A famous scene from Alien could only be realized using a simple trick: Director Ridley Scott cast his own children for the film.
Filmmakers must be open to problems and finding solutions in their work. Often, during the production of a film, problems arise that can only be solved through creative approaches.
Ridley Scott has plenty of experience with this. He is the director behind Blade Runner, Gladiator, and Alien. The well-known sci-fi franchise recently received its latest installment, but Scott already directed the first part in 1979, which is considered one of the best films in the genre.
There is a scene in which the crew of the Nostromo freighter encounters the remnants of an alien spaceship. At this point, however, production was running out of money, and it was questionable whether the scene could be shot as planned. Therefore, Ridley Scott had to find a way to work as cost-effectively as possible.
Children played the adults
What was the problem? The set that the actors were to enter had to be quite large. There they would find a mummified alien, the so-called “Space Jockey”.
Scott was keen that the alien and the surroundings appeared large and imposing compared to the actors. However, the studio did not want to invest much money in what it considered an unimportant scene.
Building a gigantic set was therefore not an option. In light of this, Scott scaled down the environment – and the people in front of the camera as well. He cast his own children and put them in the space suits that the main actress Sigourney Weaver wore as Ripley.
Here you can see the scene in question:
Filmed from behind or the side, the children appear as adults in the finished film, and the set looks significantly larger than it actually was. It is a simple but effective trick that was often used on film sets, especially in the past. Back then, there was little or no CGI, which necessitated practical solutions.
By the way, the suits were reportedly very hot. Just like the “real” actors on set, the children had to be kept hydrated and cool to avoid heat stroke. In the end, Scott’s sons became part of an iconic scene that entered film history. On MeinMMO, we have ranked all the films in the Alien series.
