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Hi, I'm Kim Manners, and I directed this episode, called "IVIilagro"
This first shot here introduces Jonathan Hawkes.
We brought a big crane in.
We pulled the roof off the set,
craned down into the...
Our character here, at this typewriter, staring intently.
I wanted to tell the story, basically, in a series of images.
That's why all the quick cutting.
This is a lock-off that we did, and we cross-faded.
You lock off your camera, and just let the actor meander, and you cross-fade.
It's a great way to tell the passage of time.
The light change there that Billy Roe did.
The sun has gone down, now we're into the evening.
The camera's still locked, it hasn't moved.
I think this scene here kind of foreshadows what this story is ultimately about,
which is a man who has no love in his heart, only evil.
And at the end of this episode he'll make the ultimate sacrifice
by killing himself to prove that he does have love in his heart.
That was tough to pull off,
where we pulled his heart out of his chest,
because we had to put this rubber heart in there,
and hide it, and make it look believable.
Thats why we started the blood through the shirt.
It helped hide the fact that we were doing a little sleight of hand there.
This set was built in our "red-blue room"_
This set was originally built for a show called "The Beginning", the opening of season six.
We've used this set over and over and over again, I think it's been 28 different things.
There's our heart, burning in the fire. That was done with certain elements.
We put a real heart in there - or a phoney heart, I should say.
And then John Wash had to recreate it through CGI,
because the phoney heart was just for a line-up.
We couldn't put the fire on it, cos it would melt the heart.
This is when our character first meets Scully.
Obviously becomes quite infatuated with her.
That shot there, you can't shoot a shot that tight in TV. That was shot with a...
What they call a 45, a slant 45-millimetre lens
with a time-and-a-half extender, so they can get that tight.
Because of the television format, you can't get that tight with normal lenses.
This scene was a little tough for Gillian to pull off, because,
as scary as this might be for some reason, she somehow finds that,
rather, there was something dangerously exciting about that encounter.
Now, this is a series of murders that they're investigating,
that are allegedly created by the main character of this man's books.
Jonathan Hawkes played this character - I don't remember the character's name.
I love this script. I love the author,
who was living vicariously through his main character, a killer in his book.
Now he's become infatuated with Scully here, and...
Now he'll write to this, and some of it comes true,
that the character actually meets Scully, and so does he.
I just thought it was kind of a very interesting character study.
And I chose to shoot it very simply.
I didn't put a lot of razzle-dazzle in the camera work or anything.
I just tried to let the characters carry it.
This is source lighting through the window. Nothing but moonlight through a window.
Probably a little negative fill here on his left side,
to just get some half-light on his face.
We used a jib arm, because if you notice,
the camera came from profile, right over the top of him.
This was shot up at Griffith Park.
There's a very small forest up there, and probably the only pine trees in Los Angeles.
It's in one isolated spot in Griffith Park, so that's where we went to shoot this.
And this is the character in the book. This is played by Nestor Serrano.
This is what intrigued me about this script, you never know if this character is real,
or how he escapes the pages of the book.
I thought it was very interesting.
That was shot on a 20omm lens to throw the lights of LA out of focus in the background,
cos I did not want to know we were in LA.
We created this - all these bushes, we brought in,
because there was no foliage up at Griffith Park this thick.
It was all brought in off a truck, all these bushes.
That beating heart was being beaten by a man with a hose and a pump. (laughs)
And that's our lead character again, just finishing typing
that chapter of the book which just took place.
We have a library of establishing shots
for, um, especially the Hoover Building in Washington,
and a number of establishing shots of Washington itself.
So we, unfortunately, have used many of them over and over and over again.
I think, about three years ago, we sent out Paul Rabwin
and a group of Washingtonian filmmakers to shoot us a new batch,
because the old ones were getting recycled too often.
It's interesting to watch these older episodes
and see David and Gillian, the different looks they had.
Gillian's hair is short, so short here. And they're so much younger. (laughs)
Here again, Scully's captivated by this.
