Production Documents / 2nd Unit & Production Schedules
2nd Unit &
Production Schedules
Twenty-five documents from inside the production office: the memos that told every department where the second unit would be on Thursday, the schedules that mapped whole seasons before the episodes had names, and the calendars that counted a month down to the minute.
Second unit is the part of a production almost nobody keeps paperwork from. It shoots what the main unit cannot: inserts, pickups, hands and feet, plates, reshoots of a scene that did not cut together. Somebody has to tell every department where it will be and what it needs, so an assistant director writes a memo, runs it off on whatever color the revision has reached, and distributes it. Then it is superseded, usually within days, and thrown away. These survived. Each one is scanned in full color on its original stock, because the color is the revision.
Second unit, Season 5
14 documentsFourteen memos issued between September 1997 and March 1998 by the two second unit assistant directors, Kevin Parks and Brett Dowler. Second unit shoots the pieces the main unit cannot: inserts, pickups, hands, feet, plates, reshoots. Each memo goes to all departments, on whatever color the revision had reached that week.
3rd Salmon · Friday, October 17, 1997 · from Kevin Parks · 2NDU-5X02-08 · 1 page
Detour & Christmas Carol
Headed “3rd Salmon”, so the schedule had already been revised onto salmon stock twice before this one.
All 1 page
Salmon · Wednesday, November 5, 1997 · from Brett Dowler · 2NDU-5X06-2 · 1 page
Detour, Christmas Carol & Emily
Issued the next day, already revised. Christmas Carol pickups move to 3106 Alberta Street, the Scully family house.
All 1 page
Green · Tuesday, November 19, 1997 · from Kevin Parks · 2NDU-5X07-3 · 1 page
Christmas Carol, Kitsunegari & Schizogeny
A revised schedule covering three episodes.
All 1 page
Green · Tuesday, November 25, 1997 · from Kevin Parks · 5X07-INSERTS · 2 pages
Emily, remaining inserts
A memo plus the attached insert list, signed “Kevin”. Notes that 5X05 and 5X06 are complete. The inserts are Scully's hand lifting the cross from the sand, her feet in the sand, and Mulder's POV of the cross.
Goldenrod · Wednesday, January 14, 1998 · from Kevin Parks · 2NDU-5X10-3 · 1 page
Kill Switch
Back after the Christmas hiatus.
All 1 page
Insert lists
2 documentsInserts are the close ups the main unit still owes: the hands, the objects, the things an edit cuts to. Somebody has to keep track of which ones are outstanding. Two of those lists survived, and one of them is handwritten.
Tuesday, November 4, 1997 · 5X05 · 1 page
Christmas Carol, pickups and inserts
Page two of the pickup and insert list, on goldenrod. Almost every line is a point of view: Scully comparing photographs, a hypodermic needle with blood in a baggy, two PCR sheets held to the light, the crucifix in the jewellery box. The header carries a typo that nobody caught, CHISTMAS CAROL, and the shoot day line reads November 1999 on a sheet dated November 1997.
All 1 page
Undated · 5X06 · 1 page
The Post-Modern Prometheus, preliminary inserts
The script supervisor's own list, written out by hand in pen on a blank form. Inserts are the close ups the main unit still owes, and this is somebody tracking what is outstanding as the day goes. Scene 60, in the cellar, reads as a shopping list: CS SANDWICH ON PLATE, CS GOAT, CS HORSE, CS ROOSTER, CS PIG, CS WINDOWS GET SMASHED. Scene 1 is CU GOAT BOY LKS INTO CAR. The circled M and S mark whose eyeline each shot has to match, so Mulder and Scully are being tracked shot by shot. The last line on the page is TV PLAYING JERRY SPRINGER.
All 1 page
Season schedules
4 documentsFour documents that plan a whole season at once, two from Season 5 and two from Season 8.
