The Concept Shoot

Photography by Trinh Huynh Knowing when to cut Needless to say it was a very difficult shoot and this is because we were using mucky special/practical effects. There was no time to reshoot some of the important scenes like the kiss as they had to be done stage by stage and because of continuity, I had to ensure I stuck to the plan. As the combat guys arrived early, to save time and limit the amount of people on set, we had to shoot their scenes first, yet in the story they arrive last. This meant restricting what we saw of the main characters played by Patrick and Thảo at the end of the scene because at this point they weren’t covered in goo and muck. I couldn’t apply the SFX beforehand because of time and resources. We picked up their reaction shots at the end of the shoot once the combat soldiers had gone and they had finished their sticky kissing scene. Then came the kiss also known as the ‘alien sex scene.’ There were many takes of the first part which was just saliva and sweat based, then the actual sucking attack where the alien girl doesn’t let go of the guy and then there was meant to be a transformational part where her face changes before she vomits into the guys mouth which poisons and disables him. I really wanted to get the vomiting kiss right but it was very unpleasant for the actors. I spooned as much of the alien vomit into each of their mouths as I felt was suitable. The idea was they would latch lips so you couldn’t see that there was evidence of vomit in their mouths, so it would continue from the saliva kiss, then suddenly she would project vomit mixture into his mouth. Kind of like when a Nemertea ribbon worm captures its prey with their proboscises/secretion which can appear to be quite sexual. Kissing is also very arousing, the shapes you can make with lips, how you can control them to your own erogenous pleasure and equally make them a very dangerous tool for your lover. I could tell the actors weren’t too impressed by the end of the shoot and we went overtime. They were wet, covered in goo, vomit and exhausted. I just wanted to get the best out of the kiss under the very challenging circumstances. And we weren’t going to get another chance to do it again. It mustn’t have been pleasant for the actors but their chemistry and fear on screen is exactly what I was looking for. Their resilience has paid off because we do have a strange and trippy scene. After the kiss scene came the alien anatomy puppeteering.