Reshoots & pickups

This is the first scene I remember where we got up to about 25 takes. Something went wrong. And also reminds me that Eric's hair was shoulder-length when we first shot this scene. We had to go back and reshoot it because Ned Tanen decided after he saw it, rightfully, that he didn't like his hair that long. And I hadn't told anybody that his hair was that long because this was only my second movie and I didn't really know everybody had to know that his hair was that long. I mean, nobody had seen Polaroids of him because I came back to the movie after another director had been replaced by me. So, a lot of things that are normally checked and double-checked weren't happening, and as a result, we had to kind of reshoot about two days after we gave him his haircut, and he wasn't happy about his haircut. You know, you got to remember Eric Stoltz did a movie called Mask where his whole face was covered up, and had a great time doing that. So, here I cut his shoulder-length hair off, which was, you know, a little bit like Samson, I think, to him, and he felt a little naked, understandably. So we got off to a rocky start. Look how it doesn't even match from those two shots. It's a completely different hairdo.

3:51 · jump to transcript →

Actually, now that I remember, that's the scene that we had to reshoot where Eric's hair was to his shoulders and we had to cut it, and redo this. This was the first scene I shot.

55:57 · jump to transcript →

This was an additional shot we did. I kind of remember we didn't... We wanted just to emphasize and punctuate how important the earrings were. Oh, this is afterwards? Yeah, 'cause his hair changed. We did the party, too, remember? We reshot part of the party. Yeah, but I mean, this shot of the earrings was something we did later, when we realized we wanted to emphasize that he picked them out. He went on a trip and picked them out with Mary Stuart.

56:41 · jump to transcript →

Right. Sweet. It's wrong. It's like it should be sexy and he should wind up awkwardly twisted up with her and so I was sick and Art did a reshoot and do you remember this? Yes. Where they like, I don't even remember what happened. They were making out and some sort of physical comedy but it just was really awkward and

42:06 · jump to transcript →

pulled me in and they said, you know, you don't know about football. And I go, no, I don't. And so they planned to reshoot and got the stunt guys and Art and everybody all together and they added a lot of this footage. Flying through the air. Flying and... Although I do love that guy by the sidelines, the blonde guy with the crew cut that goes... Oh, the...

47:49 · jump to transcript →

So this was an extremely complicated scene to shoot. Here, we're on the stage doing the actors... ...against rear projection. And now these images here, there was-- It had to be done in a very low-tech way. All the actors were put in white suits and had white makeup on. So we shot them in this room, doing all of this action... ...in their normal wardrobe. And once we had finished shooting the scene, we sent them off... ...where they put on the white suits and the white makeup. They came back and we reshot it... ...on a black stage that duplicated the same office. And now you had these weird images... ...that were run through all kinds of video process... ...to make them look like the way they are... ...reflecting, supposedly, the heat of the bodies. This is in kind of a pre-digital era, too, when we're doing this. We had television effects, but we really didn't have digital technology for film. If I remember right, this was done at Warner Bros... ...in one of their little video studios that the man built... ...who kind of invented 24-frame video for movies.

1:02:38 · jump to transcript →

And you didn't have a camera ship in here? In that parking lot? - Yes, here are the pictures. Well, we had it down the street, and then we're-- Now we've got a helicopter following the other helicopter. This is amazing stuff. - It is amazing. This was a kick to edit, trying to figure out which was the best... ...because I had at least six angles on every shot... ...and they were all terrific. Well, we wanted to cover everything. The close-ups that you see here of Malcolm McDowell... ...he was scared to death. We were actually flying up in the air through these traffic patterns... ...and, I mean, it's very scary when you come close to those buildings. And his eyes were wide as saucers. We had to actually go back and reshoot his close-ups for this... ...because he looked so terrified in the first version we did. That's beautiful right there. Gosh. They just did a great job.

1:40:28 · jump to transcript →

Bill Paxton

Another technique that's not used any more to create the size of that set. A hanging miniature that was the previous shot, where you saw the expanse of the inside of this alien virtual universe, which is what you're seeing here, setwise, the cocoon aspect of what these aliens do. A hanging miniature, which is a technique, is a small set piece that hangs in front of the camera and then the full-size set is behind it and the actors are behind it. The illusion is that the set is huge and expanding up and over everyone, when, in fact, the foreground of the set piece is a miniature, the background of the set piece and all the actors is normal size. It's basically a forced-perspective shot. This is my first on-camera line coming up. This was the first day. We started at Acton. We started here. I thought you guys had already been shooting. They had to reshoot. We went back and picked up here. I see. And Dick Bush, the cinematographer, was replaced by Adrian Biddle somewhere in this area at the same time. A few changes were made in the lineup about two weeks in.

