Archived from the Eat The Corn Facebook page.
Jul 25, 2023 16:50
Another excellent details-filled #TheXFiles interview by @[195561691234370:274:Sammensværgelsen – en dansk X-Files podcast] with an important behind the scenes person, David Gauthier — the mechanical special effects supervisor (i.e., practical on-set stuff, not visual/digital effects) for the first five years in Vancouver and again for the second film.
Episodes mentioned:
- early episodes: use of punctured tubes made of plastic bags and smoke machines in the forest, this made the defining look of the show!
- the move from very small studios in the first six episode to Fox’s North Shore Vancouver studios and eventually occupying all of that
- again, how Chris Carter controlled everything and how great it was to work with him + how amazing all the writers were, and Rob Bowman, Dan Sackheim, David Nutter
- “Ice”: freezing and reanimating meal worms
- “Fire”: dealing with fire on set
- “The Host”: how they shot the Flukeman inside the sewage pipes, and in a sewage plant
- “Exelsis Dei”: the flooded hospital room scene
- “End Game”: truckloads of ice for the submarine conning tower scene
- “Soft Light”: meeting Vince Gilligan
- “Paper Clip”: sizes of light trusses for the UFO scene
- “DPO”: lightning made out of steel meshes and lights
- “731”: making a memorabilia out of an old bell from the train wagon they used
- “Piper Maru”: getting the newtsuit from a diving company next door to the studios, effect of the black oil in the eye (of course, the French diver was named after him)
- “Home”: Kim Manners saying he’d never find work again after shooting the teaser
- “Terma”: complexities of the oil well explosion
- “Tempus Fugit/Max”: getting the script ahead of time, constructing the plane, mechanics of the abduction scene, scuba diving with DD
- “Zero Sum”: use of painted pop corn for the bees flying inside a room
- “Gethsemane”: real snow and freezing temperatures in a warehouse for the Yukon camping scenes
- “Kill Switch”: trailer explosion, robots design inspired by NASA
- “Patient X/The Red and the Black”: UFO crash, setting people on fire
- “Folie à Deux”: how the man in suit approach didn’t work
- “I Want to Believe”: shooting Mulder’s car crash in the snow, using fake ice for the surgery scenes
- not involved in the revival, it wouldn’t have been the same after all these years
https://sammensvaergelsen.libsyn.com/website/interview-david-gauthier-special-effects
Jul 30, 2023 16:09
15 years already since the release of the second #TheXFiles film, “I Want To Believe”! The show is 30 years old, and it’s hard to believe that as much time has passed between the pilot and IWTB as between IWTB and today… My opinion on that film has not changed much since, there are certainly many things I appreciate — such as the Millenniumistic photography, the Frankenstein aspects of the story, some mythic elements (descent to the underworld), Mark Snow’s music — but the whole thing doesn’t gel. It would have been fine if TXF had made one film every couple of years or so, but as an attempt to relaunch the brand it didn’t meet expectations. Not horrible, not a masterpiece.
Still, I have good memories of winning tickets to the premiere via Spotnitz’s Big Light, attending the July 30 premiere in London, interacting with many fans there from all over Europe, seeing CC/FS/DD/GA up close — and listening to this blockbuster-like remix of the main theme by UNKLE, over and over again while waiting to get in the theatre! (In the meet and greet, CC was asking if somebody from UNKLE was in the audience, I don’t know if they found each other or not.) Let’s celebrate “XF2”!
Aug 05, 2023 13:23
#TheXFiles 1997 soundtrack Songs in the Key of X is out in vinyl!
