ALIEN Aesthetic (Pt 1) - The Visual Strategies
"The most important thing in a film of this type is not what you see, but the effect of what you think you saw" — Ridley Scott
Alien (1979) is an absolute masterclass of visual storytelling. So for this year’s Alien Week (LV426 = 4/26 = April 26th) we're going to do a mini-series of substacks.
Part 1 looks at general visual strategies,
Part 2 looks at ensemble staging,
Part 3 looks at the framing (literal and figurative) of Ellen Ripley.
These post will compile some previous published socials content but good to have it all in one easily accessible place!
The Camera: Movement & Geography
We're going to start with this long tracking shot that helps establish the geography of the Nostromo's A Deck.
Ridley Scott is a master at adding movement within frames. The drinking birds at the start are iconic, but we also get the flapping paper in the foregound (pulling our eye from screens in the centre that we've pivoted around), and the "pumping" toys on the flight console. These keep the shot feeling alive yet paradoxically also feeling still. The music also helps in not just creating mood but in keeping us interested. It has momentum.
The L(ish) shaped path of the camera move combined with the pans & tilts makes it visually dynamic, even though the movement is unmotivated by action.
There are four clear positions with the move being thoughtfully designed to transition us smoothly between them. Brilliant.
While the final cameral position is a beautiful composition it is unsettling because the headless helmets are creepy AF.
They also foreshadow the design of the Space Jockey Helmet.
The Camera: Handheld
The opening sequence of ALIEN is, as we've seen, shaped by it's highly composed frames. But once the Nostromo lands (badly!) on LV426, Scott introduces handheld camerawork to add unease. While it features strong group compositions they're constantly shifting.
The handheld feel is amplified by
(1) the lens flare in the bridge sequence - they blast an source light into camera; and
(2) the f/g "shoot-thru" props in the engine room. Notice the windchime in the b/g. Scott loves moving set dressing!
The scene is book-ended by follow shots - the kind of move that handheld is IMO very good at. We come into the scene, and the group shot, by following Kane. And we break out of the scene, and the two-shot, by following Brett.
Now, this isn't the first handheld shot in ALIEN. That'd be the shot of Dallas going to see Mother. But that shot feels like, well, it doesn't want to feel handheld, that they would've shot it on a dolly if they could. Worth noting that the other scenes in that corridor are also handheld, possibly a handheld camera is all they could fit.
The Camera: Stillness and Motion
Transitioning from static composed frames to handheld to create a burst of frantic energy can be very effective. When Dallas and Ash are about to operate to attempt to remove the facehugger from Kane, the tension is heightened by close, still shots. But when the acid-blood starts to eat through the styrofoam floor, Ridley switches to handheld to follow Dallas and bring us into the next scene:
I love that it also helps show the physical reality of the beautiful set by simply having Dallas transition between rooms.
As an aside: This is a very effective and classical technique. Here’s Fincher using it at a pivotal moment in The Social Network (2010)
The Camera: Handheld POV
Handheld POV shots become part of the visual strategy of Alien once they land are on LV426. The live camera feeds motivate their inclusion. We’ve written about the use of POV in horror before1 but its use here is subtle and unsettling. In this scene we go from the camera feed to its matching POV — only for it to be revealed that its "our" POV, almost as if we're stalking them.
The Camera: A Sense of Scale
One of the best ways to convey the scale of something - especially something alien to the audience (boom tish)- is showing it relative to humans. In ALIEN, Ridley Scott exploited this 'monocular depth cue' to make the Nostromo feel massive.
For the above sequence, they built a 58-foot (18m) landing-leg to show the size of the Nostromo. But to make it feel even bigger, they used children (Ridley Scott’s and cinematographer Derek Valint's) in space suits in the wide shots. You can see the change in proportions when they disembark from the gangway.
They also use thesame same kids to help make the reveal of the Space Jockey feel huge
But the editing & cinematography really makes it sing: The cut from Kane's CU to the wide of the chamber pops — it has visceral impact.
And then the camera move starts! The move is motivated by the leading lines that extend out-of-frame, making it feel like the Space Jockey keeps on going. At first, the camera arcs only horizontally. But once the whole base is in frame, it begins moving vertically + back, because it's also hugely tall.
When the camera comes to rest in its final position, the shot still has the Space Jockey chair penetrating the edge of frame. Besides being compositionally interesting, it helps sell the physical reality of the space because the camera + rigging is itself confined by that space.
The Scares: Editing Rhythm
Kane being implanted by the Facehugger is one of the all-time great jump scares. The control over rhythm is exquisite. A slow build-up - the action played in real-time - crescendoing into frantic cuts and then "ringing out" on the wide of the ship. Musical.
The use of POV shots make this intensely visceral:
At first, we are inside Kane's experience. When he inspects the egg, we can't look away. But when the facehugger leaps, it leaps *at* us and we - the audience - instinctively recoil in fear and shock… And then Kane falls away from us. Terrifying.
The Scares: Biomechanical Design
Elements of the Alien's biomechanical design were incorporated into the Nostromo sets so the Xenomorph could plausibly hide any where. What I call “hiding in plain sight".
Just look at the set dressing in this when Ripley has made it to the escape pod!
Or this earlier scene when we first get to see the adult Xenmorph —
The set is drenched in the ambient movement of the rain & the chains. So when we are shown the glistening Alien, its movement is sympathetic to the environment around it. We barely know what we saw and that's terrifying.
One thing I love about this scene, and especially the set, is those freaking chains. We don’t know that the Alien has a tail yet. But when we do, suddenly the foreground, defocused chains become very scary —
Filmmakers, especially in horror, often rely on darkness to create suspense. But one of reasons that Alien feels so timeless is that they've derived so much of the visual aesthetic from the monster design and so they don't need to bury it in shadow. Which is why the scene with Ripley in the escape pod is so effective. Its brightly lit so we feel it is safe but it is not —
As Ridley Scott says: "The most important thing in a film of this type is not what you see, but the effect of what you think you saw "
Our eyes are drawn to movement first - it sits atop the visual hierarchy - so we watch Ripley (the male gaze may also have something to do with that) and we don't "see" the Alien until it moves. And that makes us jump!
By the time the (underrated) Alien Resurrection (1997) is released, we are so familiar with the iconography of the series that the film exploits that familiarity to create a false jump scare.
Stay tuned for Part 2 and Part 3! Meanwhile, please leave comment.