Top SFX shots No.25: Aliens

James Cameron brought old Corman colleagues the Skotak brothers on to his production of the much lauded sequel to Alien. They had worked before on the SFX teams of Battle Beyond The Stars (1981) and Galaxy Of Terror (1982), and this reunion only proved that it was a great partnership. Cameron and the Skotaks used the most appropriate technique for each shot, meticulously planning them with sawdust-and-string' animatics (later to become a habit in Hollywood). The very grainy Kodak film stock on which Aliens was shot permitted an extraordinary amount of practical model-on-wires footage, and the results rank amongst the best ever obtained by that method. This shot is a more traditional (by then) motion-control effort, but what makes it outstanding is Cameron's demanding vision of how much movement the shot should have, and the extraordinary sense of scale and drama. SFX shots as mobile as the deployment of Aliens' dropship were not to become common practice in Hollywood until the advent of CGI; this is a truly audacious and ambitious piece of film which the makers pull off with jaw-dropping effectiveness. It's almost a shame to look at it out of context.

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