Species (1995)

Dennis Feldman, the screenwriter of Species, got the idea from an essay by Arthur C Clarke. The thrust of Clarke's own essay was that, due to faster-than-light travel being scientifically impossible, humanity could not 'travel' the stars with spaceships like in a space opera.

Feldman, by his own admission rattled by Clarke's bleak conclusion, took this to mean that the reverse would also be true; no alien life would be invading Earth by zipping through the cosmos in metal flying saucers! Instead they would reach us via more insidious means.

Feldman explained; 'It worried and bothered me, and I realized, after thinking about it a while, that there could be speed-of-light communications and we could receive instructions from across the void to build something that would talk to us, that would communicate with us.

And as I thought about it, this wouldn't be a robot; it would be wetware. It would also want to use our DNA to make sure it could live in our environment, whatever this creature was. It knew the genes that were surviving here were the ones that would tell it what form to take and how to survive here'.

Feldman realized that any script about such a being would have to be frank about sex and its role in nature. 'The next issue was biology, and I realized that the engine of biology is reproduction. I started to examine what we're all doing here.

Certainly, as a species, what we're doing is reproducing, thriving and battling with other species - and ourselves. We'rein a constant invasion here, in reality. Animals seem to move from one continent to another, from one niche to another. This entire story is a way to look at what humans are as animals, and what human animals do'.

Feldman's script, now about an alien femme fatale named 'Sil', was submitted to film producer Frank Mancuso. However, it was Roger Donaldson, the director assigned to the project, who brought Swiss surrealist H.R. Giger to Mancuso's attention quite by chance!

Donaldson spied a copy of Necronomicon, a published compilation of Giger's artworks, during a visit to a comic shop with his son. Donaldson realized Giger's morbid and sexually charged artwork suited the themes of Feldman's script, and showed the book to Mancuso.

Mancuso later said about why he chose Giger, 'We wanted (Sil) to be scary, but at the same time have a sensuality that isn't lost when she appeas as the creature. There needed to be a constant level of elegance and grace to her character, and H. R. Giger was the only person we could think of who could accomplish this.'

Giger's initial Sil sculpture, in a promotional shot for Cinefantastique.

Mancuso contacted Giger's California representative, James Cowan, about if he would work on the Species project. Cowan was agreeable, saying, 'I thought this would be a worthwhile project for Giger because it allowed him the opportunity to design a very beautiful and special creature, perhaps the most elegant design since the Maria robot in Fritz Lang's Metropolis.'

Giger himself was, at first, enthusiastic about the Species gig. 'I was told this time I could do something I always wanted - to create a monster in another way - an aesthetic warrior, also sensual and deadly, like the women look in my paintings. Usually, they ask me to design monsters with bad-looking, ugly faces and horrible teeth. I wanted Sil to turn into the monster and still look beautiful. This oppurtunity was why I was attracted to the Species project'.

However, Giger soon found himself apprehensive. 'When the contracts first come it's always an unnecessarily long time anil a lot of tricks, and I'm not used to people wanting to cheat me. The legal part was more horrible this time than on Alien 3. It seems to be the normal thing in Hollywood. But in the end, it’s the result that you see which is important and not how much it cost. It has to look good. If it looks bad, I would be ashamed. I want it to be a good movie because I’ve already worked on two that weren't terrific films: Poltergeist 2 and Alien 3'.

Giger was unable to travel to the USA, partly due to looking after his ailing mother. Instead Mancuso and other members of the production team flew to Switzerland and visited the artist in his Zurich home to discuss his designs and the script with him.

Despite Giger's protestations, Mancuso started taking charge. Mancuso admitted in a Fangoria interview, 'We felt that for Giger to be successful, we had to give him a series of functions for the creature to do. We would be on the phone with him for hours every day to make sure he understood what we were trying to accomplish and checking on his designs. The fact that he is an artist and used to creating still pictures was a concern.

We had to convince him that this creature had to move with an energy that still pictures don't have, and possess a distinct personality. It took a lot of patience to work with Giger. Not because he was difficult to work with - it was more of a language thing and the fact that he was such a long distance away.'

One sore spot for Giger was how he had hoped the production, and creature effects, could be done in Switzerland. The pre-production models, including the 'ghost train' (covered in detail here!), were made at Atelier Formart, a Zurich-based sculpting studio. Giger explained;

Since I couldn’t travel to the States, I didn’t want to leave Sil to just anybody, so I produced my sketches in such a way that they conveyed an impression of Sil, but would never have enough detail to construct her from. I wanted to make the model myself, as I had the alien in Ridley Scott’s (Alien). The preproduction (Sil) model started in Andy Schedler’s studio in Switzerland wasn't bad. But the work morale was counterproductive from the beginning. We had no specialist and too little know-how. There is no film industry in Switzerland'.

