The miniature work is phenomenal. I wouldn’t have thought some of these sets were miniatures.

Really amazing how much Cameron managed to get on screen in Aliens without it ever looking cheap, despite the low budget. The film is a masterpiece on every single level of cinematic craftsmanship.

I think this was Cameron's greatest movie. I never get tired of it.

Incredible that _Aliens_ was a 'low budget' movie. What a triumph.

As much as I appreciate the advancements in CGI I'll always be a bigger fan of the artistry, workmanship, and creativity of using miniatures in movies. Even after viewing these behind the scenes videos it's still amazing how real they look in the final product.

There is an incredible shot in Aliens where the drop ship is just about to launch from the Sulaco for the first time. The bay doors open up and you see the planet below and it’s like seeing something from a NASA documentary.

Just loved the look of this movie, outstanding designs. Glad they didn't go away from that industrial military look that Syd Mead came up with but made it even more detailed.

These guys were the TRUE HEROES of Cinema!

Syd was an unbelievable industrial designer, so that helped!

God Im like a little kid here in AWE of this valuable production back story. All these people really are true craft artists.

I really appreciate the fact that there is no music in the background, no shaky video camera, and no extremely fast photos ... so we can really appreciate everything. This is perfect!

It looked real then, and it looks real today. More believable onscreen than anything I have seen done with CGI, honestly.

I would have thought *Aliens'* budget was *_BIGGER_* than the original! Great work! Next to *The Thing,* this is my favorite sci-fi movie.

Still watch Aliens to this day. Super production. Nothing to be sniffed at. ❤️🤩

The Alien 2 is a masterpiece. Set the standards high for sci_fi movies forever. From such a low budget, and without boring CGI! Don't forget the constant fear trough the movie too! Worth every second to watch!

For the child i was, these guys built the Future for me. Thanks

When the queen and Ripley are fighting at the end, I would have sworn those were full-size practical effects, ala Stan Winston's dinosaurs. Great video segment!

Decades later this movie is still perfect the way it has been done. This is called talent at all levels👌

It’s incredible what was required for special effects back in the golden days of the art form!

Just finished Rinzler’s ‘Making of Aliens” book which covers every detail quite well but this interview was fantastic to see. No matter how many times I’ve seen the final Queen/loader fight sequence it always satisfies. Its that perfect combination of live action and miniatures that sells the sequence so well. Absolutely masterful execution from all departments! Cheers

One of my favorite films. Amazing miniature work.

I am truly in love with the miniature ship work on this film!!! Absolutely stunning work ❤

The Sulaco is just hilarious and I loved it about the movie. It's a ship full of space machines and it looks, quite simply, like just one friggin' gun pointed in the direction it's going. PERFECT !!

I'll never get tired of watching these!!! Thank you!

This movie is an absolute masterpiece!

Great post! 🤘

More amazing content,shared far & wide:)

Amazing! If I didn't know better, I would never have guessed that I was watching miniatures in the movie.

Such a great video sir. I’m constantly amazed at how much of James Cameron’s early films used miniatures - most of the time you can’t even tell (eg the liquid nitrogen truck in T2). Cameron inspired me to get in to filmmaking.

I love your KZfaq channel, Great stuff, Cheers from Australia 🇦🇺 😊

When I see clips of video like this and photos on set, I like to pause them and look at all of the faces of talented people that most of us will never know and I really appreciate their silent contribution to films that we have come to love over time.

Britain has always had really good model makers for movies. Still do! I remember when I was in my late teens, I was still living at home and I lived on the third floor of our old terraced house, essentially the roof. And we had a skylight put in and we had a father and son team that did the plastering once it was all fitted. They did the entire room in less than a day! Really good guys. Anyway the Dad. I forget his name, used to work at pinewood studio way back in the 60s and he helped build the Volcano Lair in the James bond film You Only Live Twice and even did the sets for a few of the Hammer films too! I spent the entire day talking to him as it was fascinating! He'd met some truly massive movie stars but he was really humble about it. They did a cracking job on my bedroom too!

Amazing work. Got to admit some of the details mentioned here floored me!

Love watching these videos! The special features on the Aliens dvd is filled with details on how the fx work was done for the movie...thanks for sharing and stay safe!

The Sulaco is one of my real favourite ships. It looks so very real!!

Practical effects done right always look better than CGI.

And the movie looks better than stuff made today, and that's because it's all real. Except in few cases, CGI cannot attain that last bit of reality that actual objects give us. And further, using mechanical/in-camera effects enforces a constraint, a discipline that is all but gone with CGI where fantastical things happen that destroy a sense of verisimilitude.

This is excellent, thanks piercefilm.

Incredible artistry and free hand skills these people have. Beautiful craftsmanship.

Amazing! Better than CGI!

Aliens one of my all-time favorite movies

Fantastic. Loved the little details such as the "C" emblem for Caterpillar inc on the powerloader.

This movie is a work of art, and timeless ❤

I hope Giger liked what they did with his designs too.

I LOVE the practical effects in this movie! At first, I didn't realize the power loader and the queen were scaled down models. To me, I thought they were full scale props being manipulated with cables and stuff. After learning the size of these models, I'm definitely impressed more on what they did, which looks a THOUSAND times better than any CGI crap.

