1236
02:04:34,884 --> 02:04:37,052
(Edlund) Blood spattering, here.

1237
02:04:37,220 --> 02:04:41,765
(Gillis) Fast and furious.
I think we had a dummy for this.

1238
02:04:41,933 --> 02:04:46,186
All you see is his legs, but...
That's good there.

1239
02:04:47,230 --> 02:04:50,899
(Edlund) Another matte shot.

1240
02:04:51,067 --> 02:04:54,569
Many elements for that shot.

1241
02:05:02,578 --> 02:05:06,164
It's interesting,
there's a couple of movies that were saved

1242
02:05:06,332 --> 02:05:11,086
because the effects props
didn't work very well.

1243
02:05:11,254 --> 02:05:14,089
And one was Alien.

1244
02:05:14,257 --> 02:05:17,092
In the movie Alien,

1245
02:05:17,260 --> 02:05:23,473
if you had the camera on that thing
for more than a second it gave itseIf away.

1246
02:05:23,641 --> 02:05:27,394
Ridley set it up so you saw it
for less than a second.

1247
02:05:27,562 --> 02:05:30,438
And it actually made the movie more...

1248
02:05:30,606 --> 02:05:34,776
(Gillis) That first movie
really helped establish

1249
02:05:34,944 --> 02:05:37,737
a technique for this horror-action stuff.

1250
02:05:37,905 --> 02:05:40,824
(Edlund) And Jaws was
a nightmare for Steven.

1251
02:05:40,992 --> 02:05:43,743
He couldn't get
this big rubber shark to work.

1252
02:05:43,911 --> 02:05:49,207
But the few frames that it did
worked really wonderful.

1253
02:05:50,251 --> 02:05:54,254
Whereas maybe, if it had worked better,
he'd have overdone it.

1254
02:05:54,422 --> 02:05:58,758
Left it on the screen too long,
which is always the...

1255
02:06:02,138 --> 02:06:06,474
(Gillis) There's Tom
tearing somebody apart in the background.

1256
02:06:10,897 --> 02:06:13,231
(Edlund) Noshing.

1257
02:06:15,109 --> 02:06:19,321
(Gillis) This is where she actuaIly
wrestles with its tail, isn't it?

1258
02:06:19,488 --> 02:06:22,574
Steve Norrington buiIt this tail.

1259
02:06:24,410 --> 02:06:32,292
Took a couple of guys to operate it,
with big lever controls. CabIe-operated tail.

1260
02:06:32,460 --> 02:06:36,796
With a very sharp and hard
blade tip on the end of it.

1261
02:06:39,800 --> 02:06:43,303
But one of the great things
about having Tom perform in the suits

1262
02:06:43,471 --> 02:06:47,015
is that because he's the cocreator,
codesigner of the effects,

1263
02:06:47,183 --> 02:06:50,560
he has a vested interest in making sure
the performance is right,

1264
02:06:50,728 --> 02:06:55,482
and it allows us also
to not build in zippers or connectors

1265
02:06:55,650 --> 02:06:58,360
or whatever that would be unsightly.

1266
02:06:58,527 --> 02:07:04,783
And he also doesn't mind
having stuff like this poured all over him.

1267
02:07:05,534 --> 02:07:11,373
(Woodruff) A lot of these weird alien moves
that work because it's just so frenetic...

1268
02:07:11,540 --> 02:07:13,833
You're in close, and they're cut welI,

1269
02:07:14,001 --> 02:07:17,712
but it's a lot of slamming myself around
inside this little corridor.

1270
02:07:17,880 --> 02:07:20,507
And you're seeing
all the textures and colors.

1271
02:07:20,675 --> 02:07:24,052
(Gillis) Didn't Fincher do some stuff
with 90-degree shutters?

1272
02:07:24,220 --> 02:07:27,889
- There's the puppet.
- (Edlund) That's the one puppet, yeah.

1273
02:07:28,057 --> 02:07:32,310
(Gillis) 90-degree shutters to create
a chattering movement out of the alien.

1274
02:07:32,478 --> 02:07:37,941
- (Edlund) Here's another puppet shot.
- (Woodruff) I don't know.

1275
02:07:53,749 --> 02:07:55,500
(Edlund) Puppet. Puppet.

