By Brent McKnight | 8 years ago

Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien is a classic of both science fiction and horror. That might very well be the understatement of the afternoon, but it’s a true statement nonetheless. Check out these photographs of Scott’s personal copy of the Alien shooting script, complete with his notes and doodles.

This is a pretty cool piece of movie history. Not only does it live inside this sweet, not to mention super 70s looking binder, but you can se all of Scott’s interpretations and observations to himself throughout the heavily annotated screenplay.

These are the kinds of things that many of us do all the time. We fill margins with scribbles and half thoughts and scrawled notes that are barely legible, even sometimes to ourselves. It’s nice to know that we’re not alone in our frenetic compulsions, fancy pants Hollywood directors are prone to this.

Looking at Scott’s notes—even though you can’t really see what the majority of them say—and his quickly rendered pen and ink storyboards, gives you a quick glimpse behind the curtain of his creative process. So often we approach filmmakers as a sort of abstract, as if there’s something magical and otherworldly about them and their talent. When you look at these, you get a feel for the man behind the movies, and how he goes about doing what he does. Gawking at these for hours probably won’t make you understand Scott or his methods any better, but it does put more of a human spin on the act of making movies.







