Hi, this is Kim Manners and I directed this episode of the X-Files called Existence.
I love dripping water, I don't know if all the fans will notice but I use dripping water at lot in my episodes, I think it creates great mood. This is part two of a two-parter. In this box is Billy Miles' body, who fell off a building into a garbage truck where he was ground to pieces and this is his body.
This vertebra which was really completely all CGI, we took the one vertebra and we put it on a drill motor and spun it a couple of times to give them a reference plate and then he painted in all the rest of it, really well done. John Wash is a terrific visual effects guy. He and Mat Beck both, and they've done some great work, but this is really one great gag coming up. Yup, there's all that's left of Billy Miles.
We had to set this just so, because the effect that we had to create, so that actor had to set that vertebra down just so and just in exactly the right spot for the rest of the effect to work, because now we had to hook it up to a drill motor and we only had one spot we could do that. They actually had a drill motor underneath the table which would spin the vertebra, so it had to be set on its side like that.
And it is totally seamless, we just did the camera move and John Wash did all the rest, all we did was do a camera move on basically nothing there and he painted in the rest of it. It was interesting now just watching it, because we had to set that thing down just so, yet as it started to spin it stood up so the element that we shot for John he never even used, he just used it as a reference.
I shot these, that's David doing his own descender, we dropped him out of the grids on stage eleven, I believe. We had him up 36 feet in the air on a wire and dropped him backwards, he was a real trouper about it because there was no fall beds underneath him, he was on what they call a descender which has got a brake that stops him just before he hits the floor.
This was shot up on Cainan Road in Malibu. I don't know what state we're supposed to be in here, I think Georgia somewhere.
The girls are being towed here on what they call an insert car, they're not driving at all. As a matter of fact, they can't touch the wheel because if they turn the wheel it'll cross up the car. The whole crew is on the insert car, myself, I've got video monitors so I can see what the cameras are seeing, the cinematographer's on there, the script supervisor, camera, assistants, we're all riding on the back of a wide-open pickup truck type thing.
This scene was shot with one camera, we did overs and then singles, so you couldn't put two cameras side-by-side, but oftentimes we'll shoot a scene like, we'll go, say, over Scully to Monica Reyes which would be a raking two-shot, then we might put a B camera on the hood and get a single of Monica at the same time. This scene, however, wasn't shot that way.
This the kind of shot I like to do, I don't like to shoot masters so I'd rather give the audience a geography shot which will do some pass-offs and hand-offs like that, we racked from Skinner to Doggett and panned over to Mulder, which sells the audience where everybody is in the room without having to do a shot like this which is called a master.
Krycek trying to tell them here all along about these super soldiers, he holds all the cards in this scene.
Agent Crane, who's actually a supersoldier, at this point we don't know that.
This is at Fox on stage 5, this is Skinner's office. There's Knowle Rohrer, also a supersoldier.
Now this was shot out at Paramount, the old Paramount ranch. This was originally written to be a farmhouse, the girls were supposed to drive to a farmhouse and we were going to play it, all of this sequence in one house. And I went to Chris and I said: you know, I'd really rather play this in an environment, there's so much work to be done here, and he said: what are you thinking? I said: well, there's an old western town out at Paramount ranch, and he said: a western town? How are we going to justify that for the story? Sure enough, we called it Rock something, I don't recall what we called the name of the town here, but we just called it an abandoned ghost town and it had a natural spring in it and the spring went dry, that's how we justified this. But at least I had an opportunity to play in an environment which spread my scenes out so that they're much scarier than just in one house, one farm.
And I love the way this photographed, we used a real, not steel blue, I can't remember, Billy Roe would know, but there's a very unusual kind of a white-blue that almost makes these buildings in the background photograph black-and-white.
All the detail here in the set, all the spider webs, that the effects department blew in.
She's very, very good at cleaning, and which you'll come to see here. Before she was an FBI agent she worked for Molly Maids I think.
And she's going to go outside and have a cigarette, there she goes, sneaking a smoke.
