Earth’ On The Impact Of Immersive Sets And Practical Effects

The final episode of Alien: Earth is now streaming on Disney+, and I spoke with the showrunner of this latest entry into the Alien franchise, Noah Hawley, and executive producer David W. Zucker, about the impact of visual storytelling in the horror genre, and particularly in the Alien universe.

When Ridley Scott released Alien in 1979, he also set new standards in visual storytelling and sound design in the horror genre, and he introduced to moviegoers, one of the most iconic monsters in cinema history, the Xenomorph.

Thanks to brilliantly-written horror sequences and incredibly crafted immersive sets, the Alien movies know how to scare -its characters and its audience-.
The making of the “chestbuster” scene or the piercing, hissing scream of the Xenomorph echoing in the corridors of the spaceship, were made possible thanks to a very particular sound design and practical effects.

But when joining such a beloved and famous universe, how can we keep on reinventing these elements of horror while offering something new to the audience? I asked Hawley how as a storyteller, he chose when and where to incorporate the horror elements known to the Alien franchise to his script.

He said, “There’s an overall state of fear that horror seeks to produce from the very first frame. There’s a feeling of dread, there’s a feeling with the way that they mix the sound, so that the movie is quiet, and you lean in and the jumps are loud, and that triggers an actual biological response. Your heart starts racing, the adrenaline kicks in, now you’re watching the movie with that feeling. And the other thing it does, is it uses the imagination as its most powerful tool. It’s the question ‘What’s in the basement?’ right? You linger on what you worry is in the basement, and the moment before it, is really the critical point. It’s less about what actually is in the basement on some level, and you know once you create that state of fear, that feeling of fear, that tends to dominated.”

Zucker added: “It’s impressive how revolting something can be and how gruesome it can feel when you haven’t necessarily seen that much, but as you’re mentioning, the sound design, and the calibration of it that Noah has taken in his approche, really gets in your mind and you can really relieve yourself of it.”

The sets also need to be taken into account when making a new Alien story. If the first movies warned us that “in space, no one can hear you scream”, the fact that Hawley decided to set his series on Earth, brings a new element of fear to the franchise.

He said, “The themes that are raised in that first movie about technology and the masters that we discover, these sort of ancient masters, right, this AI, the fact that these characters are really trapped between the past and future was really interesting to me. I think we are here on Earth moving through our lives, with our screens and technology, thinking that we’re not on the food chain anymore, right? And we live in a natural world that says, if you ignore me, at your own peril. So these creatures are just a natural manifestation of the natural world, and then remind us all that we’re still food for mosquitoes, we’re still hosts to parasites and viruses, we can’t forget that we’re really just animals at our core.”

I also asked the cast of Alien: Earth what set decor of the Alien movies had the biggest impact on how they were going to tackle their characters in this new series.

Babou Ceesay who brilliantly portrays Morrow, a cyborg, said, “It was mesmerizing, walking into the set of the Imagino, which is essentially the set of the Nostrono. First of all, you turn into a child, everybody does, Noah does. Within a few minutes, you realize what a gift it is, because as an actor, there’s a lot of no acting recquired. You’re going to be walking that smoky corridor, there’s an eight feet tall Xenomorph, it’s all there, you don’t have to be looking at a tennis ball.”

Timothy Olyphant, who portrays Kirsh added: “You can talk about being in Alien all you want, when you show up on set, that’s when it becomes very real, and like Babou said, you just become a kid, time disappears you’re 10 years old and living some little fantasy.”

Samuel Blenkin who plays Kavalier said, “I think it’s genius in the first film, when the face hugger phase is over and then there’s this period of time, it depends on the person but there’s 20, 30 minutes when they wake up and they go ‘I think I’m going to have some breakfast now, I’m feeling kind of good’. That period of time, and then there’s blood that starts coming out, that is the most horrifying thing you can imagine, isn’t?”

Blenkin added that the production design team also dug up some of the original plans from the Nostromo, and Sydney Chandler, who portrays Wendy, said that they “kind of just built a spaceship.”

Alex Lawther, who plays Hermit said, “They built a spaceship as though it had crashed into a building. There was a big drop below, which we were harnessed in, in the drop it was a green screen, then they added fire to it. But so much of it was practical, and the sparks flying and the flames coming down, the water dripping, it was quite dense the atmosphere that was provided for us to play in.”

He added: “There were so many details, and the richness of the first film with the late 70s early 80s retro, futury feels, yes, I’m left with that impression there.”