Production
After producer Howard Gordon saw on 60 Minutes episode about the American secret agents the CIA left behind during the Vietnam War, he was intrigued and decided to develop a future script based around this. Howard was scheduled to only write one episode of the season, the nineteenth entry "Synchrony". However, Gordon met with Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz the day before the holiday break to pitch his idea. After getting frustrated developing the episode's plot summary, Gordon requested for Carter's help in exchange for a shared writing credit. Gordon then wrote the script during the break.
Gordon had been considering a man that turned invisible in the political and metaphorical sense for a while, but he still needed a way for physical invisibility. The eventual concept came after the writer spoke with his ophthalmologist brother, who told about blind spots regarding malfunctioning retinal spots or optic nerves, which do not impair humans due to a brain compensation. Gordon noted, "these stories come from scientific research ... So I said, what if someone could actually create a field of vision where none actually exists?" Gordon decided to use a Vietnam War veteran given "they are getting old, and like the Holocaust survivor of 'Kaddish', starting to die", and the opportunity would allow a larger role for Skinner. General MacDougal was named after the show's editor, Heather MacDougall.
The episode featured a finished replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that was first featured in an incomplete state during "Never Again". The replica was first put on Vancouver's Jericho Park due to the locale's "expansive, groomed, flat" characteristics. Only portions of the wall were real, whereas the rest were created via computer generated imagery (CGI). Day scenes at the monument were shot at Jericho Park, whereas night scenes took place at Ballantyne Pier, which was a large warehouse. The grandstand that had been assembled at Jericho Park was dismantled and reassembled in the warehouse. The replica had fake names created by the sister of art assistant Kristina Lyne due to legal reasons, which included names of The X-Files cast and crew. In addition, two of them, "Jesse R. Ellison" and "Harlan L. Hahn", referenced noted writer Harlan Ellison and model Jessica Hahn. The crowd for the memorial's reinauguration scene, which at times was duplicated through CGI, consisted of 500 extras, fifty of which won the opportunity to appear on the show in local radio contests.
A civilian underpass in Stanley Park doubled as Freedom Plaza. During the filming in the park, several public photographers sought out Anderson. Because of a stipulation of filming in parks, the police cannot deny anyone access. To compensate for this, many of the available crew and production staff members formed a "human blockade" to prevent the paparazzi from disturbing the shots. The terminal for the Canada Place waterfront building served as a stand-in for the interior of the Pentagon.
Read more about this topic: Unrequited (The X-Files)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)