Joe Alves created the storyboards for John Carpenter’s “Escape from New York”
Joe Alves is an amazing artist and the Production Designer of JAWS, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Escape from New York. He famously designed the 3 mechanical sharks for JAWS and won the BAFTA for Art Direction on Close Encounters both for Steven Spielberg. In this post, I want to share the brilliant storyboards he created for John Carpenter’s Escape from New York.
It’s amazing how close the final film matches his elaborate storyboards. Through the use of miniatures and matte paintings, this scene of Snake Plissken landing a glider on the World Trade Center stands out as an eye-catching set piece that hurtles the story into full throttle. Joe’s well-designed visual storytelling tools fused the worlds of pre-production and principal photography. These storyboards allowed all the departments to get on the same page and prepare the individual components needed for a successful shoot.
Here’s my 2-minute video of Joe’s storyboards presented against the final film images we see in Escape from New York:
To see more of Joe Alves’ storyboards from Escape from New York and JAWS…check out his WEBSITE.
Until next time…
