Original subtitles

NARRATOR: So here's a scene from "Aliens."

And they've gone into the colony base that's

on the planet where we know from the first film

that the aliens have existed.

And they've already seen face huggers in jars.

So Ripley is already very nervous.

And they've gone in, the whole base seems to be deserted.

There's evidence of violence, evidence of weapons being used,

but there are no people.

We've been in a kind of anxious, suspenseful state.

We've come in, we've been very subjective,

we've searched the place.

We keep expecting something to jump out,

keep expecting something to jump out but it doesn't.

And now we're going to win things a little tighter.

And this is a long game.

We've been building and building and building for a long time

here.

So how do we signal to the audience

that there is an escalation or there's a swerve,

something new is happening?

Our character gets a signal.

They've got these trackers.

They've been walking around the base with these trackers.

Nothing's shown up.

All of a sudden there's movement.

We got something here.

He says we got something, something moving.

Where is it?

Behind us.

One of us?

MAN: Hey [INAUDIBLE].

Where are your people?

You're 20 minutes into a long game

kind of suspenseful sequence at this point.

And now it's going to come to a head.

MAN (ON RADIO): Uh, that's a negative.

We're rolling operations.

It's all up to me, Frosty.

Just keep moving, baby.

NARRATOR: He moves forward with his gun, which is basically

just a steadicam on.

But I made the assumption at the time,

and this was in 1985, that the steadicam was a tool that we

used behind the scenes.

But it wasn't well known.

So we just basically took a steadicam

and dressed it up with a big machine gun sitting on it.

And it was Hell to operate because it was really heavy.

But the two actors that had carry it did a great job.

Okay, so we're in a tracking shot.

The lighting is very low key.

We've got some sense of source lighting here.

And we've got source lighting coming from their lights.

So it feels very, very dim and dark and suspenseful.

These are just basic ways of selling

that you're in sort of a haunted house, the spooky environment,

as opposed to the brightly lit kind of sterile lab

that it could have been.

I mean, it's a lab.

It's a medical space, could have been brightly lit.

But it isn't.

So the power is failing.

There is the suggestion that violence has happened and could

happen again in a split second.

Now we don't know how jumpy Ripley is,

so I did a little thing here where he brushes the microscope

arm, or whatever it is, and there

was this carefully balanced flask sitting here.

And Sigourney jumps.

And it puts you subjectively in her character for a moment.

It's not meant to make the audience jump,

because they see it in progress.

It's different than a jump scare.

In a jump scare the audience doesn't know

what's going to happen next.

And something moves very quickly.

And there might be a music sting.

And we jump.

This case is not us jumping, this is her jumping.

And it's to externalize her mental state, which

is hair trigger.

She's trying to process rationally,

she's trying to be the rational person that she

imagines herself to be, but her heart's pounding.

Because she's the only one there that's encountered this species

before.

So she's more keyed up than everybody else is.

They should be more scared than they are.

They're just treating it as professional soldiers,

military guys doing what they do.

So he's looking at the screen.

He says it's straight in front of us so we're going to move,

we're going to go in that direction.

Because of course that's what you do in a horror movie.

You're going to go toward the danger because of their hubris.

So thematically, that was a theme throughout the film.

These guys thought they were undefeatable.

They had the big guns.

They were against a non intelligent species that

had no weaponry whatsoever.

What's to worry about?

And it was always in my mind writing

this, kind of a metaphor for the Vietnam War,

where the big stomping superpower was going

to go into the little backward developing country

where all they had was a bunch of hand-me-down AK 47s

and they were running through the jungle in bare feet.

And we were going to go in with our helicopters

and our missiles and our defoliants and our B52s.

And we were going to bomb them into the Stone Age

and we were going to win in six months.

Cut to 10 years later, and the US is pulling out of Vietnam

with its tail between its legs.

And that was 10 years before this movie was made.

The fall of Saigon was in 1975.

So it was recent history, it was something

that I was paying attention to.

And it was resonating into a science fiction film that

took place on another planet.

We never specifically say that these guys are Americans.

In fact, you can imagine that they are.

Or do we?

Wait a minute.

Does he have an- oh, sorry.

I take it back.

There are a few extra stars in the number

of states because presumably, America

is a colonial superpower in this imagined future.

But we never say it in dialogue, they're

just the colonial Marines.

And at the time, I didn't really know any Marines personally.

I didn't know their ethos.

Later on in my life, my younger brother would join the Marines,

serve for six years.