There's something very dangerous here that she finds very intriguing, very seductive.
I wanted to ramp to slow motion here,
and really study what she was...
The seductiveness of this.
And then cut over here to Jonathan Hawkes, and recreate basically the same move.
He's a very good actor.
I haven't seen him much, but he's a tremendous, tremendous talent.
He was perfect for this role.
This is one of my favourite episodes, actually, "IVlilagro".
This looks like it was shot at about 120 frames a second.
Now, film travels through a camera at 24 frames a second, which is normal speed.
So we shot it at 120 frames a second,
and then projected it at 24, so that's why you get your slow motion.
This prop was made over and over and over again, to get it right.
It was very difficult. A heart with a hand.
This church is in downtown... actually, it's not downtown.
It's down here, off of Olympic, I believe.
It's a beautiful, beautiful old church.
This is one of my favourite scenes in the movie.
This is Jonathan Hawkes' point of view of Scully entering this church.
I wanted to shoot this simply. Once they get there, the camera won't move.
We shot wide, medium and tight overs.
And we just let... again, just let the actors carry the scene.
But it's such beautiful backgrounds.
Now, this is their first encounter, and he Knows all about her.
He seems to know more about her than... And it's frightening her.
But at the same time, her fear is, again, very seductive.
This scene reminds me of the moth to the flame,
the moth's attraction to the flame.
This is terrific, a great example of a well-written scene.
Actors don't struggle with scenes like this when they're really well-written.
As I recall, we did three different sizes here, and I had to shoot them all with one camera.
I couldn't get two cameras in to get two sizes at the same time, it was just too crowded.
But as I recall, we didn't go many more
than maybe two or three takes for each one of these.
Because the material is so good, the actors just eat it up.
It's also easy for an actress like Gillian to work with an actor like Jonathan,
who does his homework, and is well prepared and is as talented as he is.
I mean, it really becomes a joy to watch two actors who really bounce off of each other.
They didn't improvise, but look at the tears in her eyes here. I mean, this is...
Nobody blew menthol crystals in her eyes.
She's listening to the actor here, and he's listening to her.
This is a real good example of two actors who are in the scene together,
and the reason they're in the scene is because they're listening to each other.
They're not listening for their cues, they're listening to what the other person is saying.
And that's why Gillian got so emotional there, because she was totally in the scene.
This is when acting is not acting. It's, you know... it's the real deal.
It's the real thing. Method acting is when you're... you're working it too hard.
You know, acting is a craft that... No one should ever catch another person acting.
If you're really a good actor, you shoulcln't make... it shoulcln't look like acting.
And that's what a scene like that was. It was two people who are really in the moment.
That's why this episode is really so special, because it's great actors
who are doing some very well-drawn characters.
Again, I wanted it... You wanna be in the character's head in an episode like this,
because, you know, it's not about the monster of the week, or anything like that.
So you wanna... Especially me, as a director, I love to shoot tight,
and get into their heads.
These close-ups right here, in this scene, are loose as far as I'm concerned.
I love to get into, you know, eyebrows and chin and...
And this was a scene that I call the Quinn Martin scene.
I start tight on the mailbox and pull back, and I had to do it over and over again,
so it didn't look like a 1970s TV shot.
But we finally got it to... Phillip Padgett, that's his name.
But we finally got it to pull back and fit, rather than look like a zoom, you know?
Here comes Phillip Padgett now.
It's a fake elevator, and there it is. It's on the lobby floor, and we shoot inside of it.
And at a point here, we're gonna have to move the whole elevator to the next floor,
so when the doors open you're someplace else.
They're walking down the hall of Mulder's apartment,
so we actually had to move it to the hall from the lobby.
I don't like storyboards. I'd rather...
The way I do my homework is, I see the scenes in my head,
and I make some kind of very rudimentary notes to myself that only I can read.