Pink · Revised August 20, 1997 · 1 page
Fifth Season Directors Schedule
The whole season on one page: show number, writer, director, prep, start and wrap. Episodes 1 and 2 are typed. Episodes 3 and 4 have their titles written in by hand in blue pen, Redux II and Detour, because they had not been named when this was typed. From episode 5 on, the title column is simply empty: directors and dates assigned to episodes that did not exist yet. The sheet heads itself DIRECTORS SCHEDULE, with no apostrophe, and the title here follows the paper.
All 1 page
Salmon · Revised November 14, 1997 · 1 page
Fifth Season Directors Schedule
The same document three months later. Worth reading against the Pink: the blanks have started to fill in. Headed DIRECTORS SCHEDULE with no apostrophe, like the Pink.
All 1 page
Prep calendars and scouts
3 documentsWhat a production week actually looks like when it is written down.
Pink · November 2000 · 8ABX12 · 1 page
Prep Calendar, November 2000
A month laid out as a wall calendar, timed to the minute and marked “as of 7:20 PM”. Set decoration meetings, an underwater photography meeting, a location scout, wardrobe, the start of principal photography, and Thanksgiving.
All 1 page
White · January 2001 · 8ABX16 · 1 page
Prep Calendar, January 2001
Location scout, VFX/SFX/stunt scout of an oil platform, prop meeting, second unit mini scout, casting calls.
All 1 page
Tentative, Thursday October 19, 2000 · 8ABX09 · 4 pages
Surekill tech scout
Headed 8ABX09 “UNTITLED”, before the episode had its name. Under the date it notes that Stage 5 is in use by 8ABX08 and, plainly, that Scully and Doggett are not available. The location list runs down the day scene by scene, with the Herald Examiner building standing in for a Worcester bus station.
Je Souhaite, Season 7
2 documentsTwo documents from one episode, 7ABX21, written and directed by Vince Gilligan and shot through April 2000. They arrived bound into a single file and are separated here, because they were kept by two different people. The first belonged to the art department. The second belonged to somebody in effects, and it is the more interesting of the two.
April 6, 2000 · from Corey Kaplan and Lauren Polizzi · 7ABX21 · 16 pages
Je Souhaite, director's plans
An art department memo and the fourteen set drawings that answer it, for production designer Corey Kaplan, drawn by J. Bruce, Harbour and RH/JB. The memo is headed “Untitled”: four days before the first day of shooting, Je Souhaite still had no name. The sets run from the Avalon Carson trailer park and the mobile home interior on Stage 5 to the U-Stor-It on Pacific Coast Highway, the Elysee Cafe standing in for the diner, 5th and Spring downtown, the county morgue, Mulder's apartment, Skinner's office and Mulder's office. Each sheet carries its own scale, and the mobile home drawing is annotated BOAT NOT ON STAGE. KICKER WALLS TO BE USED.
April 2000 · 7ABX21 · 12 pages
Je Souhaite, effects crew working file
Bound into the back of the same file, and not an art department document at all. Two pre-production calendars on green and pink stock, the April 6 tech scout itinerary, a yellow revised schedule, a pink production meeting pass, a handwritten crew call and the green final shooting schedule. What ties them together is the handwriting, and the handwriting belongs to somebody in effects. Beside each stop on the scout is what that stop needs: 2 cobweb guns, dust gun, water truck at the storage facility, water splash, car hood, car body on Suburban Road, and a flat NOTHING beside the diner and the city street. The handwritten page is a truck load-out — cob webbers, air hoses, a dust gun, a bucket of Fuller's earth, an air compressor, a mole fogger. The schedule margins keep the day's gags in a running list: trailer explodes, car window blow, debris fall, rug falls, and later stove knob breaks, rear panel removes, fire bar, helium heat wave. The same crew is assigned day by day across every page — Rick, Lee, Eric, Jeff, Jeff, Ron, Randy. Beside one circled scene somebody has written DID WE GET THAT?!! Four phone numbers on the tech scout page are blurred in this scan.
Have more of these?
Second unit memos, call sheets, prep calendars and production schedules were never meant to be kept. If you have any, they belong in the record.
Contribute →