One of Hollywood’s most iconic horror franchises is back and returning to its roots with Alien: Romulus‘ skillful mix of practical effects and CGI. Part of the heart of the movie’s visual effects team is visual effects supervisor Eric Barba, a frequent collaborator of David Fincher, including having won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects for the filmmaker’s 2008 fantasy drama The Curious Case of Benjamin ʙuттon.

With Alien: Romulus, co-writer/director Fede Álvarez and creative partner and co-writer Rodo Sayagues have taken the sci-fi/horror franchise back towards its original timeline after Ridley Scott’s divisive prequel films, setting the story directly between the events of the classic first two installments. In addition to reviving the retrofuturistic technology of the original films, this also led to the visual effects team and production design teams returning to the practical-driven nature of the originals, while still utilizing CGI to amplify the terrors of outer space and to recreate the late Ian Holm as the new character of Rook.

In honor of the movie’s ongoing campaign for Oscars voting, ScreenRant interviewed VFX Supervisor Eric Barba to discuss Alien: Romulus. The Oscar winner praised Álvarez’s dedication to making the film feel as authentic as possible for both the viewer and his cast, as well as breaking down the creation of some of the movie’s more haunting sequences, namely The Offspring’s arrival in the climax, as well as the extensive detail put into creating the movie’s depiction of space.

Barba & His Team Were Just As Much About Amplifying The Practical Effects

“…we kept everything just so that the feeling on set was I was in this dark, cold spaceship…”

As previously noted, Alien: Romulus marks Barba’s second Oscar nomination after The Curious Case of Benjamin ʙuттon, putting him and his team up against fellow 20th Century Studios release Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, as well as the teams behind Better Man, Dune: Part Two and Wicked. In reflecting on the nomination, Barba expressed his excitement not only for himself, but for every visual effects team involved with the film, noting “it takes a giant team” to pull off a film like this:

Eric Barba: I’m thrilled for not only myself, but all the teams involved, because of all the hard work it takes. It takes a giant team, everyone working hard every day to even get that nod. I think that was the most exciting thing for me when I came on to this project, was how excited the artists were. And not just the digital artists, which they were, but the practical teams, the Weta team, certainly the Legacy Effects team, Alec Gillis and Studio Gillis, they’re just so fantastic, and brought so much to the table. So, it’s been great. I’m thrilled for everybody.

In looking at his team’s approach to the visual effects, Barba begins by praising Álvarez’s “great vision” when it comes to horror films, as well as his dedication to practical effects, for which he and his team then helped amplify with the puppets of the Facehuggers, chestbursters and others. He does, however, explain how they changed the approach to filming space-related scenes by utilizing black screens instead of blue or green, that way it created the appropriate mood for the actors:

Eric Barba: Well, Fede has great vision, and he knows that in a horror film, you have to really get your actors engaged, and you have to feel how tense they are, how scared they are, and all those little micro moments in their eyes, and the only way to really do that is if they’re in the moment. And to get them in the moment, we needed to build as much practical as possible. Some of the things we’ve had conversations about that maybe don’t come up as much are the little details.

Like, for example, the giant hallway that we use when they go back and forth, we didn’t put green screen or blue screen outside of it. We put black, and we kept it dark, and we kept everything just so that the feeling on set was I was in this dark, cold spaceship, and that goes for everything. The cockpits, we put black out in front instead of blue or green. We always tried to keep the actors in the moment. And then, certainly with the puppets, the Facehuggers, the chestbursters, so they were seeing what they were and reacting to it. You have a Xenomorph in your face, literally, with its splatter going all over you. How can you not be in that moment?

And The Offspring, the actor that played it was terrifying in person, honestly. Because once you’re in full makeup, and you’re just kind of staring up at this seven-foot-ten creature, it’s unbelievable. So that was paramount, and once you get that, then everyone feels like they’re in the movie. And then, obviously, with other visual effects, we’re able to embellish. We need more Facehuggers, and we need more Xenomorphs, and we’re in space, all those things. But it was for the actors, primarily, to get them involved and to feel like they’re there.

Alien: Romulus’ Chestburster Scene Left Barba Smiling “Ear To Ear All Day Long”

“It was like being back in school having fun.”