I have a shorthand. And I'm a very, very fortunate director,
because after I see a scene and make my notes,
I can pick up the script a week and a half later, and the notes prompt me to the visions I had,
and I can recreate them then with the camera.
Basically, I put myself in the audience's chair.
I'd read a scene over and over again, and I'd say
"What do I wanna see as an audience member? What images do I wanna see?"
"What cool images do I wanna see, to make this scene... to tell the story of this scene?"
And that's how I started, and then...
I've been doing it for so long that I understand the characters,
I understand what Chris wants.
This is a different prop than the one you saw earlier.
We're not gonna show you the face of it, only the back of it.
And this is Scully's fantasy here.
We didn't really have time to improvise much on The X-Files.
They'd read a scene, and if it didn'twork for them, they might change some dialogue,
but, you know, the storytelling in The X-Files is always very specific.
So it really isn't an arena for improvisation.
That would be a second-unit insert. But you can see what's happening here on screen.
What he's writing is actually happening to Scully,
so he's... almost hypnotising her through his writing.
They say danger's very exciting, and that's what this episode is about for Scully. it's.__
She Knows every step of the way she's doing something wrong, but it's too enticing.
The danger element of it is too enticing to her. It's a very sexy story, actually.
Meanwhile, Mulder's working the case here. He's up to something.
Basically, working in Los Angeles and working in Vancouver was...
While Vancouver was exciting, and we had the opportunity
to be in a very dark, dreary, rainy, wet atmosphere,
which suited The X-Files and the mood of The X-Files,
it was a wonderful relief, for me anyhow,
to be able to come to Los Angeles and work in the dry air,
and have a little sunshine and a little warmth.
Vancouver was very demanding. Very, very demanding,
and it was nice for me to be able to work here in LA,
go home at night and have a home-cooked meal, be with my wife and children.
I think it worked. I think David and Gillian liked the move, as well.
I think it worked really well for them and their... and their spirits.
I think... I think the Work...
I don't think the work suffered for moving it from Vancouver.
I think, if anything, it may have gotten a little better.
The crews in Vancouver worked... You know, our crew in Vancouver was tremendous.
We worked at North Shore Studios, and they were small sound stages.
To be able to come up here and work on Fox's massive sound stages was a treat.
You know, it's always kind of a treat
to be able to work on a lot that has so much history.
And we got very lucky, cos our biggest concern when we moved from Vancouver
was that we would never find a crew as good as that Vancouver crew.
As a matter of fact, we found a crew that was more than up to the task.
Our crew in Los Angeles were just the hardest-working people, and a great family.
We were very fortunate to be able to replace the Vancouver people
with such a tremendous group of people here in Los Angeles.
This shot was done, again, on a jib arm.
This is a remote-controlled camera that's underslung from a long jib arm on the dolly.
And I've come all the way around them here.
It's tough for Bill Roe,
because I'm seeing almost all of the set, so he doesn't have a lot of place to put light.
But Bill's... He's never had a challenge that he couldn't meet.
He'll light from the floor, light could come through the windows.
Everything he does, he makes it... You can't throw him a curve ball, Bill.
Here Mulder's put together the crime,
he's figured out that what this man is writing is exactly what the murders are,
that are going around here in town.
So he's... he's got him now as a suspect,
when in fact it's not him at all, but the character of his book,
which is obviously the paranormal element here in this element... this episode.
I work on the editing process quite a bit, once we're done shooting a show.
I'll spend two, three days in the cutting room with the editor,
and we'll go through the show, shot for shot, scene for scene,
and we'll get it just the way we want it, and then I turn it over to the other producers.
And I work together hand in hand with them, to make sure the show maintains its integrity.
Oftentimes, our shows will run long,
maybe 10, 12 minutes long, and we have to find that film to cutout.
We only have a certain amount of time that each episode can run.
But, because I'm also an executive producer here,
the other producers take great care to preserve my vision and my film.
They're always ready to out dialogue in order to preserve my shots, my vision, as it were.