1276
02:07:57,086 --> 02:07:59,754
(Gillis) Remember Alex Thomson
had some snoots

1277
02:07:59,922 --> 02:08:02,757
he'd put on hand-heId Iights
and shine 'em?

1278
02:08:02,925 --> 02:08:06,052
You had a guy shining 'em
at the mouth of the alien,

1279
02:08:06,220 --> 02:08:09,097
so you could realIy see the teeth pop.

1280
02:08:11,392 --> 02:08:16,104
(Edlund) Yeah, he's a real vet.
Alex is a good cameraman.

1281
02:08:16,897 --> 02:08:23,987
(Thomson) Here, I used these red filters
on the lens to try and give a feeling of heat,

1282
02:08:24,155 --> 02:08:28,366
some of which gives you those deep blacks,
which Iooks very nice.

1283
02:08:28,534 --> 02:08:32,370
You have to be careful,
cos if you shoot something with a red filter,

1284
02:08:32,538 --> 02:08:35,582
the focus shifts,
and you can't get anything in focus.

1285
02:08:35,750 --> 02:08:38,460
It makes everything Iook out of focus.

1286
02:08:38,627 --> 02:08:42,672
So you have to mix the red
with a little bit of yelIow,

1287
02:08:42,840 --> 02:08:45,425
just so that you can hold focus there.

1288
02:08:45,593 --> 02:08:48,511
As you can see,
they are still a littIe bit soft,

1289
02:08:48,679 --> 02:08:53,433
but it doesn't matter,
cos it's quite a nice effect, I think.

1290
02:08:53,601 --> 02:08:58,521
(Woodruff) When we would suit up in the
alien suit, the whole body was one piece.

1291
02:08:58,689 --> 02:09:01,191
It was open at the wrists, ankIes and neck.

1292
02:09:01,358 --> 02:09:04,110
And we would glue the hands
and the feet on,

1293
02:09:04,278 --> 02:09:06,821
and keep them on for most of the day.

1294
02:09:06,989 --> 02:09:11,618
Part of the reason was that we didn't wanna
keep pulling them off, and putting them on,

1295
02:09:11,786 --> 02:09:14,829
and building up layers of glue
and breaking down the suit,

1296
02:09:14,997 --> 02:09:19,167
because they were cosmetic blends,
we didn't want to see the edging of them.

1297
02:09:19,335 --> 02:09:23,171
So once I was in, including the neck,
I'd be in for a good part of the day,

1298
02:09:23,339 --> 02:09:25,673
and just stay inside the suit.

1299
02:09:25,841 --> 02:09:29,010
Here you can see the whole body,
and it works pretty well,

1300
02:09:29,178 --> 02:09:33,681
because of the angle and of course,
the cover of smoke. The more we hide...

1301
02:09:33,849 --> 02:09:37,477
I really Iike the imagery of it, with the
big long tail and the spine and everything.

1302
02:09:45,319 --> 02:09:50,198
(Thomson) We're now coming to the gallery
where the lead is going to be poured,

1303
02:09:50,366 --> 02:09:55,245
and I'm trying to give the effect
of this extreme heat, from underneath.

1304
02:09:55,412 --> 02:09:58,456
There goes the lead into the hole.

1305
02:09:58,624 --> 02:10:01,709
A lot of smoke and steam in the effect.

1306
02:10:01,877 --> 02:10:06,381
I tried to get some light onto the lead,
to bring out the silver,

1307
02:10:06,549 --> 02:10:11,886
but in fact it wasn't terribly silver,
so I couldn't quite get that effect,

1308
02:10:12,054 --> 02:10:14,389
but I don't think it matters anyway.

1309
02:10:14,557 --> 02:10:17,976
You can feel that it's hot and burning.

1310
02:10:18,144 --> 02:10:21,354
(Woodruff) It was all just gallons
and gallons of methyl ceIl

1311
02:10:21,522 --> 02:10:25,567
that had been tinted
with an aluminum coloring.

1312
02:10:25,734 --> 02:10:30,530
And we did have a stunt puppet
that was built to take the initiaI impact,

1313
02:10:30,698 --> 02:10:37,495
but we did some shots where the weight of
all that material was not that huge an ordeal,

1314
02:10:37,663 --> 02:10:40,915
and we were able to do it
with me in the suit.