Aug 09, 2023 21:49
Here’s a new and different #TheXFiles podcast, “Fandom X Archive”, dedicated on chronicling the early days of the XF fandom! A deep dive in the early to mid 1990s, with alt.tv.x-files newsgroups and the like… I love such academic/fannish stuff, somewhat due to nostalgia! In part, I developed Eat the Corn’s interview database as an archival resource to support such endeavours.
https://aliensupersoldier.com/?p=1839
Aug 18, 2023 18:02
One thing I like in #TheXFiles is the cinematic atmosphere, and this is what these little “no context” videos provide: short clips from episodes not focused on the actors but on these moments between when the plot happens, a still camera fade in or a moving crane shot, when we linger on a setting, a forest, an object, a mood…
Season 4:
Full playlist with seasons 1-7: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ5SdDogH5i2ly4Vrzll6XZTmQji0CNsb
Aug 24, 2023 14:40
#aphextwin’s ambient electronic track “Windowsill” sounds…quite a bit like #TheXFiles main theme. And sure enough I checked, this track was released some 6 months after the TXF pilot aired, in March 1994!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selected_Ambient_Works_Volume_II
Aug 29, 2023 23:07
Before #TheXFiles there was the #twilightzone! @[100057694884330:2048:Frank Spotnitz] talked to the @[100064733644766:2048:Rod Serling Memorial Foundation] about how TZ was a big influence on TXF and on pretty much anything on television in the past 60 years, and how we should celebrate Serling’s unique brand of humanistic storytelling. Interview runs from 2:06:50 to 2:51:50. What’s *your* favourite TZ episode? (And yes I’m pretty sure it was not the Dusky Realm.)
https://www.facebook.com/RSMemorialFoundation/videos/3499712833614340
Sep 01, 2023 19:56
A new interview with Dan Sackheim by @[195561691234370:274:Sammensværgelsen – en dansk X-Files podcast]! He was a producer and director at key moments of #TheXFiles: he helped set the tone of the show from the very beginning and he produced the first movie. He is quite candid and you can hear his love and respect for Carter and the show. Highlights:
Launching TXF:
- Carter was playing softball with Michael Duggan [later a writer/producer in Millennium s3], Duggan set up a meeting for Carter to first meet Sackheim.
- Carter was convinced to hire Sackheim when he referred to Errol Morris’ documentary “The Thin Blue Line”, which had inspired Carter when he was thinking of the visual identity of the show.
- Carter was concerned that the director of the pilot episode was not creative enough, he wanted a producer with a sense of visual acumen.
- Sackheim remembers that during the shooting of the pilot, a key grip fell into a grave hole and broke his leg.
- Shooting Deep Throat, Conduit, The Host (which he finds silly)…
- Learning from Carter the importance of visual storytelling, the importance of telling a story from a point of view.
Fight the Future:
- He read the script on Carter’s computer when Carter was trying to convince him to produce it, he accepted in exchange of him and Carter developing Harsh Realm!
- It was the first movie he was producing, he doesn’t know why Carter chose him! He learnt on the spot, made mistakes.
- Only 8 weeks of prep was very challenging.
- Memories from shooting FTF: David frustrated at Martin Landau missing his lines during the alley scene, using fake ice, improvising with the prosthetics of the aliens, shooting inserts with the second unit, David frustrated shooting the scenes with the bees (“the bees have a better union than I do!”), they ended up using CGI bees and could have done shooting without real bees (!), the ice stage was under hot lights and the ice was melting, there were negotiations with the “Independence Day” producers to allow to show Mulder peeing below the poster, they nicknamed the Antarctica base “Ice Station Zebra” [after the 1960s espionage thriller].
- There were conversations that if there was going to be a sequel then he might direct it.
TXF s5+ and Harsh Realm:
- In early seasons things were malleable, by the time he returned in s5 things were very fixed.
- Shooting Kitsunegari, SR819 (having to play marriage therapist between Mitch and Arlene!)…
- He spent a lot of time in the editing room during s6-7 and for #Millennium and #HarshRealm. [He also directed the excellent MM episode Closure]
- He recut IWTB with Carter, Spotnitz and the editor, it was a small budget. [He is uncredited, first time I hear of this!]
- He was asked to join the revival, but didn’t want to do what he had already done.
- A change in the Fox network hierarchy resulted in Harsh Realm being cancelled.
- In 2013, he, Carter and Spotnitz discussed rebooting Harsh Realm (!) — it would have been a different show, but they couldn’t agree on a common vision, on how to make the virtual stakes real. [This is the first I hear of this, and I would have loved it if this would have been made!…]
https://sammensvaergelsen.libsyn.com/website/interview-dan-sackheim
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