1:07:05 · jump to transcript →

Bill Paxton

I heard that some of the studio execs were screening footage back in the States, and they were a little perturbed and asking "Where's the effects shot?" Gale Hurd said "You just saw an effects shot." She was referring to that perspective shot. They were completely fooled by it. They thought nothing had been shot. They thought they were spending huge amounts of money on these sets. They said "You spent so much and there's no miniature." She said "No, that is the miniature." It was a smart move on Cameron's part, to do it that way very quickly in the film, so the studio wasn't worried quite as much about what was going on 5,000 miles away in London. It does make it a bit tricky to shoot, though. If anything goes wrong, you're stuck with it or you have to fix it later but with a reshoot. You can't really fix it later. So that worked out quite well, but with actors and everything there's a lot on the line. Something we've lost sight of over the years is that with this era of filmmaking, not only for live-action but for miniatures, there wasn't much ability to go back and fix something. Now, digitally, you can change an actor's face, you can get rid of wires, do all kinds of tricks, split-screen, take elements and change shots. But at that time you had to plan these things and make it work within a narrow tolerance, otherwise that was it, that's what wound up in the film. IIt reminds me of a stage play. You're doing it live, in a sense. What was on film was it. There was no going back. You could only do it so many times. There was a limited budget to work with and it had to work on film, no matter what.

1:08:47 · jump to transcript →

Gary Goddard

and they didn't want to do a second unit. So when you see shots that would normally be a pickup shot, like that one of the grappler hook grabbing that bucket chicken, I shot that. I mean, every single shot. Normally those would be done by a second unit, be done as pickups later. Sure you were. Taylor? Mmm, good food. Yes, I've never tasted anything like it.

23:42 · jump to transcript →

Gary Goddard

Cannon and I said, look, there's no end to this movie. These guys are battling, and he breaks the staff, and that's as far as we got right there. Okay, now that was actually a pickup shot later, but the last shot, I'm coming down. This we shot, all the follow-up, everything except that insert of the staff breaking. We shot this, we got this. All of this. But now, from about the next shot on, this was shot about two months later. Skeletor.

1:35:26 · jump to transcript →

Barry Levinson

Eleanor Babbitt. This scene was one of the few scenes we reshot.

19:37 · jump to transcript →

Barry Levinson

We went back to Cincinnati at the conclusion of principal photography and spent a day picking up a couple of scenes. This was one of the scenes that we can improve upon from the original version. Dustin always said that we reshot the first three weeks of the movie. I kept telling him, actually, we only reshot about, all told, probably about two days.

19:42 · jump to transcript →

And he was a little bit in love with them. That's great. The very beautiful Ione with Mortarboard. And John Mahoney, who we've just got to talk about. Such an amazing actor for a first-time guy to be able to work with. Now, that was a reshoot. It was indeed. Right? I came back from there. I remember that was one thing.

1:33 · jump to transcript →

Right? Didn't we reshoot this? We shot this. We believe that your father operates from a large pool of cash that comes from phony billing, phony patients. We've been investigating him for five years. I loved in the boombox scene, which we can talk about later, I loved that everything...

1:18:36 · jump to transcript →

Tim Lucas

Civic TV is Channel 83. Videodrome was written and produced with the intention of opening in theaters in 1982, so the number 83 was meant to point to the future. However, the film was not completed by the end of 1981 as intended, and reshoots continued well into June 1982. The film was ultimately released in February 1983, which advanced the even more frightening thought that the future is now.

0:38 · jump to transcript →

We did some non-dialogue stuff with a double, and we had to reshoot it because his persona came through in his body, even in wide shots, you couldn't double it. Yeah, the body language, the mime, everything is perfect for him. Yeah, the one double scene we have here, you pointed it out. It was not up to par. Reshoot it. Well, I've been, you know, all throughout Europe doing appearances with Robert at one time or another, and it's always sobering to...

1:30:34 · jump to transcript →

Jim Piddock

which two they have now violated, by the way. Yes, where the end credits once was scored with a young Zhivkov singing, now it blares a jangling pop tune. Where it once had all the P's and R's printed wrong way round to give you a little bit of the Cyrillic flavour, now it's printed in an utterly undistinguished font. Well, they had to reshoot it, I suppose. Couldn't very well leave in a credit for The Boy Zhivkov or Magda or Test Your Arm Man, names that mean...

1:32:05 · jump to transcript →

And the flute mirrors every drop of urine from his penis. Which was six. Six drops. You'd have to reshoot it though, huh? Now we are downtown again. Yeah, the music took on like a more dramatic effect. Here's Grady.

28:08 · jump to transcript →

You said, I want you to take these shirts home and hang on to them in case we need them to do reshoots. And I think what you knew is that if they ever got back to the lockup at Paramount, they'd be gone. Did you get them? I got quite a few of them. I still have them. They're kind of in a safety closet area. Well, after this, they go to Smithsonian. Oh, sure.

1:23:44 · jump to transcript →

Now, what is this, David? What did we do? Did we reshoot that? I can't remember. What is this? You put a beacon on the wall? This is David's car. An electric car. This is actually a miniature, isn't it? On a cart? This is on a cart, and they were different sized lights and carts depending on where we were. Right. And the camera was strapped onto the back of this. This was an actual car wash. And who came up with this idea? If you like it, it was my idea. Oh, you know what? This is from M-Spot. O.J. Simpson was in this?

3:29 · jump to transcript →