1315
02:10:54,430 --> 02:10:58,600
(Gillis) And there's a cool thing
comin' up here, isn't there?

1316
02:10:58,767 --> 02:11:03,521
Yeah, that was that CG puppet.
That was a rod puppet covered with...

1317
02:11:03,689 --> 02:11:07,817
- And then here comes Tom, covered with...
- (Edlund) CG Iead.

1318
02:11:07,985 --> 02:11:10,153
And here he comes up the ladder.

1319
02:11:10,321 --> 02:11:15,700
(Gillis) You can see that aluminum powder's
making Tom sick with every step.

1320
02:11:38,307 --> 02:11:41,809
(Edlund) And then
our only CG shot in the movie.

1321
02:11:41,977 --> 02:11:48,483
- (Gillis) Full 3-D CG, is that right?
- (Edlund) Yeah. There. Quick shot.

1322
02:11:48,651 --> 02:11:53,321
(Gillis) Actually, didn't we build a rig
and you put the cracks over it?

1323
02:11:53,489 --> 02:11:57,325
(Edlund) No, that was CG animation.

1324
02:12:02,331 --> 02:12:04,332
Not a great shot in retrospect.

1325
02:12:04,500 --> 02:12:07,502
(Gillis) You know what, though?
I mean, 1 992?

1326
02:12:07,670 --> 02:12:10,505
(Edlund) It was, yeah.

1327
02:12:22,977 --> 02:12:28,690
And then we had Sigourney on the stage
to shoot her in bluescreen,

1328
02:12:28,857 --> 02:12:34,195
and she signed a picture for me

1329
02:12:34,363 --> 02:12:37,240
"Help, get me the hell out of this movie!"

1330
02:12:39,326 --> 02:12:42,787
- "Love, Sigourney."
- (Gillis) We see bald-cap

1331
02:12:43,038 --> 02:12:46,874
shots soon,
that were shot months later in LA.

1332
02:12:47,042 --> 02:12:50,712
And Greg Cannom
did a beautiful bald cap on her.

1333
02:12:50,879 --> 02:12:54,048
(Woodruff) More than a bald cap -
it had to have that stubble.

1334
02:12:54,216 --> 02:12:57,844
It was much more difficult
than a baId cap.

1335
02:12:58,012 --> 02:13:04,267
(Edlund) You'd think he'd done samurai
movies with the quality of the bald cap.

1336
02:13:04,435 --> 02:13:08,438
(Woodruff) This was fun,
having Lance back in the role too.

1337
02:13:08,605 --> 02:13:13,526
And it's so brief,
when Lance gets hit with this Iead pipe.

1338
02:13:13,694 --> 02:13:16,904
But we showed his ear
had become dislodged,

1339
02:13:17,072 --> 02:13:24,579
as Fincher wanted to show that this is
the real guy, and not a synthetic person.

1340
02:13:26,540 --> 02:13:28,750
(Henriksen) The script had Bishop I and II.

1341
02:13:28,917 --> 02:13:32,754
And to pIay the creator of Bishop,
who wouId be this guy,

1342
02:13:32,921 --> 02:13:36,924
I literally didn't have to do anything,
as an actor,

1343
02:13:37,092 --> 02:13:41,429
because to pIay the creator of a guy
you make Bishop in your own image.

1344
02:13:41,597 --> 02:13:44,265
You'd buiId an android in your own image.

1345
02:13:44,433 --> 02:13:49,187
It's like when you read the Bible -
it's God made man in his own image.

1346
02:13:49,355 --> 02:13:52,565
And I thought the outrageous part
was Fincher being...

1347
02:13:52,733 --> 02:14:00,198
He was a young guy, 27 or something,
and when he talked to me about this scene

1348
02:14:00,366 --> 02:14:03,284
he was so articulate and so supportive,

1349
02:14:03,452 --> 02:14:08,414
I was shocked, because he was such
a young guy. He sort of saw inside you.

1350
02:14:08,582 --> 02:14:10,917
It was a realIy amazing thing.

1351
02:14:11,210 --> 02:14:13,544
(Gillis) For Lance's human character,

1352
02:14:13,712 --> 02:14:16,297
when it's revealed
that he is actually a scientist

1353
02:14:16,465 --> 02:14:21,302
who the Bishop model was patterned
after, Fincher wanted a wound.

