A rare interview with Corey Kaplan thanks to The X-Files Preservation Collection / The X-Files Museum! She was The X-Files’ production designer for the Los Angeles years (s6-9), an important member of the production team. I liked what she had to say about how productions today differs from how it was in the past. Some highlights:

It’s all about collaboration. With the dark look of the show, she had to work a lot with the Director of Photography Bill Roe. Unlike most production designers who are usually architects, her background was in art and photography. She lived the transition from shooting with film to shooting with high-definition digital cameras. With those, everything is very vivid, you see too much into the shadows. Between that and the overload of digital special effects, everything looks cartoonish now (like the Marvel shows).

Before TXF, she was doing art films and low budget horror comedy films, so she had some experience in filmmaking. When she got interviewed for TXF, she was doing a skateboard movie (“Brink!”), she brought the skateboard with her, and Carter’s office was filled with surfboards! Carter and company were all wearing casual clothes, sitting on the floor, eating snacks, they matched immediately. Kim Manners was the first person she met. Often mentions working with Bernadette (Bernie) Caulfield (s6-7 producer).

It was a tough job, 7 days a week for 4 years. Many relationships did not survive, including hers.

“The Beginning”: she remembers the script had Gibson swim in the nuclear reactor, shed his skin and become an alien [probably misremembers]. The metal armature of the nuclear power plant that they built for this first episode was huge, it was re-used throughout the 4 seasons (as Mulder’s basement [?], containment centre, control centre [possibly Mount Weather in “The Truth”?], …)

Carter asked her “what’s your dream job?”, she liked a mansion in Lake O(?), Carter wrote “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas” around that, and they had to build that set in 8 days!

She had to cut short her Thanksgiving holidays after reading the script for “Agua Mala” and going back to work to build the sets for flooding.

Also mentions the cow coming through the roof in “The Rain King”, the Hopi ruins in “The Truth”.

She felt included and heard, unlike in modern shows, the art department was contributing actively, not executing orders. In production meetings with the 18 heads of department the assistant director would start with her. “Chris [Carter] writes for what you give him”, he’d tell them to scout LA and find interesting things to use in scripts. She remembers Kim Manners preparing and planning the day’s shots in detail, it’s not done that way anymore.