Philippe Mora's adaptation of the Whitley Strieber novel had its special effects realized by Michael McCracken; working under him was his son Michael Shawn McCracken, Jeff Kennemore, Jim McPherson, Karen Mason, Steve Frakes and Joe Podnar. Whitley Strieber was involved heavily on the production, and insisted the special effects team be as accurate to his supposedly true experiences. The 'mantis aliens' that may or may not have been real even in the film's narrative, were realized as latex masks.
As for the 'visitors' that haunted Strieber, the 'little blue doctors' were realized as little people wearing large masks with mechanisms allowing the brows to move. McCracken designed the little blue doctors to not be as expressive as a human; 'They move in an odd way, their face (...) has a gravity feeling, they have kind of a grim quality about them'. Past the 'hero' masks with facial movement mechanisms, several static masks were also created for the background aliens. The performers had to stay in the padded bulky suits for up to twelve hours!
When realizing the 'Grey' visitors, McCracken closely followed Ted Seth Jacobs's illustration for the original novel. It wasn't possible to have the slender beings played by a human actor, so McCracken resorted to puppetry. McCracken did the main Grey sculpture, with his son Michael Shawn McCracken doing the fibreglass casting and paint job. The Grey puppets were held on wires, giving them the appearance of floating. The Grey that takes its face off to reveal a more reptilian creature was also a puppet, presumably hand-held to let the creatures snout twitch.
McCracken's team noticed strange tics from Strieber on-set; when seeing the Grey puppets, according to McCracken, 'It was like he face went white (...) It took him the rest of the day to recover from this. There was a kind of trauma, even from the reproduction of the (alien) figure'. According to McCracken's son in an Instagram post, Strieber also made the FX crew keep all the windows covered to keep out alien visitors!
The Grey puppets would eventually be reused (or possibly resculpted) for a PSA filmed in 1997,
according to Michael Shawn McCracken on his Instagram,
'Matthew Mungle, Jamie Kelman and me at Sony / MGM studio circa 1997 shooting a PSA. The Director requested “Classic Aliens” so we provided them with 3 Communion type Aliens. We shot this on Stage 26 where previously The Wizard of Oz had been filmed. Specifically the sequence in the corn field with the Tin Man the Apple Tree and the Yellow Brick road were shot in 1939.'
Sources:
- Encounters of the Fourth Kind: A Report on Communion (1989 Documentary)