1354
02:14:21,470 --> 02:14:27,141
So we created a torn ear
where the whole ear was lifted forward.

1355
02:14:27,309 --> 02:14:30,853
And Nick Dudman applied
that beautiful application on it

1356
02:14:31,021 --> 02:14:34,607
and some blood tubes
and that sort of thing.

1357
02:14:35,401 --> 02:14:40,154
(Thomson) Obviously I've got
flicker boxes working on these lamps,

1358
02:14:40,322 --> 02:14:45,660
to give the effect of firelight
and the hot furnace.

1359
02:14:45,828 --> 02:14:50,498
You can just see it in the background.
You can see the light fluctuating.

1360
02:14:50,666 --> 02:14:52,917
Just giving the effect.

1361
02:14:55,712 --> 02:15:00,383
Once again, it's nice to flicker
on several sources at the same time,

1362
02:15:00,551 --> 02:15:05,596
because if you do it just on one lamp,
it never looks quite right.

1363
02:15:05,764 --> 02:15:08,182
It's either too regular or too irregular.

1364
02:15:08,350 --> 02:15:13,980
But if you use one more than one lamp
at a time, it comes across much better.

1365
02:15:26,994 --> 02:15:30,663
(Henriksen) When they hit me
in the head with a steel bar here,

1366
02:15:30,831 --> 02:15:36,711
they had to put an ear on me, and they used
Jack Nicholson's ear from Batman.

1367
02:15:36,879 --> 02:15:42,091
And for Sigourney, to see her again -
she had had a baby, she had softened,

1368
02:15:42,259 --> 02:15:44,594
she was the sweetest person.

1369
02:15:44,761 --> 02:15:47,847
It was an incredible revisit to Pinewood.

1370
02:15:48,765 --> 02:15:54,520
(Thomson) This is a curious
kind of situation for me.

1371
02:15:54,688 --> 02:16:01,527
In a moment we're gonna see a wide shot
incIuding the pit of molten metal,

1372
02:16:01,695 --> 02:16:06,449
and I had a lot of lamps done
and some tracing paper.

1373
02:16:06,617 --> 02:16:09,243
And a lot of light underneath,

1374
02:16:09,411 --> 02:16:15,791
but it still didn't look like
a bubbling molten mass.

1375
02:16:15,959 --> 02:16:19,045
And I called David Fincher over and said

1376
02:16:19,213 --> 02:16:25,426
"I don't know how to photograph this,
because you can see the scaffolding."

1377
02:16:25,594 --> 02:16:30,973
Then you couId see the different source
lamps and he said "Oh, that's alI right."

1378
02:16:31,141 --> 02:16:36,646
Then just took his finger to his nose and got
some nose grease and popped it on the lens,

1379
02:16:36,813 --> 02:16:43,694
and diffused the littIe spot where
the furnace was. And it Iooked great.

1380
02:16:44,738 --> 02:16:47,657
I was grateful to him for that.

1381
02:16:49,409 --> 02:16:52,453
I think you'll see it a minute,
in this wide shot.

1382
02:16:53,455 --> 02:16:55,957
There you go. That's the shot.

1383
02:17:18,480 --> 02:17:23,943
This is a stunt man, who was
a really good physical match for Sigourney.

1384
02:17:24,111 --> 02:17:27,488
- I mean, he was tall and sIender.
- (Edlund) Yeah, right.

1385
02:18:00,397 --> 02:18:03,357
(Henriksen) I didn't know who to care for.

1386
02:18:03,525 --> 02:18:07,737
I was shocked by the movie, because
every guy was a rapist or a murderer,

1387
02:18:07,904 --> 02:18:11,699
and then Ripley ends up
sleeping with a doctor,

1388
02:18:11,867 --> 02:18:16,871
who injected all these people and they died.
And so I didn't know who to care for.

1389
02:18:17,039 --> 02:18:20,207
It was like nihilism on top of nihilism.

1390
02:18:20,375 --> 02:18:25,379
I mean, you couIdn't care for the monster,
and you couldn't care for the people,

1391
02:18:25,547 --> 02:18:28,549
so I left the theater thinking

1392
02:18:29,551 --> 02:18:34,472
how sorrowful the whole thing was.