Giger's original Sil sculptures.

Giger worked hard to convince Mancuso that the Sil monster could be realized as a transparent creature, and thus be seen to glow from the inside as in Giger's ideas for the script, Sil would glow when transforming. This was something rarely attempted on film before (except by Steve Johnson on The Abyss, but we'll get back to him later...)

To convince the production team, a transparent Sil model was constructed by Giger, with help from sculptors Andy Schedler and Cony De Fries, at Atelier Formart. Holograms were inserted into the limbs to show the transparency in action.

More of Giger's preliminary sculptures - NONE of these are by Cliff Wallace

To further convince the producers, Giger commissioned a Sil model from Cliff Wallace's CFX Studio, based in Pinewood Studios in England. Based on Giger's design drawings, Wallace's team constructed a half-scale Sil model, and a full-size transparent Sil head.

Atelier Formart's and CFX's models of Sil were enough to convince Mancuso that Sil could be realized with a transparent body, but he unconvinced that the work could be done in Europe, and demanded the effects work and filming be done in America. Giger glumly remembered;

'We were made to feel guilty during an attack-like visit from Mancuso, Donaldson, production designer John Muto and screenwriter Dennis Feldmann, who wanted to move the production of Sil to Hollywood. Even though we hadn’t even started production, we were collectively ashamed and left Sil to the Americans.'

Mancuso, setting in action the production's many problems, decided that Sil would be a mostly digital creation, as otherwise a transparent monster could only be realized as a puppet, and thus would be too 'stiff' to depict on camera.

For the digital Sil, Mancuso contracted Thomas R. Burman's Burman Studio to sculpt a set of Sil maquettes. Giger was unimpressed with Burman's sculptures. 'I saw the photos of Burman's small Sil. The head looked like a fish. It was not at all what I had imagined.'

Mancuso hired Richard Edlund's Boss Film Studios to realize Sil as a digital creation; however, Edlund was fully aware that for close-up shots, Sil would have to be physical. Digital technology, especially motion capture, was still in its infancy in the 1990s.

Edlund enlisted the help of Steve Johnson's XFX; not only had Johnson previously worked under Boss Film, but had already handled Giger's designs on Poltergeist 2, and had realized translucent creatures for The Abyss.

Johnson, an admirer of Giger, wanted to do his best to make him happy and made sure to listen to Giger's suggestions. Johnson recalled, 'Giger’s designs are fluid, marked with raw motion on the canvas, and they are incredibly erotic. When you’re asked to bring one of his creations to three dimensions, it's a difficult thing to achieve, because you have to take a loose, fluid approach to it. I think one reason the entire process turned out as well as it did is that we stayed in very tight communication with him through faxing, phone calls and Fed Ex. We kept him very much in the loop and always listened to what he had to say.'

Giger, still frustrated at the studio's bureaucracy, was more pleased with XFX's Sil design than he was with Burman's but still felt it was imperfect;

'What was presented to me—in half size — was (Burman's) clay model with a fish face, which even MGM didn’t seem to like. The second clay model, made by Steve Johnson in actual size, was better, although the upper body was too big and the head with its low forehead looked a bit ape-like. I corrected the figure’s appearance, using faxes and phone, so that she would remain beautiful even after her transformation.'

XFX had only ten weeks to construct the first of the Sil puppets before filming began. The Sil puppet was based on sculptures by Mike Hosch and Norman Cabrera.

From moulds of the sculptures, the puppet's components vacuformed in clear plastic, and cut up in pieces wherever the points of movement where to be.

One challenge Johnson had set for himself was that the puppet had to appear as life-like as possible, already complicated by Sil's translucent design. Johnson stated, 'Our creature has a complex skin process that allows light to penetrate, as well as play across the body structure. It is a unique and horrifying being, yet a thing of beauty as well. One of the coolest elements of the creature was that it’s translucent and you see through it, so it couldn't be done in the normal way. One thing that helped us out a lot was all the materials research we’d done for The Abyss previously for the floating aliens at the end.

You do a sculpture, a mold, a mask, then a paint job. I feel it doesn’t always move naturally or organically, or doesn’t wrinkle upon itself naturally. I wanted to make something a lot more organic than that for this film. It was my major goal to do that and make Giger happy.'

Foam rubber was used for the puppet's elbows, knees and hands, but a different material was used for the puppet's other translucent 'organic' areas; nylon! Johnson explained, 'Nothing was working, and we were running out of time so, in desperation, we tried nylon hose, grafting it in large sections with a few floating vacuformed pieces to help maintain the shape. It was a wonderful solution – so stretchy that no matter how the creature moved, it didn’t wrinkle like fabric. And, coated with K-Y jelly, it was virtually transparent – like a clear, fleshy membrane'.

