Alien Analysis.

Alien, directed by Ridley Scott was produced and released in 1979 and is a science fiction film which also contains aspects of horror and film noir as well as sticking to the conventions of a typical sci-fi film. The film is shot completely upon the spaceship, Mother, which is very conventional of the sci-fi genre.

The film Alien is known as containing one of the most horrific and disturbing scenes of the time – The Chestburster scene. This scene is shown in the middle of the film and the outcome of it leads to the climax of the film, the scene shows John Hurts character, Kane, being affected by his Alien attack at the beginning of the film when all seemed to be clear.

The beginning of the scene starts with all the characters and the audience unaware of what is about to happen as it was believed that Kane was finally uncontaminated by the alien. For this reason the shock of what happens is juxtaposed by the happiness that the crew had shown in the previous scene when they found out that he was supposedly free from disease. Kane starts showing signs that all is not well when the characters are eating dinner, during this part of the scene the food in the foreground is shown out of focus and the characters in the background are in focus, this is known as shallow focus and is used to emphasise the characters emotions and how Kane is acting.

Eventually the other crew members start to realise that something is up, however it is too late. The director then cuts to a mid-shot of the back of the characters which is shown in a high angle shot to show how the Kane has become vulnerable to the disease. Many high angle shots are used in this sequence for this same reason, especially when Kane is on the table, although at this point there is also some high angle shots of the other crew members who are trying to help him, this helps to emphasise the fact that the crew are in a position of power as they are the ones who are trying to help him. At the same point when Kane is on the table the lighting is very unnatural and synthetic as it is through the rest of the film due to it being set in space, but at this point it is as if there is a spotlight upon him emphasising his pain and just what is happening to him.

At the end of the scene Kane’s chest bursts open to reveal an Alien who has been held up inside and it is as if the Alien has just been born through Kane. This is where the highlights of the horror genre are entered into this film as the scene contains a lot of blood and its purpose is to scare the audience. At the time this may have succeeded nicely however nowadays due to advances within film special effects it failed to scare me as I felt it seemed very unrealistic.

There is no music played throughout the scene which I feel is very significant to the impact that the scene has upon the audience as it highlights the diegetic sound in the scene such as the screams and reactions of the characters as well as the thrashing about of Kane and the other crew members. The only non-diegetic sound used in the scene is after Kane’s chest has burst as there is a muffled heart beat in the background, which I believe is supposed to be coming from Kane’s heart to show what has happened is so serious you can ever hear his heart beat however his heart is not physically shown in the shot and therefore cannot be classed as diegetic sound.  The heart beat sound also has the effect of seeming as if it is a countdown of how long Kane is going to live for now that this has happened, this is a typical convention of sci-fi films.

Although the Chestburster scene contains the gore element of horror, there is also another scene which contains different conventions of horror throughout, the here kitty scene. In the scene the crew member Brett, is searching for the lost cat, although it does not end as would have been expected at the beginning of the scene. The scene spends most of the scene building up the tension before Brett ends up being attacked by the Alien.

The first thing that I noticed in the scene is the framing at the beginning when Brett is moving through the corridors which is done very nicely and helps to establish the scene and focus on Brett himself, this is also done through the use of shallow focus in much of the scene. The scene contains a variety of camera shots including the most common being close up shots of Brett to show his emotions and the build up of tension through his facial expressions. The lighting of this scene links very much to film noir as it is all low key lighting which is at contrast to the previous discussed scene which was mainly synthetic unnatural lights.   

Similar to the last scene there is a background non-diegetic sound of a heartbeat which this time is counting down to the climax of that scene when Brett gets attacked. There is also non-diegetic music in the scene which comes to a loud bag at the climax after being built up throughout the scene, this helps to create tension through the scene and then create a shock once the attack actually occurs. There is also the diegetic sound of Brett saying “Here Kitty” which helps to emphasise to the audience just what he is doing there.

The editing of the scene is very slow which helps to create the tension, however it quickly changes to fast paced once the attack happens to confuse the audience. There is also a use of parallel editing in this scene with Brett searching for the cat, this is used to highlight the reasons for Brett being there bus also to show the audience that he is not near reaching the cat.

All of the scenes throughout Alien intertwine with each other however these two both show the conventions of both sci-fi  and horror as well as starting with a sense of security which then leads to a shock/scare at the end.