1393
02:18:35,682 --> 02:18:39,268
I mean, again, the image of lead at the end,
the vapors from lead.

1394
02:18:39,436 --> 02:18:45,900
If you can die from lead paint, imagine
what you could do from lead vapors.

1395
02:18:57,371 --> 02:19:01,749
(Gillis) It looks great. The cinematography's
great, art direction's great.

1396
02:19:01,917 --> 02:19:05,753
I think probably the biggest advances
have come in the creature stuff.

1397
02:19:05,921 --> 02:19:11,926
Even in Resurrection, our stuff was
a lot more sophisticated and subtle.

1398
02:19:12,094 --> 02:19:17,264
And certainly, with being able
to do a CGI alien in that one...

1399
02:19:17,432 --> 02:19:22,436
(Edlund) It gives you... Well, you're not trying
to put five pounds in a one-pound bag.

1400
02:19:22,604 --> 02:19:27,108
(Gillis) What is still very interesting to me
is this really is a bridging movie,

1401
02:19:27,275 --> 02:19:29,610
in terms of that rod-puppet technique,

1402
02:19:29,778 --> 02:19:34,448
that it really does have a connection
to the physicaI as well as...

1403
02:19:34,616 --> 02:19:37,326
You were starting to do digital stuff in this.

1404
02:19:37,494 --> 02:19:43,165
In fact, I remember
in the Academy screening,

1405
02:19:43,333 --> 02:19:47,628
people were very interested, and asking
"Was that an all-digital alien?"

1406
02:19:47,796 --> 02:19:50,464
And I remember when you said
"No, it was..."

1407
02:19:50,632 --> 02:19:53,968
and you noticed there was
a disappointment in the air

1408
02:19:54,136 --> 02:19:57,847
that it was not quite there yet -
the digital work was not quite there yet.

1409
02:19:58,014 --> 02:20:02,977
(Edlund) Oh, I announced that this
was our last photochemical project.

1410
02:20:03,145 --> 02:20:08,524
- So, I mean, that was...
- (Gillis) That's significant, yeah.

1411
02:20:17,951 --> 02:20:23,497
If you line up alI of Fincher's movies,
you can see that it's a Fincher movie.

1412
02:20:23,665 --> 02:20:25,750
I still think he did a great job with this.

1413
02:20:25,917 --> 02:20:29,128
Not a lot of people
could have really pulled it off,

1414
02:20:29,296 --> 02:20:33,632
given the obstacles that he was facing.
I think he did a great job with it.

1415
02:20:33,800 --> 02:20:38,345
(Edlund) He did have a great team, from
production designer, camera, you guys...

1416
02:20:38,513 --> 02:20:40,598
(Gillis) And you.
Don't forget that, Richard.

1417
02:20:40,766 --> 02:20:44,560
I know you can't say it yourself,
but we can.

1418
02:20:44,728 --> 02:20:49,690
(Edlund) Well, I can say you guys.
And the track is good too.

1419
02:20:49,858 --> 02:20:53,527
You know, Goldenthal. Elliot Goldenthal.

1420
02:20:55,197 --> 02:20:59,283
You know, the creature work that you guys
are doing now is better than this work,

1421
02:20:59,451 --> 02:21:03,204
because you've just been able
to play the violin for longer.

1422
02:21:03,371 --> 02:21:06,791
If you could start again,
you'd have done it differently.

1423
02:21:06,958 --> 02:21:11,253
Cos that's the interesting thing
about this kind of work -

1424
02:21:11,421 --> 02:21:13,756
you figure a way to do something,

1425
02:21:13,924 --> 02:21:18,385
and later you figure, I could have done it
this way, and it would have been better.

1426
02:21:18,553 --> 02:21:21,597
(Woodruff) And even within the context
of when this was done,

1427
02:21:21,765 --> 02:21:25,893
I think had we finished this movie,
and then started immediately right after,

1428
02:21:26,061 --> 02:21:30,064
and done it all again, even without
any advances in materials or technology,

1429
02:21:30,232 --> 02:21:32,983
we so would have done things differently.

1430
02:21:33,151 --> 02:21:38,823
It's like anything: the more often you do it,
the better you get at it.