Eric Feidler supervised the puppet's mechanics. The puppet's body was articulated via rod-puppeteering and marionette methods, while the skull's movements would be cable controlled. Johnson explained, 'Since the skull was visible behind the clear outer face, we thought it would be interesting to mechanize the head on the inside.So we put plates under the outer skin on top of the skull to effect brow movement, and added bands of texture under the cheeks.”

The animatronic Sil head was fitted with two sets of mobile teeth, and the animatronic head's eyes were fitted with mechanics that allowed it not just to blink, but to also change eye colour.

Another consideration for the Sil puppet was the hair, which was overseen by Shaun Smith and Brian Goehring. Johnson originally wished for Sil's hair to be a more ambitious effect.

'We explored the idea of mechanizing the strands independently for a Medusa effect but when that proved unfeasible, we ended up making three different hair constructs.

Two were non-articulated – one in a dormant shape and the other fanned out like a peacock tail – and the third, our hero version, had a double tentacle mechanism concealed under the strands to provide a snake-like, four-way movement at both the base and top. The strands were elasticized and attached in several places so that they functioned as one unit, moving in a graceful S-curve whenever Sil whipped her head around.'

The Sil puppets could have their limbs, heads and torso detached, which proved useful for such shots as the swimming pool attack sequence, which had to be shot first!

In addition to the main Sil puppet, another specialized Sil puppet was made for the climactic scene where Sil gives birth. To achieve the shot, a puppeteer would force a dummy 'baby' through a membrance made of a type of adhesive.

Johnson explained, 'By using the membrane, we didn’t have to create a perfectly realistic baby – which would have been difficult to do. Once Sil sets it on the ground and begins to peel off the chrysalis, the camera cuts to a real baby.'

Giger was reportedly delighted by XFX's Sil puppet, to the point he sent Johnson a fax saying the XFX puppet was the best realization yet of any of Giger's designs. Johnson appreciated this so much, that he in turn printed out the fax and pinned it to the office wall!

Certain shots couldn't use either the puppet nor Boss Film Studio's digital model. For these shots, XFX supplied three foam rubber suits, made by Lynette Johnson, Dale Brady and Tamara Carlson, and painted by Moto Hata. The Sil suits were worn by kickboxer Dana Hee.

Hee being fitted into an early version of the suit.

One sequence where Dana Hee wore the suit was a dream sequence where Sil mates with a male of her, ahem, species. Johnson described the thought process behind the dream male's design, 'I wanted to really break up the human form, (similar to) what Giger did with the Alien using tubes running off the back and length of the head, so you didn’t quite know what you were looking at and it didn't look so much like a man-in-a-suit.’

The dream male alien mask being sculpted.

Johnson elaborated on the 'dream man' alien suit, 'We broke up the human form on the male with a series of twelve-foot protuberances – like enormous crab claws – extending down the back, and a penile tentacle protruding off the back of the head.'

XFX also was tasked with the film's other effects, in particularly the gelatinous cocoons that Sil would be 'born' from. The blob-like creature in the laboratory scenes, surprisingly used more puppets than the main Sil monster did! Johnson explained,'

'We used over 20 different puppets to create a two-minute sequence. It was one shot after another, with each shot requiring a separate strategy: gravity tricks, different puppeis, opticals...We were very excited about it —and very nervous.

'We took a real lateral approach to the cocoon and several of the lab creature effects. We show this organism grow from a single cell throughout twenty different effects all the way into a 10-foot chrysalis. Chrysalis supervisor Bill Bryan and I came up with a way to actually create creatures without using rubber molds. A real organic, lateral approach to actually creating animatronics... What it basically involved was forming layers of polyeurathane plastic that we then manipulated with pneumatics by applying negative and positive air pressure.

We then painted them with colored gels, overlapping them. So we ended up with something that moved much more organically than a foam rubber piece ever could. Like muscles moving underneath, skin sliding on top of that and wrinkling where it naturally would — I’m very pleased with that. It’s probably one of the most innovative things we did in the film.'

XFX also handled the film's shocker moments of gore and body horror, such as the shot were pickle-like tendrils erupt out of young Michelle Williams' face. The effect was achieved via prosthetic makeup, as Johnson explained.

'It’s a combination of two very distinctly different techniques; one being makeup effects and the other CGI. She has appliances on her face and underneath those are little buttons and we attached mono-filament to those buttons, and just out of frame, pulled the wire. The computer department took care of removing the wires And there’s really no other way you can get that direct kind of movement.

