Production
It took two years to finish the set building and the writing on the script before shooting could finally take place. During the shooting the appearance of the "aged" characters was a well-guarded secret. Their look was created using state of the art make-up techniques. Michael J. Fox describes the process as very time consuming, "it took over four hours although it could be worse". Principal photography began on February 20, 1989. For a three week period nearing the conclusion of Part II, the crew split and while most remained shooting Part III a few, including writer-producer Gale focused on finishing its predecessor. Zemeckis himself slept only a few hours per day supervising both films, having to fly between Burbank, where Part II was being finished, and the California locations of Part III.
The film was also considered one of the most ground-breaking projects for Industrial Light & Magic. It was one of the effects house's first forays into digital compositing, as well as the VistaGlide motion control camera system, which enabled them to shoot one of the film's most complex sequences, in which Michael J. Fox played three separate characters, all of whom interacted with each other. Although such scenes were not new, the VistaGlide allowed, for the first time, a completely dynamic scene in which camera movement could finally be incorporated. The technique was also used in scenes where Thomas F. Wilson's character (Biff Tannen) had to interact with a younger version of himself.
As the film neared release, sufficient footage of Back to the Future Part III had been shot to allow a trailer to be assembled. It was therefore added at the conclusion of the Part II narrative, before the end credits, as a reassurance to moviegoers that there was more to come.
Read more about this topic: Back To The Future Part II
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“Just as modern mass production requires the standardization of commodities, so the social process requires standardization of man, and this standardization is called equality.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)
“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally to be nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)