That star has great significance. I don't know if anybody picked up on this when they first saw this episode, but that would be akin to the star of Bethlehem.
I believe that this is the first time that Agent Doggett gets the information about the super soldiers and the secret government project to build a super solder. And of course it's all a lie coming from Knowle Rohrer because he in fact is a super soldier. I miss working with the syndicate, they were great, great guys, the actors themselves were wonderful. I miss John Neville and the scenes with Bill Davis and John Neville, and we had an actor Don, I can't think of Don's last name, but a big gentleman. The syndicate office was always such a rich environment. Rob Bowman and I decided that, actually Rob set the style for the syndicate, but big faces in the foreground and then shadowy figures in the background, it was a real style choice and it really worked well for a lot of those guys, it made them all look very powerful because they were so mysterious, you really never got a good look at them.
They were a sinister bunch, no doubt about it. That's the one thing when we moved the show from Vancouver to Los Angeles, the syndicate had took on a completely different look. We shot with them only a couple of times but we never could capture the great character faces that we had in Vancouver, we could never capture that here in L.A.
Krycek here sets up Skinner pretty bad. He's going to leave him for Billy Miles. This was a very tough stunt that's just coming up here. We've got Mitch in the elevator and this was a steel arm that comes through and just misses Mitch's head. It looked like it hit him but it was solid steel that if Mitch would have lean to his left two inches he could have been killed. That was a very difficult stunt right there.
There was a great bit of joking the day we shot that scene, about the feminine napkin that Skinner was wearing on his forehead. (laughs) He took a lot of razzing.
That's another thing that I always marvel about when I look at these episodes. Here we have David Duchovny with stitches. If we played an episode where we collectively saw the scars of all of their wounds over the nine years, these guys would look like the elephant man. They sure heal good, don't they?
Robert's got a great face for the camera. The camera loves photographing Robert and Gillian. You can't put the wrong lens in their face.
Here we go, the housecleaning scene. Well, you have to have a proper place to have a baby, now don't you?
And this is the whale-song scene. This is Annabeth now is going to sing whale songs, and she suffered a lot of razzing doing this, too. I told her that if this acting thing doesn't work out she could always get work as a marine biologist. We actually got a tape of whale songs and we gave it to Annabeth and she thought we were crazy, and I said, no, coming up in the next episode you have to do some whale songs, so she took the tape home and she listened to it, and I have to give it to her, she was a trouper, she really did do her best to recreate the sounds of a whale, and it was embarrassing for her, because there she is, standing in front of the whole crew, sounding like a fool, or making a fool of herself, but that's what acting is all about, I guess.
Annabeth hadn't worked much with guns before this television series. We actually got her with a retired LAPD guns expert and he took her out to the range where she fired live ammunition so she knew what it was like because she didn't know how to hold a gun and when she was firing blanks she'd squint and flinch, so we had to give her special gun training.
Now this was shot with a 10mm lens, this craneshot coming up. Right here.
Bang! That car missed the lens by about six inches, that's a 10mm lens and the stunt girl stepped out of the way at the last second. We armed out of the sky and right into the grill there, but that car was tied off, with what we call a dead man, it had a cable going from the rear axle to a gravel truck that's parked up around the corner, and some shivs, so it could only go so far, but it kept stretching that cable and I was praying to god we didn't hit that lens because it would cost probable sixty thousand dollars if we hit the camera, at least.
This is the perfect scene that redefines the words 'trust no one', this woman is actually an alien. You just don't know who to trust on the X-Files.