Then we went to another method and had the worms actually break through the skin using the same technique which had pre-scored skin on top of the buttons, so it would look like a worm beginning to grow out. Once that had gone three or four inches, then the CGI took off.'

Another gruesome effects shot was where Sil, in a fit of jealousy, rips out the spine of some unlucky party girl. This was achieved via a prosthetic which a false spine could be yanked out by the performer in the Sil suit.

XFX also supplied dummy heads in actors likenesses, for shots of Sil smashing them; one of the many plot elements Giger was unhappy about, as he felt it was retreading Alien.

XFX also supplied the more understated makeup effects, such as Alfred Molina's cut face, the prosthetic finger that gets sliced off, and of course the baby dummy for Sil's birthing scene.

Despite XFX's massive workload, the lion's share of the creature's scenes still went to Boss Film Studio's digital Sil. As reference for Sil's movements, Edlund's team would construct a small puppet first.

Andre Bustanoby and Ken Dudderar built a miniature Sil armature. The Sil armature was more advanced than Boss Film's earlier attempts at making motion capture puppets, as Bustanoby explained in Cinefex;

'The Sil armature is a third-generation device. Our first armature was one the model shop originally made for a dinosaur test in response to a potential project requiring enormous amounts of animation input instead of only key-framing. Then we did a cow for a Kellogg’s commercial – really our first production use of it. All the while we were learning and making mistakes and seeing where we could improve.

The Sil armature was designed so that it could be reused for later productions as well, as Bustanoby explained, 'With our first- and second-generation armatures, we were locked into a particular configuration once they were built. I wanted this one to be like a tinker toy set that you could break down into its component parts and basically reconfigure in an infinite number of ways. So we constructed it as sort of a smart armature, with each joint a self-contained unit equipped with its own circuitry. That way, we could pre-program it, throw it in a box and use it later to create a new character in a fraction of the time it would take to build one from scratch.'

Boss Film's motion capture Sil armature.

Giger was thoroughly displeased with how production of Species had went, but it was Boss Film's digital Sil that particularly drew his ire. Giger was quoted as saying in Cinefantastique;

'Visual effects supervisor Richard Edlund once called the mechanized puppet of Sil, built by makeup effects expert Steve Johnson, a "transparent pin-up girl.” Thus, two completely different Sils appeared in the movie. There was the — for me, aesthetically convincing — transparent puppet built by Johnson and the other, absolutely not transparent, teeth-gnashing, unaesthetic computer-Sil, which has nothing to do with my ideas.

Unfortunately, this computer-controlled, frog-like ugliness appears in the last ten minutes of the film and I can only hope that viewers will not consider it synonymous with my work. I want to distance myself from this Sil, which has nothing to do with my concept.'

Johnson, who had done his best to adhere to Giger's vision, was more neutral on the experience, but still understood Giger's frustrations.

'I had one phone call with (Giger) after he saw the film where I commiserated with him. I feel badly for him that he didn’t get his image necessarily shown a lot. And for the first time it was one he really liked, so he would’ve been very happy to have it seen. It’s probably more of a disappointment for him than me because I understand the Hollywood process a little better.

The reason I have no bad feelings is it was just such a wonderful, positive experience. I know that we were all on the same team and made the movie that was ultimately their choice to make. But I really can’t complain because as much as Giger’s unhappy, I think he’s unhappy because he’s not as directly involved in the film and doesn’t quite understand as well that it’s a group effort all the time.

It’s not really fair to criticize after the fact until we’re out there producing and directing our own film. I don’t think we’re ever going to get our artistic images exactly the way we want them.'

Johnson also felt the experience had been positive as it encouraged the XFX artists to think outside the box. 'I did a lot of research at the start, and had a revelation of sorts. I came to the conclusion that our industry has gotten so stuck in accepted techniques that we may have forgotten what creating reality is all about. In Species, nothing we did was standard technique – but it was, hands down, the best work we’ve ever done.'

At the very least, Giger was so impressed with Johnson's work on Species that he commissioned XFX to build a replica Sil display prop after production wrapped. The display Sil still resides in the HR Giger Museum today.

The replica Sil sculpture.

Sources:

• Starlog #218 'In the Blood' by Bill Warren
• Fangoria #144 'Supervising Species' by Marc Shapiro
• Cinefantastique Vol. 27 #7 (March 1996)
• Cinefex #63 'CAPTURING AN ALIEN SPECIES' & 'AN ENDANGERING SPECIES' by Estelle Shay
• World of Fandom Vol. 2 Issue #26 'SPECIES, MGM, Sil, the Ghost Train, and Frustrations of H.R. Giger' by Joseph B. Mauceri
• Assorted bluray featurettes