And I learned a whole new appreciation and respect

for the US Marine Corps.

And I actually wouldn't make this movie this way

now, because of what I know about the US Marines.

But every filmmaker evolved.

They learn, they observe life, and sometimes

their opinions on things change.

So this is all classic suspense.

So we have the moment where you're at the door, the corner.

The pieing of the room, as they say

in a police show or something like that,

where you sweep the space.

Now we've just gone into a subjective shot.

We don't quite know why we're in a subjective shot.

But the camera's moving.

Why is the camera moving?

Is it something hiding?

This foreground object is meant to suggest that there's a place

to conceal, and we're looking out from behind concealment.

It's totally subconscious.

It's not meant to be a conscious statement.

It's a subconscious statement.

The camera just came to life.

So these guys are moving forward.

The sound design, the chirp of the tracker,

it's getting louder.

And it's getting faster.

It's an increasing tension through sound design.

We want to milk out that state.

We want the audience to be on the edge of their seats.

So here in the graphic, is it moving toward us

or are we moving toward it?

But again, the underpinning to this scene

is the presumption going in that this is an alien.

And that presumption is fed at least,

I would say, 50% by our knowledge of the prior film.

So this is a sequel intentionally

resonating with the film that came before it.

Intentionally and I think successfully.

Not overly so, but definitely that's a factor.

So now we've just gone subjective again.

We're handheld from behind the Marine, Hicks, moving up.

So we're with them.

We're moving with them.

We're on their journey just for that moment,

which is the point of the shot.

To be there and to see that there's nothing ahead of them.

They can't see anything ahead of them.

But here is this foreground thing, the shadowy foreground

thing.

And they're not looking at it.

The camera's moving ever so slightly.

And then something shadowy breaks across the frame.

Sudden lunge and a sudden music sting.

Classic.

Classic music sting.

And Drake, this was a tough one from an editorial standpoint.

Drake, our smart gun operator, opens fire.

But Hicks, with lightning quick reflexes, deflects his weapon.

A little hard to see, and if I'd had a little more money

or maybe I'd seen the dailies, if I was looking at a monitor,

I'd say, I don't see his gun.

I don't see Hicks hit Drake.

I probably would have gone again.

But this was in the day of film.

So you waited the next day and then

there was no time to go back.

But the audience still gets it.

Because two shots later, you see Hicks

having blocked Drake's gun.

You're seeing the questions being answered after the fact

but that's okay.

That's okay.

So there's an interim shot of the rounds hitting the wall.

And we see the destructive power of the smart gun.

And then we see that Hicks has deflected his weapon.

And Drake's pissed off about it.

Because he would have made the shot

if Hick's hadn't done that.

But Hicks has clearly seen something

to stop him from shooting.

And then he does something strange.

Ripley.

NARRATOR: He calls to Ripley.

So now you know it's not an alien.

But what is it?

So now you've just toggled out of suspense mode.

The suspense has been alleviated.

It's now dropped to zero.

Now you're into curiosity.

It's been replaced by curiosity different emotion.

Different physiological response.

Now you're leaning forward.

What is it that Hicks has seen?

We're not telling you.

We saw something, but we don't know what it is.

And we're not going to answer the question right away.

Now she's seeing something.

And we can tell by her expression

that it's interesting.

But we don't know what it is.

Holy shit.

Now to me this is the right order of information.

You see the character see something.

And it's clearly there in her face.

Unmistakable.

I'm looking, I'm looking, and I see something.

Sigourney was not looking at Carrie Henn, who played Newt.

She was probably looking at a dot on the wall

and creating that in her mind.

If she had felt that she needed Carrie to be there,

we might have had Carrie there.

I don't remember.

But it depends on the individual actor.

But she might have been reacting to nothing.

And this is what she sees.

And so now we have the reveal.

We've just introduced a character.

Now as the film was written, we've already met her.

And there was a whole sort of eight minute sequence with her

when she was not the unkempt little savage animal.

My intention there was to draw a contrast

to see her before and after.

As the film was finally cut and released,

we took out all of reel two and basically threw it

in the trash.

And so we didn't see Newt.

This is now her introduction shot.

So this was an unplanned introduction

that works very well.

But I think it's critical to understand that every shot is

always doing something.

The audience is learning.

And once the audience jumps hip to the fact

that the film is teaching you things

you need to know further on in the film,

you'll continue to pay attention.

You start to play the game.