Aliens Intro Analysis

I am going to look at the intro of Aliens to analyse for our project. This will help us with out own intro for a film that we will be creating with our own editing, acting…etc. Looking at different films will help inspire us for our own film and help give us ideas about how to put the music together and put the clips together. It will help us to create a successful intro to a film. 

Aliens was released as a sequel to the famous Alien film. Aliens was released in 1986 and was a big hit. It was directed by James Cameron who also helped to write it. This film is a sci-fi horror so that means its set in the future (which is where the sci-fi comes in) and is a bit jumpy with aliens (the horror part). It does contain a bit of gore, which adds to the horror genre. The film was rated an 18 so it was defiantly aimed towards the adult sci-fi fans who were also into a bit of horror. 

The intro of the film starts right away with scary music to build up tension. At the moment are titles slowly fading in and out over the music. This must resemble the slow build up the film has until you see a creature (in this case the Aliens). Then you can see in the back some blurred shapes which then slowly fades into the title of the film Aliens. The music is getting louder and tenser. Suddenly the I gets brighter and slowly, then quickly turns the whole screen white. This must resemble the whole film. It slowly builds up the tense until it scares you. 

We are now in space tilting towards a distant space ship. The space consists of a blue colour just like the titles did. This is a cold colour which shows how space is a scary place, meaning the Aliens. The music is now quieter after the bright screen from earlier. The ship is just floating in the distance making space out to be enormous and the ship really small. This resembles power, humans aren’t as powerful as they think they are because there are loads of other creatures out in space that are more powerful. The intro has lasted 2 minutes with scary music and with a lot of titles over the space background. The only types of shots used were a long shot and a zoom in on to the ship. This was taking us to the ship to change setting for the next scene.

This introduction contains some very important points to making a scary intro for a horror film. Mainly the music, which is noticeably scary through out the whole 2 minutes. Colour meanings just to add to the effect. And also different camera  techniques to show different forms of power in the film. This helps to give different characters status.

By Ben Schramm