Alien: Ore · Black Ink

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 in its world. More than 550 pitches came in, and six were chosen.

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 decide whether to get out or go back down and fight it. It runs ten minutes and never leaves the mine.

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

The Spear Sisters · Directors

Anything carrying the Alien name gets measured against the original, whose title and poster are among the best known in the genre. Our part was the title, the on-screen typography and the poster.

The Approach

Working inside the most famous title in the genre.

The original Alien title builds slowly, a fragment of a letter at a time, and anyone who loves these films knows it. We designed the title sequence for Ore in the same style.

Inside the film, the location and date cards follow the franchise's on-screen style, set small in the corner of the frame.

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, on screen and on its posters, and 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

Alien:Ore

Alien:
Ore