7 Questions with ALIEN ROMULUS Creature Creator Shane Mahan

IMAX In Frame  ‌ ‌ ‌ Welcome to the story behind the story. This is IMAX In Frame   King of the Creature Feature In conversation with ALIEN: ROMULUS special effects artist Shane Mahan   Strangeness comes naturally to special effects artist Shane Mahan. Whether you need a mysterious humanoid amphibian like in SHAPE OF WATER or to outfit the latest row of Marvel superheroes, Mahan and his company Legacy Effects are who Hollywood calls to bring some of cinema's most memorable characters to life. Mahan began his career working for legendary special effects artist Stan Winston, gaining experience on projects like THE TERMINATOR, which in turn led him to the set of ALIENS (1986). Firmly rooted in the universe of the film, he now returns to the franchise almost forty years later, for ALIEN: ROMULUS. We sat down with him to chat about creature creation, his artistic journey, and of course, IMAX. 1. Can you tell us a little bit about your career journey – how did you get to the place of being a working artist in the realm of the effects space? Do you have any advice for aspirings out there who might want to follow in your footsteps?  How much time do you have? (laughs) Honestly, it started when I was a very young boy. I was always fascinated with and naturally drawn to films that had interesting characters in them, whether that be because of the makeup, or stop motion, or anything of the fantastic. I was just more and more fascinated by the whole thing, like the old Universal films. I would just devour them. At some point I realized, well, certainly grown-ups must be doing this for a living.   There was a magazine called Famous Monsters of Filmland when I was a boy. It came out monthly and it was very cheap back then, and that was sort of a gateway to that world. They would have articles about who was making things in Hollywood and how things were done. At about 10 or 11 years old, I decided that’s what I wanted to do. Getting through school, studying art- because that’s a big part of it you know, sculpting, painting.   Also when I was in those early years, I was doing theatrical plays and doing makeups for shows. Self-teaching as much as I could do before I went to Hollywood.   Then I went to school for even more advanced training, and then apprenticeship programs with studios here in town. That eventually led me to meet Stan Winston. I’d worked for about a year here and there, but then I was hired at Stan’s for the first TERMINATOR. It was only meant to be 6 months, but I ended up staying with him for about 27 years. So, I mean, that’s sort of it in a nutshell. I know I was a very strange boy, but that’s what the passion was from a young age.   [For new aspiring artists], there’s a lot of challenges today, but I don’t think it’s impossible. You just have to be very, very good at what you do. You have to not be afraid to take critique and improve yourself. Keep trying, keep trying. Meet people. Just work very hard; it’s not going to come instantly.   It also depends on what kind of effects you want to do. Whether it’s digital work, or the other kind of special effects where you are flipping cars and blowing up bridges. There’s also a rebirth of stop motion animation, which is not lost at all. Phil Tippet and other companies are still doing that. Tim Burton employs that technique a lot. Guillermo del Toro just made PINOCCHIO a couple years ago.   So, the art is still there. My advice to anyone, is you must study art. Take sculpting, take painting, those are the fundamentals.   2. Famously, the original iconic design for the xenomorphs was inspired by the works of artist H.R. Geiger. Can you talk a little bit about working on ALIENS (1986)? What was it like returning to this world to breathe life into a new generation of these creatures? Did ROMULUS’ placement in the franchise timeline affect how you approached the creature design? The ‘86 film [ALIENS] was a dream beyond dreams to come true. I’d landed that position with Stan. The auspicious sort of connection between Stan and James Cameron and myself and my other collogues John Rosengrant and Tom Woodruff, and a few others at that time, was sort of a magical moment. It fused a team that would go on to do other things. We could sense that THE TERMINATOR was going to be something very, very special. It was one that you could tell was going to be pretty remarkable.   I would get hints that Jim was working on a script for an ALIEN sequel. I was such a fan of the first film, and I was thrilled to death when we were all invited to go to England and make the sequel for it. It should have been a daunting task, but we were all so excited to be creating things. I just had such a wonderful time. And I hadn’t made another ALIEN film since. Years went by, it went to friends of ours here, there, and everywhere. Alec Gillis and Tom had done a few sequels. Then it went to other places, and I didn’t think we’d ever work on another ALIEN film again. This call [for ALIEN: ROMULUS] came out of the blue.  We had long conversations with [director] Fede [Alvarez]; he really wanted to return to the roots of what was great about the Geiger design but to make it unique unto itself and this film. I had to sit and think with my colleagues here and think “what’s the best approach, really?”. None of us wanted it to just be, exclusively an actor in a suit. So, we took the approach we did for the Queen alien from ALIENS. It's a mechanical device with a very small narrow waist, its limbs are longer, its 8 feet tall. It’s non-human on every level. We’ll have an actor in a suit for supplemental shots that are more active, like wire work.   75% of the suit will match the animatronic, so if you cut it together, and work together, it’s the same head size, the same chest size, it’s like you won’t know the difference between the two.  