Alien

Alien by Ridley Scott is a science fiction horror film. The premise of the film is that the human crew is up against a superior weapon-like alien. And the use of camera, lighting, and sound turn this slow pace film into a suspenseful horror film. This is shown in the beginning of the film with the camera travels across the corridors of the ship in slow motion with eerie music. The purpose for this is to get the audience into the mentality that this is a science fiction horror, especially since no alien/extraterrestrial being is show until, the alien eggs, 35 minutes into the film. Thompson explains that “the slow, calm, controlled movements of the camera have established the basic rhythm of the direction- unhurried but supremely confident that what we will eventually be shown will be worthy of our investment of interest”. This is a refreshing contrast to horror films today that usually have a killing or scary moment from the get-go. The Camera and sound use in the film paint the idea that you are alone in space and on the ship. This plays very well with the film’s tag line, “in space no one can hear you scream”. In the end of the film I felt that the camera, lighting, sound, and the set design made the film more horrifying than the alien itself.

Picture of the alien eggs with the films tag line.

Mother and the Crew

The ship computer, which is referred to as mother in the film, is interesting given anthropomorphic role. The Mother is in control of the waking the crew from their cryogenic/deep sleep like a human mother awakens her children for school. Also mother is in control of the ship and in charge of taking the crew home. But ironically Mother and along with the science officer/doctor’s primary objective is in conflict with the safety of the crew, which is in contrast to their human counterparts. The usefulness of the crew is diminished due to the ship’s “ability to guide itself safely across interstellar distances in the complete absence of conscious human control” (Mulhall 15). The crew is seen as “useful creatures for the ships purpose” (Mulhall 15). This reinforces the idea that of the crew is dispensable and the paradox in calling the ship’s computer Mother.

This picture shows Ripley confronting Ash and Mother's prime directive.

Works Cited

Mulhall, Stephen. “Kane's Son, Cain's Daughter.” On Film. London: Routledge, 2002. 12-32.

Print.

Scott, Ridley, dir. Alien. 1979. Twentieth Century Fox, 2009.

Dr. Strangelove (edited)

Throughout the film there are extreme close-up shots and were exclusively done within the B52 Bomber. The first sense of this happens when the “FDG 135” message comes through on the communication dashboard. The dashboard is in a normal close-up in the being of the shoot (showing the message EDB 11) and is quickly zoomed into an extreme close-up shot to show the “FDG 135” message. The message is readable at the normal view but by zooming into the extreme close-up, it gave the scene a greater sense of urgency and the message more seriousness. For example, during the film when the captain was reading out the “Wing Attack Plan R”, I feel it intensified the situation when the camera distance was extreme close-up on every switch being turn. This gives the idea that the activation of C.R.M. 144 Discriminator is serious and was one step closer to a nuclear holocaust.

Below are picture showing the close-up and extreme close-up camera distance.

To offset the intention of nuclear war Kubrick add parodies to real life event as jokes on nuclear weapons and military secret. One example is when Russian ambassador, Alexei de Sadesky, stated that the soviets got all their information for the New York Times. This is a parody to the real life event that the “Soviet Union was easily able to gather most of its intelligence about U.S. secret plans from the New York Times” (Stillman 488). I found this to be amusing since one would expect the soviet to gather their information form espionage and operatives instead of a free press. Another more serious parody in the film is about the doomsday weapon and strategy were base on the which is base on the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) strategy. Stillman states that Kubrick did a great deal research on nuclear war and military strategies so that the strategies discussed in the film would be believable. Kubrick went to England and visited “Thomas Schelling and Herman Kahn, who could feed him the latest scary strategies, such as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) or limited nuclear war on the battlefields of Europe” (Stillman 492). The film’s parody to real life cold war made the film funny but probably also frightening to the people at the time.

The B52 Bombers were fake props and looked like they are filmed in front of a green screen background. This sense occurs in the beginning of the film, when the narrator states that there is a fleet of B52 Bombers that are always airborne and 2 hour away from Russia, and throughout the film. I notice they were probes when I realized that the planes movements were strange and defied physics. The plans looked stiff and seem to glide across the sky unlike real plans. This is not as obvious in the scene described above since they somewhat hid it in that director add films of real planes in between the shots of the fake (model) B52 Bombers. Later in the film, it became apparent that the plans are props since rudders nor any other parts of the plane moved when it made turns and maneuvered. Here are picture of the model planes below.

Work Cited

Kubrick, Stanley, dir. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. 1964. Columbia Pictures, 2009.

Stillman, Grant, “Two of the MaDdest Scientist.” Film History. 20 (2008): 487-500. Web. 24 Aug. 2009.