This is the underground garage of the FBI headquarters, this was shot in Century City, right across the street from the studio here at Fox, and this is kind of an interesting story because the entire end of this movie was my idea, because it was originally written as a foot chase inside the hallways of the FBI between Knowle Rohrer and Agent Crane and Agent Doggett and A.D. Skinner, and when I read it I said: you know, guys, this is a little Keystone Cops, I said: why don't we do a big car chase, and Chris liked the idea and we worked kind of together on designing what you'll eventually see here at the end is I think a pretty spectacular car chase and it's pretty spectacular stuntwork done by the actors themselves and some great special effects explosions. It made it much more exciting, then a cut with the birth of the baby than a footchase down halls and staircases. This show really was a work in progress, as we were shooting it we were still writing it and it was actually very exciting because it was really working from the hip. I think Chris and I were kind of working together to make it as good as we could make it, and just continuously work on it while we shooting it, so there wasn't a lot of prep time involved, but I think we came up with the best product possible.
[Doggett recognizes Knowle Rohrer. Back with Scully and Reyes.]
This was David's swan song with the show, this was his last episode. He had only done, I think, six episodes in season eight. This was his last one and he wasn't coming back at the end. I'll tell an interesting story about David and Gillian's last kiss.
[Reyes says something feels off. She goes to get more water.]
I've got a real tough stunt here, coming up, called a ratchet. The stunt girl, her name is Laura Albert, right there, and she's literally on a cable that's pulled pneumatically, and she's flying probably about thirty miles an hour. And originally she was going to hit the wall of that barn and I just couldn't let her do it, she was travelling too fast, so I had her hit some fall beds and if you'll notice I cut out from Laura flying to Annabeth, hitting the wall, and Annabeth came from behind camera and just threw herself into the wall with some back pads on and then slid down, but it was still Annabeth really sold that, it was a painful little thing to do.
And this was not easy. (laughs) We drug this poor guy over and over and over again, and the girls were getting tired.
To get a shot like this over a guy laying on the ground up to Annabeth, we actually put him on apple boxes and half a sheet of plywood and elevated him up off the ground and then used what we call a prism, which is a 45 degree mirror, we can get underneath his head, but he's actually a foot off the ground and when Annabeth kneels down to him you can't tell the difference, that he's a foot off the ground and she isn't. I don't know why that is but I thank god it works.
[Scully feels a contraction.]
Now there's a lot of cool stuff in this episode. I think the killing of Krycek is one of the best scenes I've seen in a long time on television.
This was shot down town, that staircase was shot down town, the day that we did the rooftop. A 360-degree come-around with the steadicam. We lit the whole set.
This is back on stage, stage 5, this is the FBI hallways.
This is Doggett, he's eavesdropping here on a late-night meeting between Agent Crane and, for those of you in the audience that don't know who he's been talking to, he's been talking to Deputy Director Kersh, who's all part of this as well, or so we're led to believe in this episode.
This was all shot in the same hallway, we just changed the set dressing around so you think you're in different hallways, but it's all the same hall.
Now we've got a gag coming up here, where this piece of glass next to David is going to explode, and we actually broke the glass but there's a piece of Lexan between David and the real glass that protects him from the real flying glass, we had a mortar inside with rubber glass that we'd blow on him, so it's a two-part effect.
This is one of my favorite scenes I've ever directed - killing of Krycek. Nick Lea is such a great actor and he and David together worked really well together, and I just love the way they played this scene.
Mark Snow, he added so many wonderful layers to an episode of the X-Files, I don't have any input but Mark is a man who understands not only the series but he understands the film and storytelling, and he can do things with his music that make an hour of my film, you know, ten times better, I mean he just, he brings the finishing magic to an hour of television. He's a very talented man, this show would be nothing without him. He does his music at his home, it's all electronic.
This was my idea, to kill Alex with a CGI bullet. I thought it was important moment, we're taking out one of our main and most notable villains here, and I wanted to set it aside from just shooting a man in the head, so we went ahead and spent the money and CGI'd this bullet tracking right toward camera. It was an expensive shot but I think that was really well worth it. I think this was a very impactful moment.
Right here, boom.
I love the way Mulder walks away from him here. Oh well, Krycek's dead, OK, moving along, moving right along.
[Scully in labor.]
I joked around with Gillian a lot during this whole pregnancy arc. I'd say to her: ok, Gillian, in this scene you're pregnant and (laughs) and she has a great laugh.