For almost 40 years I have been fascinated with miniatures…since star wars I guess. This was a treat

Thank you to this guy for the incredible work he and his team done to contribute to this amazing movie 👌👍

One of the most incredible cinematic experiences of my life . The crow d went apeshit in London where normally you barely got any reaction at all i'll never forget it .

And now the budgets are huge and these new movies still can't quite match how good Aliens looks!

Some of those models look look so cool. I'd love to see them in real life.

Easily one of the best Sci-Fi movies ever, wish they could find that magic again in the franchise.

A truly great film, which has all the hallmarks of a classic. The directors cut was a real treat!

What happens with all that in camera stuff is that it ages well. Aliens still looks gresh asidebfrom the last scene where the ship is rocketing away. The entire movie just stands up. The performances put it over the top and for me is the greatest sequel ever made. OK Empire is right up there....

Thank you for all your hard work! Loved it!

"Such a low budget" is not something you hear quite often when speaking of a milestone sci-fi blockbuster. The narrator was not only happy himself with Sulaco model, he made lots of movie fans happy as well I believe.

God! To me, a model comes from a box and gets put together on a table. These guys, they made art pure and simple.

Thank You for the greatest sequel ever made !!!

wow thanks for uploading, this is fascinating!! love these miniatures!

Fascinating story. Thanks. Aliens is one of the greatest films of all time.

this is gold material, i want more :D

Absolutely loving these vids ❤

Funny how he says "Aliens" had a relatively small budget. I think the effects are some of the best ever done, and hold up fine today. And, most importantly, they are vastly better than the CGI cartoonish crap that is ruining so many movies today....

It’s ironic that come 2003, the pre-production for AVP, they had a higher budget than Aliens (60mil compared to 16), but the studio was against making another film in space because it would cost too much. So they went with Paul’s idea of a Pyramid under the ice because it would save money.

He sounds like a really nice guy. He spent a lot of time complimenting other people. You put him in front of a camera and all he's thinking about is "how can I include other people in this?"

"I don't think we got that shot..." 😅

There was enthusiasm, effort, love, and love for cinema in the old movies. People were doing their jobs with love and with great respect. Now, the last stage of the increasingly synthetic industrial society; "virtualism"...

Some of these things I never realised were models. The power loader and queen look full sized in every frame...

I actually had no idea Aliens had a low budget. It always looked amazing to me.

I watched the shot and the powerloader looking banged up actually contributes to the scene because it makes it more believable that the alien queen is banged up too because of the fall with her tail spike being snapped and all. Everything in the air hatch looks tremendously believable no matter how many times I watch it and the common dissonance of CGI not being there makes it such a joy to watch. I assume software will be created eventually to spot CGI and A.I. generated videos and I would love to one day see that software to scan this movie and go: All real! 😂

Love that film, good work fella

Wow that was awesome to see, thanks for uploading 🌟

I love stories about spray paint and hot glue! It gives hope to starting filmmakers that don't have money to work with.

proof that no advancement in CGI will ever beat a bunch of artists in a shed.

just gotta love industrial light and magic

It was brilliant anyway wether the budget was small or not it didn't show ! 👍🙂

Really cool channel. Thanks for putting these on KZfaq.

More of these insights please! Never seen this content before - excellent. 😊

Aliens is still one of my favourite movies and in retrospect I wish it would have been the last one as I think the franchise took a nosedive in terms of quality after this one.

I'm very surprised Aliens had such a low budget. With a director like Cameron, and source material from the Alien storyline, you would think the budget to be 3x more than it was. The completed film sure looked like a movie with a bigger budget.

Would love a tour of his house with all those models of Galactica, Buck Roger’s etc. Cool.

This would be a dream job for me. Working with a team of model builders for a movie production. These guys are the best of the best at what they do!

Incredible film.

Bring back models to movies.

This is still one of my go to movies. I keep it on my iPad for flights that don't have an entertainment system. Also love it on my 70" TV.

Wow so impressive!

the fight between Ripley and the Queen also benefits from the great sound fx work

The Sulaco always reminded me of a Franchi SPAS-12.

Cool

Just found this channel...keep posting please.

Aliens was low budget? Well, they sure got their money's worth.

regarding the budget Aliens was 19 million dollars, and 1 million of that went to Sigourney Weaver. In contrast your typical big studio film in the 1980s was 25-35 million, with Dune at 40 million and Star Trek the motion(less) picture at 45 million being the high end outliers (and frankly where was that money even spent on Dune?). So they really were under the gun to do things cheap.

Sensational models 🤩👍💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎🥂😉

GREEBLING!

Wonder how these guys felt when 3D effects started to replace this incredible craftmanship... I hope their skills are still needed

🎬🎥🎬🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🥇🎬🎥🎬 ABSOLUTELY

Oh that Sulaco model is so sweet.

Epic it would be amazing to wk on a set designing props

Fantastic. Its both very interesting and kinda bad that I'm watching this, because it takes away the magic from the movie. Its like when you figure out the magic trick secret its no more magic anymore. I prefer to be lied at, when it comes to the movies, so I mostly try to avoid "the making of" videos. However, curiosity takes over me sometimes.

With such limitation and constraint, in creating cinematic treasure.. so much love and passion.. unlike today’s hollywoke.

Wow. So interesting to listen to you guys. I know i am writing this every time. But your work is so inspiring and give me a smile how you did the shots and the models done so perfectly. 😊