Alien: Night Shift - 40th Anniversary Short Film

[Perfect-Organism]

Just watched this.  I appreciate the James Cameron lighting techniques.  Panels of fluorescent white light offer an eerie setting.  This does seem to have some pacing issues though.  The chest bursting scene was one of the best in a long while.

Do we have to have another black guy stealing stuff?  Cringeworthy.  It's a stereotype I don't care to keep pushing.

[Hadley Hope's Soggy Donut]

Good job. Solid. Very similar quality to the first film, as others have already said. The opening shot is great--gives us so much information without a single edit.

It's interesting to see the strengths and weaknesses of the different filmmakers on display here. This director was great at setting a tone and getting natural performances from his actors during the "slice of life" part of the film. Good dialogue, natural delivery. Feel like real people. Good banter. As soon as the crap hits the fan, however, we start to see some clunkiness. I've directed amped up, crisis scenes before (and mostly failed, lol), so I know how difficult it can be to get your actors "there" emotionally. And then there's always the risk of going too far, and then you get campy over the top. In this case, I feel that the actors didn't have enough time or number of takes to get all the way "there" emotionally. Some of these takes feel like rehearsals of the real thing. The main girl (who I love in the first half) just never feels very distraught or freaked out. She sort of complains about her boss being killed, and then she (inexplicably) feels the need to shut herself into a place, when she was, only seconds before, wishing she could leave forever on a transport ship. Lady, the door is open--you run! What's missing here is the motive that was present in "Specimen", where the lady was locked in, and wanted to save her dog anyway, so hells yeah, you stay and fight.

Meh, what do I know? It's all just armchair quarterbacking, lol. These films have been great. I wish I could have a shot at making one! Then we could all tear it apart, lol.

[RidgeTop]

It is odd that they need to go to this little supply depot for a drink. We know from what we've seen on Hadley's Hope that these colonies have Bars, which would likely be open later then this little shop. I definitely think a Bar setting would've made this short more interesting.

[iain]

[0321recon]

Good job. Solid. Very similar quality to the first film, as others have already said. The opening shot is great--gives us so much information without a single edit.

It's interesting to see the strengths and weaknesses of the different filmmakers on display here. This director was great at setting a tone and getting natural performances from his actors during the "slice of life" part of the film. Good dialogue, natural delivery. Feel like real people. Good banter. As soon as the crap hits the fan, however, we start to see some clunkiness. I've directed amped up, crisis scenes before (and mostly failed, lol), so I know how difficult it can be to get your actors "there" emotionally. And then there's always the risk of going too far, and then you get campy over the top. In this case, I feel that the actors didn't have enough time or number of takes to get all the way "there" emotionally. Some of these takes feel like rehearsals of the real thing. The main girl (who I love in the first half) just never feels very distraught or freaked out. She sort of complains about her boss being killed, and then she (inexplicably) feels the need to shut herself into a place, when she was, only seconds before, wishing she could leave forever on a transport ship. Lady, the door is open--you run! What's missing here is the motive that was present in "Specimen", where the lady was locked in, and wanted to save her dog anyway, so hells yeah, you stay and fight.

I second this. Really liked the slice of life aspect since I've directed scenes similar to this before, I agree with you, when everything goes haywire you need to help your talent to get at that 'moment' via getting your actors to go back to anxious laden/traumatic moment to get them there, and shoot the scenes. Then, after it's done, get them back to the present.

[Nightmare Asylum]

The Alien related stuff in this one was my least favorite part of it. Better than Containment, but Specimen remains my favorite of the three so far, and by a pretty wide margin.

[bacchus]

Bit of a mixed bag this one compared to last week's excellent 'Specimen'. Firstly, you have to praise the lighting, cinematography and soundtrack - all very reminiscent of both Alien and Aliens. Thought the casting was good too - both the lead for this week and last week could both hold down the lead role in a feature length Alien film IMO.

The obvious elephant in the room was the almost ridiculous looking baby Xeno running towards the lead character before she beats it with the metal pole. It looked like it was on wheels and out of focus - probably intentionally to avoid showing how bad it looked. Thought the practical effect of the chestburster emerging looked cool and authentic enough though.

Might have been just me, but did anyone else have issues with the sound for this one? Thought the dialogue wasn't very clearly recorded especially towards the beginning, and there was some definitely noticeable ADR (dialogue recorded after the film was shot) for the older guy which wasn't synced up with his mouth.

Story-wise, nothing new or original, yet another that takes heavily from scenes or moments in the original films, it felt really bare bones and predictable fairly early on.

It's a shame that a lot of the focus seems to be on the technical limitations due to the low budget of these shorts rather than the story - perhaps that says more about the story (or lack of) than the budget. I know 8-10 minutes is very short and not enough to create anything of real substance with a beginning/middle/end, but that's where the filmmakers should have taken things in more interesting directions instead of just "character sneaks around in the same room as an alien" which the last two shorts have been.

