cinemontage.org: FX’s “Alien: Earth” series captures all the vintage charm of the original 1979 “Alien” film while adding fun, new flavors to the franchise: the “Ocellus” eyeball alien creature, the carnivorous plant-like alien called the “Orchid,” the USCSS Maginot spaceship, cool new tech like Morrow’s Swiss Army-style cyborg arm, and lab equipment for transplanting consciousness — all requiring visual effects.
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Its been interesting to see through the alien franchise how special effects have evolved over the years, and how certain elements have stayed the same. I’ve seen the videos of how they build the original alien puppets for special effects, and how when they did that it was really the first of its time and the latest thing in special effects. I like how they’re still using practicals while integrating CGI, and staying true to the original movie and its groundbreaking approach to visual effects. I also really appreciate that they really made sure that they integrated those two methods seamlessly, so that its not obviously a mix of practicals and CGI but the CGI is enhancing the practicals and extending them. It sounds like what made this possible was good communication across the teams, and also that they just had a lot of fun. This is a good reminder that departments should not be separate, but should be extending the work of other departments and complimenting them.
The team behind this project clearly was very passionate about getting it right, and it seems like they made a ton of very intentional choices, ones that differ from the choices that many people make while creating visual effects. I think the fact that they actually filmed on site rather than with a green screen is part of what makes them so successful. The use of practicals in conjunction with CGI is in my opinion the best way to create really beautiful and unreal effects. I think that for this particular franchise, because the original movie was filmed in a more traditional way than what is possible with technology now, it is especially important to incorporate more of the original ways of doing things, so that you can capture the same vibe as the first movie. The hardest part of getting it all to work is the coordination between all the people working on it, so much has to happen and I would imagine it was quite a difficult experience.
Alien is one of my favorite movies ever, and its practical effects have always been some of my favorite ever in film! The set design, specifically, is my favorite thing about it. There’s a super long montage in the beginning where the camera literally just pans and cuts through the entire ship, and we get to see just how freaking awesome the set is. I’m in theatre because I love theatre as an art form, but this is one of the movies that makes me consider film as well. I think it’s really interesting that in the over 40 years of Alien being out, the focus has shifted from “how can we hide/disguise how this is a person in a suit” to “how can we best digitally engineer this to make it seem realistic?” Hearing how relatively low-budget Alien: Earth was makes it really reminiscent of the original. Sometimes nowadays it feels like the CGI just gets worse and worse, so the use of CGI with practicals and big sets feels like it will produce a better movie.
I have never seen the Movie alienBut I have seen small clips on social media and a lot of pictures of the creature and I've also had the opportunity to see some of the sketches and renderings for the monster online and first of all the monster is so complex and I love diving in and seeing how they create this monster whether it's through digital art afterwards and put it into post or if a prop creator or master took the sketches and created this so I was really excited to read this article and see how they brought this not just this movie to life but the creature to life as well. One of my favorite scenes that I've seen is the debris coming down and crashing into the camera, and obviously, you can't destroy an expensive camera, so I love getting to read about it in this article about how they worked on that scene.
I love to see people dedicating a lot of work and effort to a project like this. I feel like in the age of AI people just take the easier, cheaper route of just generating the content they want but it makes a really big impact on the final product when there are all these different pieces that come together to make a well done special effects movie or show. The combination of physical set and props as well as the work done post to edit it and then that editing being done by people with a lot of experience in special effects work really makes a product that's worth watching. It doesn’t feel soulless, it feels like it was created by people who are passionate about it and not just generated by a machine. I'm glad that this art form of special effects is not entirely erased by the existence of generative AI.
Alien, as a franchise, is known for its special effects and crazy, horrifying visuals. I am reminded in Alien: Resurrection in which Sigourney Weaver finds dozens of imperfect and failed clones of herself. I think it’s interesting where the Alien: Earth team tried to implement physical VFX solutions and where they stuck to the modern work flow of digital effects. The discussion of the robot arm sleeve that didn’t work practically and had to be done over in post is really revealing, as I think it shows the flexibility of modern tv and movie work. In previous decades, it was tough luck if your visual effects didn’t show up well on camera, but now, any mistake or change can be made with enough work with CGI. I kind of don’t like this, as I think it can hamper the artistic vision of a project when you don’t need to have a strong vision of how you want your world and its fantastical elements to look when you start filming because you can always fix them in post, but I’m not too hung up about it.
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