As with most installments in the franchise, one of the most iconic scenes in Alien: Romulus was that of the chestburster scene, in which Aileen Wu’s Navarro dies in the arms of Isabela Merced’s Kay as it happens. When we asked about his team’s involvement in that scene, Barba acknowledged that “99%” of the scene was done in camera, and that as a fan of the series, he “had a smile from ear to ear” while monitoring the digital touch-ups:

Eric Barba: Well, that team, that sequence, hurt me, because, literally, I had a smile from ear to ear all day long watching the playback on the monitor. I couldn’t believe how great it looked. But honestly, once it got all cut together, we did some little touch-ups and paint-outs of things that, naturally, you’d have to do, but that’s pretty much 99% in camera. Alec Gillis and his team and everyone played so nice together. Alec had worked with Shane from Legacy before, back on Aliens, so when they got together with the effects teams from Weta, or our local Hungarian effects team, it didn’t matter whose thing it was, they all jumped in and started helping each other. It was like being back in school having fun. It was fun, and I think that shows, there’s a lot of love for what they do and a lot of fun for what they do.

The VFX Team’s Approach To Space Proved One Of The Most Challenging & Artistic

“I’m an artist myself, and I love that kind of challenge.”

While the movie may have largely been comprised of practical effects, that doesn’t mean that Barba and his team were only onboard for digital touch-ups, as they delivered some stunning set pieces in space as Cailee Spaeny’s Rain and her friends take off from the mining planet of LV-410 to head to the Weyland-Yutani space station the movie is largely set. Barba denotes the lift-off as being one of the more challenging to create for the film, particularly after Álvarez presented him with the request for “every sH๏τ to look like a painting“, which also proved inspiring for the VFX Supervisor:

Eric Barba: Well, certainly, the lift-off into space, there’s a lot that has to be established in that sequence. When we’re on our set, it was easy to get that dressed and looking every bit as grimy and dirty and muddy. And just because it was in the high 30s on those nights, and it rained, and the mud got stuck to everything. So, everyone’s cold, everyone’s muddy, and the sets were beautifully dressed and finished. Obviously, we augmented it to a tiny degree, but for the most part — or the big opening sH๏τs, I guess, we did augment. But you want to feel in it, so when they lift off into space, what’s priority is for us to understand that they’re on a planet that we can’t see the sun, because it’s encompᴀssed in these storms and clouds.

And Fede had said to me, “I want every sH๏τ to look like a painting.” And that inspired me. I’m an artist myself, and I love that kind of challenge. So, I think the hardest thing was getting the space sH๏τs to look beautiful, and like paintings, and scary, because it’s not natural for some of the visual effects teams to essentially underlight, or backlight, or not want to show off what they’ve done. Because we had these amazing models that were scanned and built and then taken into the digital realm from the physical. And the guys, the digital teams, did a fantastic job in transferring them over, but then they want to light them up and show them off. It’s like, “Well, that’s fantastic, but we really need to make this scary and beautiful.”

So, that was a constant review process of going, “Well, let’s not maybe have too much light here, too much light there.” I mentioned an instructor I had back in college, one of my painting instructors, who had taught me that to compose things, was to put a light thing in front of a dark thing, in front of a light thing. That was one of his mantras, “a dark thing in front of a light thing in front of a dark thing,” and just build those silhouette shapes. And that’s what I kind of had them do. And you’ll see that with the rings. We made the rings white, so they were more icy, and we tried to get the planet backlit, and the station back lit, so we were always pulling out silhouettes.

They’re good painter techniques, but something that had to be constantly looked after, because of the nature of digital going to overlight, much more than maybe live-action. If you look at the live-action, it’s beautifully lit, so that was the other bar. Galo had given us such a beautiful palette and beautiful pH๏τography just to start with, it’s like, “Wow.” I was excited for that, just seeing it when we were shooting, because it was like, “Okay, great, this will allow us to bed it. And it’s an Alien movie. It’s dark, it’s scary, this will be great.”