So that was the constructive part of all that. But artistically, the art team here worked really hard to make it feel new but properly paying attention to what Geiger had created.   3. You've been on so many different kinds of sets. What was the most challenging shoot you've worked on? They are all challenging, and they all have their own idiosyncrasies. I’m kind of strange, but I like a sort of “the harder the better” mentality. I like being in the jungle, and I like being in different environments, like rain. I find that to be somewhat oddly romantic, to be on location.  When things become difficult is when you start running out of time on a project. For whatever circumstance- actors might not have been available to the last minute, schedules may have changed. Then it becomes a little daunting, and that happens frequently, and you have to press on and do it.   But I don’t know if I’ve ever had a film that was the most difficult thing. It certainly wasn’t ALIEN: ROMULUS because that was a joy to work on, even though it was very physically demanding. I couldn’t wait to wake up in the morning and get to the set, you know. I just couldn’t wait.   4. Out of all of the entities fans will see in ALIEN: ROMULUS, do you have a personal favorite? I don’t have a personal favorite. I can’t have a personal favorite. You think of it in stages; you break down the script and approach it as “there’s this scene and there’s that scene and so on.” So, I just have to think of it as a collective whole, from start to finish. I have yet to see the film, so I don’t really know what it looks like yet.   Generally, my personal faves come after I’ve watched it a few times, and I see what’s effective or worked better. This film has a few surprises in it that I’m not allowed to talk about right now. But I think the real fans of the first two films are going feel a lot of the DNA of what’s going on in that world. I’m really happy with everything, so I don’t really have a favorite.   5. You and your company Legacy Effects have worked with a wide swathe of filmmakers – James Cameron, of course, but also Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro Iñárritu, James Gunn, just to name a few. Does the process change at all, depending on who’s at the helm, or the nature of the story? Well, they’re similar but also unique unto themselves. All the gentlemen you named are highly successful because they have their own unique vision. They have a very strong sense of what their movies are going to look like. So, you have to adapt to what their vision is. A Tim Burton movie looks like a Tim Burton movie. What you would make for a Tim Burton movie, you would not make for James Cameron and vice versa. They’re different artists. It’s a different approach, so that’s how you modify your thinking, artistically.   It all starts with the written page. It starts with the script and the story. You’re taking notes of how the moments of the characters have to tell the story. Then you start to collaborate with the directors, see what they want to hear and see, what they want it to be. Then as a collective art department, you start doing art and whittling it down, throwing a lot of things out, then pulling it together.   While that’s happening, we’re figuring out how to accomplish it on the set. How are you actually going it make it work? How are you going to actually show up at 4 in the morning someplace and shoot that scene? What’s the process, how are you going to break it down? So there’s a lot of levels to it. But that’s actually really thrilling to me, to create the characters. Basically, you have to think of it like there’s an empty room. There’s absolutely nothing in it month 1. By month 5 there’s something that’s materialized that wasn’t there before. It’s like magic.   But you have to think it through, and you have to make it this tangible, workable thing. Hopefully make it so that the audience, within the first two minutes of seeing it, believe that it’s just a creature, not an effect.   6. You mentioned earlier those supplemental scenes with a live performer in costume. What kind of performer is that, between the realm of people like stuntmen and dancers? What kind of movement professional are you using there?  A little bit of both. They are specialists of body movement. They’re also very tough people, because they’re wearing heavy and uncomfortable costumes. The head is filled with mechanical servos, and weighs quite a few pounds. There’s a certain amount of discomfort, but you just have to push yourself through it, and sometimes nearly blind. It takes a very special actor to wear things like that.  7. If you could watch any movie again, for the first time, in IMAX, what would it be? This is the hardest question to answer. I don’t have just one favorite movie, I have like 100 favorite movies. I’ve thought long and hard about this. It’s very difficult to come up with a film that showcases what IMAX is, and what film would play well within IMAX. I think I’ve seen JURASSIC PARK in IMAX, and THE TERMINATOR, too. Those play well. I happen to think I would love to see LAWERENCE OF ARABIA in IMAX.   I love David Lean’s films, and just the grandeur of the desert and the scope of that might be fantastic. I’m sure after we’re done speaking I’ll think of something else. Just about everything looks great in IMAX.   This interview was transcribed from a Zoom conversation. 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