1431
02:21:38,990 --> 02:21:44,787
(Edlund) What draws me to this business
is that it's aIways prototypical.

1432
02:21:44,955 --> 02:21:48,958
Everything you do, you haven't done.
So it's always interesting and new.

1433
02:21:49,125 --> 02:21:52,002
(Gillis) You build off your experiences,

1434
02:21:52,170 --> 02:21:56,090
but you Iook for ways
to put a different spin on it.

1435
02:21:56,258 --> 02:22:00,094
(Edlund) And you're working with
a different psychology of people too.

1436
02:22:00,262 --> 02:22:03,013
Every director's different...
It's like a family.

1437
02:22:03,181 --> 02:22:09,603
It's interesting how movies create
a family of people, all these crew members,

1438
02:22:09,771 --> 02:22:14,483
and they all come together and become
this interwoven, weIl-knit group.

1439
02:22:14,651 --> 02:22:17,736
And then at the end of the production,
they explode.

1440
02:22:17,904 --> 02:22:20,990
Then you work together again,
but never in that combination.

1441
02:22:21,157 --> 02:22:24,118
(Gillis) But it is fun.
When we see you here in the hallway,

1442
02:22:24,286 --> 02:22:26,287
it's like, "Hey, there's Richard."

1443
02:22:26,454 --> 02:22:32,293
And you recall those experiences.
It's almost like being war vets or something.

1444
02:22:32,460 --> 02:22:37,381
And you say "What happened to...?
Where's this guy? He still alive?"

1445
02:22:37,549 --> 02:22:42,469
(Edlund) It is Iike going to war,
except your enemy is time and money.

1446
02:22:42,637 --> 02:22:48,809
(Woodruff) I'll bet you don't hear this kind
of warmth and love on the other audio tracks.

1447
02:23:04,326 --> 02:23:08,287
(Henriksen) Walter Hill called me
and said "Come and do this part."

1448
02:23:08,455 --> 02:23:12,333
"Just go to England, have a cup of coffee
and a doughnut and come home."

1449
02:23:12,500 --> 02:23:14,418
And it ended up being a whole month.

1450
02:23:14,586 --> 02:23:17,671
And I made four round trips
to England in a month,

1451
02:23:17,839 --> 02:23:20,674
to do this part.

1452
02:23:23,553 --> 02:23:29,350
The only part that bothered me was being
more like Burke, where I'm a corporate guy.

1453
02:23:29,517 --> 02:23:32,686
I didn't like that very much.

1454
02:23:32,854 --> 02:23:36,482
I don't like playing corporate anything.

1455
02:23:52,207 --> 02:23:55,709
(Edlund) The American Humane Society
was involved.

1456
02:23:55,877 --> 02:23:59,380
Which ones were those?
Not the ones in England.

1457
02:23:59,547 --> 02:24:02,549
(Woodruff) They were on set
documenting everything,

1458
02:24:02,717 --> 02:24:05,427
when we did the reshoots here
with the Rottweiler,

1459
02:24:05,595 --> 02:24:09,056
and having a representative there
when the dog's face was shaved,

1460
02:24:09,224 --> 02:24:11,767
for finger and grip marks.

1461
02:24:11,935 --> 02:24:17,147
(Gillis) The Society was responsible
for insisting on the sedative for the dog,

1462
02:24:17,315 --> 02:24:19,483
cos Fox just sent over a hammer.

1463
02:24:19,651 --> 02:24:21,986
(Edlund laughs)

1464
02:24:22,153 --> 02:24:25,072
(Woodruff) It is good to say no animals
were hurt in the movie,

1465
02:24:25,240 --> 02:24:28,242
and then we'd go out
and just beat animals all night long.

1466
02:24:28,410 --> 02:24:31,078
But it wasn't for the movie,
it was just for fun.

1467
02:24:31,246 --> 02:24:33,497
(Edlund) I loved Harold Ramis' comment

1468
02:24:33,665 --> 02:24:38,627
that no animals were hurt during this movie,
but many hundreds were eaten.

1469
02:24:38,795 --> 02:24:40,921
(laughter)

1470
02:24:42,632 --> 02:24:43,632
[ENGLISH - US - SDH - COMMENTARY]