Alien: Romulus is going to kick it old-school with a favoritism for practical creature effects over green screens and CGI! Director Fede Alvarez shared his preference for practical effects and puppeteering over the reliance on CGI VFX to bring the creatures in his Alien movie to life! Not only that – he actually recruited all the same guys who worked on James Cameron’s Aliens (1986) to build the Aliens for Romulus as well!
The Hollywood Reporter: You just touched on the Weyland-Yutani spaceship that your team built, but overall, how did you balance practical effects and VFX?
Fede Alvarez: For the creatures, we brought in all the guys from Aliens. They were in their early twenties when they made Aliens, and they were a part of Stan Winston’s [special effects] team. And now we had them at the top of their game. They have their own shops, and so we brought them all together to work on all the creatures, because we went with all animatronics and puppets at every level. I even got the chance to be under the table with them, puppeteering all these animatronics.
I have this obsession with no green screens, so we built every creature and set. Everything had to be built so we were really living and breathing in these spaces. But I’m not an anti-CG guy. I got the chance to do Evil Dead, because I had made this short movie called Panic Attack! with a couple of friends and we did all the CG. So I come from a background where I know how to build the effects myself. I still do VFX shots in my movies to this day. I’ll cut and do VFX shots on my computer, sometimes. So it’s just whatever is best for the shot, and when it comes to face-to-face encounters and moments with creatures, nothing beats the real thing.
We couldn’t agree more, Fede! Nothing beats the real thing and the effects work by Stan Winston’s crew for Aliens was legendary! It’s amazing news to hear Fede brought the same talent back to construct the creatures for Alien: Romulus!
Source: THR
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