While found-footage may be a dying subgenre, it’s also still a unique storytelling tool that I hope to see integrated more often into the traditional perspective.
Even though we won’t actually see this footage in Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant, Twentieth Century Fox has released this supplemental found-footage component that straps on a GoPro (our weapon of choice in making most of the V/H/S segments) and takes us directly onto the Covenant with Daniels (Katherine Waterston) as she sends a video message to her father as the crew embark on their mission. We’ve also just added a second video in which we also get to see Oram’s frightening crew transmission from Weyland-Yutani Corp’s mission. While the footage is not from the film, it was shot during production on set. All of the planet/extra footage was pulled from main unit’s GoPro camera dailies, we’re told, and most of that will not appear in the film. They’re basically a visceral first-person POV of different moments one will experience in the film. Expect even more leading up to the release…
“The cameras were mounted on the crew backpacks and positioned throughout the main colony ship and its lander unit, giving audiences an Alien perspective they’ve never experienced before,” explains the GoPro website. “GoPro, 20th Century Fox, and creative agency 3AM, partnered to create a series of original in-world crew messages to extend the narrative of Alien: Covenant. Each video highlights a different crewmember as they record a farewell message for their friends and loved ones back on Earth.”
It’s awesome, giving us a taste of what it would be like to actually be part of the crew as they find this new planet, and come across alien technology (such an Engineer suits) and landscapes. It looks like it would be one helluva found-footage movie and I wish it were actually integrated into Alien: Covenant. But alas, it’s not, even though it does actually hark back to James Cameron’s Aliens in which we actually got to see helmet cam footage from the marine’s perspective.
Would you guys like to see this footage actually in the movie?
