Sci-Fi Horror
2019

Alien:
Ore

Title Design Motion Graphics Key Art & Poster

Directors

The Spear Sisters

Studio

20th Century Fox

Series

Alien 40th Anniversary Shorts

The Brief

Forty years of dread, handed to six filmmakers.

For the 40th anniversary of Alien (1979), 20th Century Fox invited filmmakers to pitch original stories set inside the franchise. More than 550 pitches came in. Six were chosen, and each winning team was handed the keys: the world, the creatures, the dread.

Alien: Ore is one of the six, written and directed by Vancouver's Spear Sisters and shot in a real mine outside the city. Lorraine, a veteran miner, uncovers something in the deep shafts and has to choose between getting out and going back down. Ten minutes, one location, and everything the original taught us about the dark.

Those feelings of fear, claustrophobia and isolation in a new way.

The Spear Sisters · Directors

A film wearing the Alien name arrives with the most recognisable visual language in the genre already attached. Our job was its most visible surfaces: the title, the typography on screen, and the poster.

The Approach

Working inside the most famous title in the genre.

Everyone who loves these films knows the title before the film starts. The slow reveal, segment by segment, that told audiences in 1979 to sit still and pay attention. We designed the title sequence for Ore in that lineage, built for a story set thousands of feet underground.

The typography carries through the film the same way. Location and date supers set in the franchise's cold, patient register, doing quiet work in the corners of the frame while the mine does the rest.

For the poster, we art directed and built two directions from scratch. One is illustrated: black rock split by a thin seam of green light, a single headlamp at the bottom of it. The other is photographic: a bare arm reaching up out of the dark. We shot that key art ourselves, with a model in the film's actual hero costume. Neither poster shows the creature. The original kept it hidden, and its posters did too. Ours follow that lead.

The Work

Key Art

Theatrical Poster

Motion

Title Sequence

Key Art

Alternate Poster

Behind the Scenes

Key Art Shoot

Outcomes

4.2M

Views on YouTube, where the short premiered through IGN

1 of 6

Films chosen from more than 550 pitches for the official 40th anniversary series

1 of 2

Shorts in the series released with its own theatrical poster

Given unprecedented access to the franchise.

20th Century Fox · On the anniversary filmmakers

Ore is attracting a lot of online buzz.

Forbes · April 2019

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