Now the fun begins. This portion of this was shot on the stage. They're going to run into a door, now watch, he's got a gun in his hand. And he enters the staircase. Now watch what happens on the staircase. Doggett has no gun in his hand. This was shot down town, no gun. Oh, there's Crane, now he's headed off at the pass, and you come back out, and he's got his gun. Watch, you'll see it in his hand, there it is. Just a little bit of a continuity mistake, but you never would have seen it unless I told you it was there.
This shot you're about to see, when Annabeth throws the water in the Ranger's face, that water actually hits the lens but you don't see it on the lens because we used what we call a spray-deflector, and it's a wheel that's spinning in front of the lens at I don't know how many revolutions per minute, and it keeps the water from hitting the lens, you can't tell that she's just the thrown the water right in the lens. One of Cheri Metcalfe's amazing make-ups.
Now Monica's having a really bad day because Billy Miles is not dead. No sense playing with that shotgun anymore, uh, Monica?
This is shot again in Century City. We had to be very careful because there's a car about to come up here and you'll notice that the cement over the car is very low, and the stuntman had to get up and up on top of the car. You see how low that cement is, he had to get up on top there without us killing him.
And that stuntman actually stuck that, he landed on top of the car, we hit him about twelve miles an hour. Again, this is the same gag that, real glass that we break at Robert but he's protected by Lexan and we blow a charge of rubber glass on him at the same time that the other window breaks.
This was a very difficult scene for Gillian and Annabeth, for all of us.
This is actually the actor who's strapped onto the car, he's tied on to the car and he's doing about forty, forty-five miles an hour. This was shot off an insert car. We're doing, oh, probably forty-five miles an hour. Now this of course is a dummy. (laughs) Ooh, that has to hurt.
This explosion was shot just as the sun was coming up outside. We barely got that off. You can see the sky's lighter there. We shot in that garage for four days and it was a tough four days because we were breathing carbon monoxide constantly.
[The baby is born.]
These people are all aliens or super soldiers, if you will. They're all human replacements watching the birth of Scully's baby.
[Mulder arrives in a helicopter.]
This shot was shot from a crane. I had a crane clear up in the air and I actually brought the chopper over the crane and then arm down with it.
This is a state park, that helicopter couldn't touch down on the ground, so that's why it hovered and the stuntman crawled out of it. You'll notice it's still hovering, it's not touching the ground. For some reason, state parks in the state of California will not let a helicopter land on their soil, but we could hover like that. See, it's still off the ground. As long as it didn't touch down, we were OK, but it could hover. Kind of a strange law.
[Doggett and Kersh.]
This scene is actually the birth of season nine, this was the birth of the new series without David Duchovny, and I tried to set it up with a real nice two-shot of Annabeth and Robert, at the time we felt they were going to be carrying the flame here for us in season nine, which they did. But it's a real series-launching, two-shot at the end of the scene here.
Here it is, this is the new series shot right here.
I don't know how many of the fans notice this when they watch this show, but if you think of the three Wise Men, there they are. Come to bear gifts.
This the scene the fans waited eight years for. This baby right here belongs to one of our co-executive producers at the time, or executive producer now, John Shiban. This is his brand-new baby, his name is Jerry. Only a few days old and John Shiban's already got his son working for a living. Got his own trailer. (laughs) Probably have his own series in another year.
It was interesting because we established Jerry as William Mulder here in this scene, and when we came back for season nine, Jerry was a monster, so we couldn't use him, so we had to cast children, new babies, that looked like Jerry. Well, try doing that, it's not true, all babies don't look alike.
This was David and Gillian's last scene together. We shot it on the last day of the picture. And as they come together to kiss, you'll see the camera will pull out of the door, that was the last shot of David and Gillian together, and we wrapped. And David and Gillian stood in that room together alone, and held each other for a good five minutes, they didn't talk, they didn't move, they just held each other, and tears were running down their faces, it was a very touching moment, one I'll never forget.
I think we got the kiss in one take.
Thank you.