Scores so far...

Containment - 3/10
Specimen - 8.5/10
Night Shift - 4.5/10

[Monster Man]

Thought this one was alright, but of course that guy had to yank out the

Spoiler

Blade Runner Blaster . And thankfully it ends on the colony being overrun. Fun times!

[close]

[SuperiorIronman]

Out of the gate I give it a C+

Of the things I like;
The Alien definitely looks better than in the prior shorts and I think the acting was alright. Though it does seem that some here are definitely more talented than others. I think the guy with the pistol definitely is one of the better actors here and I would've liked to see more of him in this short. Partly because the guy does seem to do well with the material given but also in that he does kind of remind me of several customers I've encountered over the years. The slice of life sort of stuff is good and he definitely gets props in my book because he sold his role to me.

Onto what I disliked
The shot of the facehugger could've been left to keeping it just out of focus. It's still within the opening shot and panning slightly over to it just kind of takes the mystique out of it. We're in an alleyway so I guess the idea is that we might mistake it for garbage and the focusing is to make that reveal, but I knew what it was immediately. If it was in the shot outright but obscured in darkness it would explain why the guy didn't notice it, add a light panning over it making that reveal would've worked better if we did have to see it. Otherwise it could've just been in the shot but in the dark with only an outline. The shot that we ended up getting felt kind of amateurish. It's an Alien short, we know an Alien is in this so don't try being clever, you can have it in your shot and make the audience feel like it did something when the eagle eyed viewer notices it or we go back through to find it. We don't need them to hold our hands by pointing right at it.

I also take issue with the black guy stealing, dated stereotype, stop doing it.

The set design also didn't quite work. I get that it's a supply sort of thing but I assume it would've been arranged a little nicer than somebodie's shed. I didn't feel like this is a functioning establishment as much as it was somebodie's tool shed they dressed up.

The pacing was also off and if they would've filled the dead air with something other than whale noises (nature noises wtf?) I feel like this would've moved a bit better.

The ending also felt cheap and since it was on a cheap looking set it didn't work for me. It felt amateurish.

_________________

All and all I give it a C+. It tried, but I feel like this is the weakest of the shorts.

[Vermillion]

I just waiting for that pulse rifle to just go off.

It's coming.

And it's going to be a beauty

[Voodoo Magic]

This took an effort to get through. Hope the next one is better. My interest towards these are fading fast. 

[Huggs]

Good: The guys did fine. The set was fine. The idea was decent. Nice claustrophobic feel.

Bad: The ADR is terrible. Those baseball lines, omg Jesus save me. The delivery was atrocious and her characters lips weren't even moving. You could hear the Mic cut in and out. Her acting was awful. Some shots of the chestburster were so-so. The lack of sound when beating the chestburster. Dudes aim. "The creatures on the floor, oh let's shoot everything including the ceiling".

Good idea. Very poor execution. Definitely the weakest so far.

Removing the ADR and recasting the female role could've saved it.

And enough with the stereotyping complaints please. The stealing fit the narrative. I'd have expected his character to steal it even if he was of any other ethnicity.

His character was a d*ck, and he played it to the bone. Dude single handedly carried this short. Solid work.

[Nukiemorph]

Uninteresting and derivative story.

Feels like we're seeing one of the more boring parts in a longer, more interesting story.

I had the same complaints with Containment, but this slightly less well done due to the clunky puppet work and audio editing.

(At least the main woman in this one actually fought the chestburster instead of instantly resigning to death.)

4/10

I keep hearing that this was the weakest of the six, so I'm looking forward to the rest.

[SiL]

I didn't think it could get worse than Containment, but here we are.

I was actually impressed with the subtle facehugger at the beginning -- then nope, here it is for everyone who missed it.

Feel bad for them regarding the sound -- there was no way they meant for that to happen and it's pretty clear they were scrambling to fix a major damned issue. The practical burster puppet itself looked good, but the use was awful. It just kind'a ... slides out of the dude's gut?

And the black guy's aim was just ... it's on the floor, why the f**k are you hitting the ceiling?!

A lot of effort went into this and I do applaud that, but it really did not just come together in the end. And damn do I feel that in my soul cos I've been there.

[LastSonofKrypton]

It's definitely the weakest of the three, and that's not being harsh.  Aside from the technical issues, it just didn't land in places, the part with the guy panic firing was poorly executed, and some of his shots were beyond ridiculous.  All that being said, a lot of work was obviously put into it so fair play to the people involved.  It wasn't bad by any stretch, but given the strength of the previous two shorts, it fell short of the mark for me