“ALIEN: COVENANT” IN UTERO VR EXPERIENCE: CINEMA RETRO’S MARK CERULLI COVERS THE LAUNCH

This article originally appeared on CinemaRetro

BY MARK CERULLI

Even among discriminating CR readers, there is NO doubt that Alien, Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi masterpiece is truly terrifying. Jump forward to 2017: technology is light years ahead and the world is counting down towards Scott’s latest directing effort, Alien: Covenant. One of the many new technologies to emerge in the 38 years since the franchise chest-burst onto the scene is Virtual Reality. VR vastly expands the experience of a visual work by immersing the viewer in it. Like feature films a century ago, VR content is starting out as short films, being consumed by a growing audience. Kudos to Twentieth Century Fox and RSA for giving their iconic franchise the VR treatment with Alien: Covenant In Utero, A Virtual Reality Experience. The two-minute feature was unveiled at a special event held at Technicolor’s Experience Center, the company’s VR incubator in Culver City.

Who can forget John Hurt curiously peering into the strange pod and getting attacked by a face-hugger in the original Alien? Now you can be inside one of those very pods. “Consumers are being part of the story, not just watching the story,” says Matthais Wittmann, VFX Supervisor for MPC, the Technicolor company that worked on the project with Ridley Scott Associates, Twentieth Century Fox and a host of other partners.

“Our goal was to scare you,” said Ted Schilowitz, Futurist at 20th Century Fox. Mission accomplished: The In Utero experience immerses the viewer inside the birthing pod, complete with sights (like blood or whatever alien fluids transverse the veins) and sounds (heartbeats, a screaming victim outside the pod) as the Alien Neomorph finishes developing and bursts out, fully lethal, towards its next victim.

“We hit the ground running,” says the project’s director, David Karlak, who rode the buzz from his brilliant futuristic short Rise straight into Ridley Scott’s office. “It’s an example of how you take all the different disciplines that make films look as good as they do today and recalibrating them to deliver a VR experience that is unparalleled,” the director adds. Obviously any young filmmaker would jump at the chance to work with a legend like Ridley Scott, but for Karlak, the project’s unique universe also had its attractions: “For me the inspiration was the concept… since this was told from the point of view of a Neomorph, how would a creature that’s designed to hunt perceive the world?” Well, like the old saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, pretty soon everything starts to look like a nail.

Director David Karlak

Jen Dennis, RSA’s Executive Producer of Branded Content & VR watched how her boss immediately took to VR when a similar project was created for his 2015 hit, The Martian. “It’s very important to Ridley that these pieces have a real filmic essence to them, they have to feel ‘filmic.’” In a nod to Karlak’s talent she said, “When we saw Rise, we knew he was the right person for this.”

Achieving the proper 360° look fell to Technicolor’s MPC VFX Supervisor, Matthais Wittmann who had his hands full from the very first frame: “You need a really high frame rate or you get sick,” he pointed out. Since there are no cuts in VR, “You can’t save yourself with edits.”

The fact that MPC was also handling visual effects for Alien: Covenant was a huge plus. “We knew very early on that there would be a VR component so our crew went over to the sets to take photographs so we’d have them…” Wittmann says, adding, “our team was there, they knew about the lighting, they’ve worked on other Alien movies already so all this information we can leverage.” And then, of course, there was The Master: “Since this was a point of view that has never been done before,” Wittmann continues, “it was also very helpful to have Ridley Scott close by so we could ask him, ‘Is that how it would be?’” Director Karlak echoed how invaluable Scott’s guidance was – suggesting he watch videos of baby crocodiles hatching and endoscopic footage of a human womb, just to keep the team on the right track. Now after over five months of intense work, this alien baby has arrived, fangs and all…

Intrepid Cinema Retro scribe Mark Cerulli gets the full “Alien” VR treatment.

Alien: Covenant In Utero, A Virtual Reality Experience, is available on the Oculus platform on “Alien Day”, April 26th and then on all mobile and tethered platforms like Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream View, HTC Vice and PlayStation VR starting May 10.

Alien: Covenant arrives in theaters on May 19th from Twentieth Century Fox.