Art of the Cut has just released a lengthy interview with Pietro Scalia, the editor on Alien: Covenant, talking working on Alien: Covenant and editing in general. In the interview, Scalia discusses how the prologue with Weyland and David almost hit the floor of the editing room:

“SCALIA: At one point Ridley wanted to take the “white room” Prologue out at the beginning. I said, “why … no absolutely not. You can’t. It’s very good.” It’s very formal, the way was shot and edited. The compositions and deliberate pace is the beauty of it. A chess game in the formal sense, triangles and lines that intersect from a design point of view, beside it’s thematic importance I mentioned before. I love that the whole scene It reminded me of Kubrick and ….

HULLFISH: Kurasawa.

SCALIA: Yes! Kurasawa. A beautiful and austere scene at the same time filled with tension. I wanted the whole movie to be like that. Ultimately it’s the director’s film and Ridley decided to keep it at the front. At the end of the day regardless of disagreements or different opinions one leaves personal imprints behind; all choices are filtered through.”

Alien vs. Predator Galaxy had previously heard that the film’s prologue had nearly been released as a viral video before being inserted back into the film. Ridley Scott has also previously spoken about how 20th Century Fox had also wanted to remove David’s flashback from Alien: Covenant in its entirety before a shorter version made it into the finished film. You can read more about the alternate and deleted scenes here.

Scalia also talks a little about the temp track he used while editing the film, revealing that he used Alien, The Snowtown, Macbeth, Sicario and Midnight Special.

“Ridley really wanted to pay tribute to Jerry Goldsmith’s score of Alien. I also started working with Jed Kurzel’s cues from The Snowtown. and Macbeth. One particular track fro Snowtown had this relentless pulsating tone and rhythm that I used in the Med Bay sequence and Ridley immediately responded to it. I also used some Harry Gregson-Williams music thematic temp cues that he provided us with. For some really low-end voices and beats I used elements from Sicario and some David Wingo from Midnight Special.”

Be sure to head on over to Art of the Cut to read the interview in full!

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