For that, I'm very lucky, really.
This is shot downtown. This is, I believe... I can't remember the name of this building.
This was shot downtown in a giant warehouse,
where other studios have come in, and they built this jail set.
And so we heard of it, and we went downtown and used it, utilised it.
We were there for a day or two, I think.
This was a very simple episode. There weren't a lot of locations,
there weren't a lot of exteriors_
It was a real... a real interior show.
That's why I'm shooting here so tight. I just...
It's all up to the actors to carry a piece like this.
This cemetery, this is all special-effects fog that we had to lay out, and it was a huge area.
And they put down... It's not just smoke, they put down little misters.
And it was cold, so the mist would stay low to the ground.
This is on location, I believe someplace in Glendale.
This was tough, because we've got a chase coming up,
and there were lots of holes in the ground,
and I didn'twant this little girl to get hurt, or Nestor -
Nestor Serrano, who plays the character in the book.
There he is, there.
Those are stunt people, stunt doubles, who took that fall.
This was interesting. One of the reasons that...
One of the big things that attracted me to this story is that this character is never explained.
In other words, it's the evil in Jonathan Hawkes', or Phillip Padgett's heart,
really creating these murders.
But we never answer whether it's Phillip Padgett that does the murders
or if it's really the character in the book that comes from the pages.
That was never answered, and I found that very intriguing, really.
That's the thing about The X-Files.
It oftentimes will leave more questions than it'll give you answers.
But that's what gets the audience thinking.
This was shot on a motorcycle. David Duchovny can run faster...
Well, we did an episode called "Tunguska", and he outran two horses.
So I had to get on a motorcycle with a camera to keep up with him.
This was tough on this little actress. We had to bury her in all of these flowers.
As I recall, she had allergies. (laughs)
And it was very tough for her to lay quiet underneath there, until we got her uncovered.
Back in the jail again.
You can see it's a big complex that this company built.
That's why we went clown there to use this set.
For us to build a set like this would have cost maybe $400,000,
and we probably rented it for $5,000, so...
The mythology episodes are very complicated. We have to get them just right.
The stand-alones give you a little more freedom, creatively.
The mythology episodes are an established style or established story line.
They're usually shot... They're usually bigger episodes,
where with your stand-alone episodes, it's kind of your independent vision.
It's not part of a running story.
So, like I say, I used to prefer the stand-alones. Now I...
They're both... they're both challenging, in their own way.
This is the scene here where the character actually confronts the author,
and again, we never... we never say whether this is real or not,
although at one point the character disappears, so this is really a conversation
that Phillip Padgett is having in his own head.
Interesting wardrobe choice, this hood.
We wanted to make him look like Death himself.
Mulder and Scully are watching. There's nothing happening.
He's not talking to anybody.
So this whole scene is a figment of this imagination.
I worked with Nestor on a series called Hat Squad that we shot in Vancouver,
about three brothers who were cops,
and who had a father, played by James Tolkan, who was an ex-cop.
And these guys, these three brothers, all wore hats, fedoras.
It was based on an actual squad of police, I believe, out of Chicago.
Nestor's a great actor.
This scene is where the character is telling Phillip Padgett
that he only has evil in his heart, no love in his heart,
that he can't feel love because he has no love, he only has evil.
This is the scene that sets Phillip Padgett up at the end of the hour,
to tear out his own heart, to prove that he can sacrifice his own life
for the love that he feels for Scully,
so that nothing, no ill will, befalls Scully.
This is the scene where he's gonna burn his manuscript.
This is on stage. This is back in that set that I was talking about, the red-blue room.
This is over on stage six at Twentieth Century Fox.
Now we have a little interaction.The character from the book is now gonna kill Scully.
And Phillip Padgett knows it, and Mulder now is...
Unbeknownst to him,
Mulder is actually interfering with Phillip Padgett saving Scully's life.
This was a really well-written piece.
Revisiting it has been a lot of fun here.
There you have it.
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