In looking at the planet of LV-410 itself, whose rings of ice also pose a threat to the Alien: Romulus cast as they race to leave the station before it’s torn apart by the debris, Barba did very extensive research in order to accurately depict the planet, particularly looking at pH๏τography taken by the Cᴀssini space probe of Saturn as inspiration, while also turning to the contrast rule he tried to apply to the other elements of his depiction of space:

Eric Barba: Well, I literally looked at everything I could get my hands on. And ultimately, you know, the Cᴀssini space probe was launched, and it was the closest probe we’ve ever had that got near Saturn’s actual rings. And it sent back fantastic pH๏τography, and that pH๏τography was incredibly inspiring. So, as I kind of looked into that, the problem with that pH๏τography is it’s still from a great distance, and because the rings are moving at incredible speed, we tend to see the rings as these kinds of solid shapes. But there’s this wonderful “How Saturn got its rings” BBC special that this astrologist kind of explained, and they did their own CG representation of what she was describing, and that became our inspiration. Once I saw that, I was like, “I’ve got to show this to Fede,” and I sent it to Fede, and he was like, “Wow.”

So, that’s what we said to the teams. And it’s ice, and I wanted it to be white ice from the beginning, because of that thing I was saying before about being able to stack composition and backlight everything. It took us a teeny bit to get there. Fede was on board, once he saw some of the imagery, and there’s an amazing concept artist who I’d worked with at ILM, Fred Palacio, and I kept requesting him to do some paint-overs, because I knew his artistic ability would help get us there. And he did, and that became our guide. He did some beautiful work, and then with ILM, “We got it, now we understand.”

And then, Weta took over in the third act, when we get closer to it, and they had the same, all the references and images, and then they picked up. And my comment to Daniel, when we first launched them, was just like, “Look, the rings need to be so thick and amazing that the Southern Hemisphere should dim while this is rendering.” It needs that type of computational power to throw out this thing, because Weta is well-known to have the largest computational power in the Southern Hemisphere. They laughed, and they certainly gave it their all.

One Offspring SH๏τ Had To Be Recreated Entirely Via CGI, Despite A Beautiful Practical SH๏τ

“…it looked amazing, but editorially, we couldn’t keep it…”

One of the more notable new additions to the franchise in Alien: Romulus was that of the monstrous Offspring, the Xenomorph-human hybrid creature born from Kay after she injected herself with the Prometheus black goo to save herself. Barba recalls the intense response the Offspring got during the first test screening for the film, as well as his own disturbance at seeing the figure on set during production, particularly one sH๏τ that “looked amazing” in camera, but had to be recreated entirely with CGI:

Eric Barba: Well, that was something that, even in the first test screening, we all sat in the back row and kind of watched to see how the audience responds. And there’s that moment when he’s on all fours, the first time we see him, and the music dies down, and we look over, and we’re just all listening to hear how the audience is reacting. When the audience is silenced, and you hear gasps, you’re like, “Alright, this is working.” Because that’s how he felt on set with him. He was amazing, and there was a really fantastic sequence where he’s running down the hallway, and the cold gas is kind of coming behind him, and we just see silhouettes of him as he’s chasing Kay down the hallway.

We had these great sH๏τs, these fragments of the silhouette with this giant creature, and it was so scary. And it was in camera, and it looked amazing, but editorially, we couldn’t keep it because of some other things. So, one of Weta’s tasks was to recreate what we actually sH๏τ, because it was so beautiful, and they did a great job doing that. But there are things that we got because we had him there, and we could shoot with him, and the actors could react to him. You didn’t want to be too close to him, I mean, because he’s so otherworldly with his proportions. And then, in that costume with the goop coming off him, he really was terrifying, and he played to it. He was great.

About Alien: Romulus

This truly terrifying sci-fi horror-thriller takes the phenomenally successful Alien franchise back to its iconic roots. While scavenging the deep ends of a derelict space station, a group of young colonizers come face-to-face with the most relentless and ᴅᴇᴀᴅly life form in the universe. Starring Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn and Aileen Wu, Alien: Romulus is directed by horror master Fede Alvarez from a screenplay by Alvarez and frequent collaborator Rodo Sayagues based on characters created by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett. Ridley Scott — who directed the original Alien and the series entries Prometheus and Alien: Covenant — produces with Michael Pruss and Walter Hill.

Check out our previous Alien: Romulus interviews with:

• Álvarez and the cast at San Diego Comic-Con 2024
• Aileen Wu (post-release)