NB - Much of this information comes from Johnson's commentary from the DVD release. No matter how many times you have seen the original production, purchase of the disc is strongly recommended just for Johnson's contribution. The same is true for his audio commentaries on the first two HULK TVMs and the pilot episode of ALIEN NATION. This writer is looking forward to hearing his commentaries for all five of the ALIEN NATION TV movies.
Johnson's first draft of what would, ultimately become V was called Stormwarning and didn't contain any aliens. Johnson wanted to tell a straight-forward story about how people would react to a fascist takeover from within the United States. NBC boss Brandon Tartikoff suggested that the American viewing public wouldn't accept a fascist takeover from within and suggested a Soviet or Chinese occupation. Johnson thought such a scenario unlikely (how would they mount a successful invasion and maintain control for a prolonged period?) so created the alien threat.
Johnson's first story treatment, the one he read to the studio brass, was completed 23 July 1982. The first draft of the screenplay was completed 12 August that year. The 230 page script was completed in only 19 days (in longhand). Filming started 11 October.
To save money, many of the sets and props designed for the first mini-series were designed to be modular, allowing them to be multi-purpose and adapted as the script demanded. The Skyfighters could be split into two along their centre-line and the fore and aft sections attached to other mid-sections (tanker, transporter, squad car etc.). This approach was used on both the full-sized and miniature versions of the craft. The alien laser pistol, based on a German luger, could have extra sections added to form the larger laser rifle.
Rushed production is the reason that not all the Visitor Motherships around the globe look the same in the television coverage. They should do.
Actress Dominique Dunne was originally cast as Robin Maxwell and had already started filming when she was strangled and killed by her abusive ex-boyfriend. The role was recast but one shot featuring the original actress survived into the final edit. A dedication to the late actress appears on both parts of the original mini-series.
The first mini-series, along with The Final Battle, were novelised in a single 400 page volume by A.C. Crispin. Crispin's second novel (writing with Howard Weinstein) covers the same time period as the first book but from the perspective of the populations of New York City and Washington DC. According to that book, the Fleet first arrives in October (p.10). Despite being written after the first mini-series was shot and aired, the book does take some liberties with what is established on-screen. The New York Mothership landing bay (which MAY be a different design than the LA craft) is described as having blue-grey walls and being dimly lit in contrast to the bright bays seen throughout the TV version.
Both mini-series were purchased by the UK's ITV network and aired in the summer of 1985 as a schedule filler when the network's planned coverage of the Olympic Games collapsed over budgets and staffing, leaving hours of airtime to fill at short notice. The two mini-series were stripped over 1 week and delivered ratings of around 10 million viewers.
Filming began in October 1982. Shooting took 54 days, almost all of which were on location.
The opening scene, at the South American rebel camp, was filmed at Indian Dunes, north of Los Angeles. The sequence was shot in 2.5 days. The helicopter accident that killed Vic Murrow and two children during the shoot of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE had happened at the same location shortly before V started filming.
Multiple camera shots were used during the helicopter sequence which allowed several shots to be repeated from different angles, creating the impression of separate events (watch for the duo climbing into the old wreck several minutes before they do it for real).
Two jeeps were used for the sequence, neither of which were very mechanically sound.
Marc Singer was a last-minute casting decision. He got the role on a Friday and started on-set the following Monday.
The musical sting from Beethoven's Fifth Synthoney, the first music (other than the main theme) heard on the mini-series (as the Mothership sweeps over Donovan) spells out 'V' in morse code.
There are 56 speaking roles in the mini-series.
Johnson only had 2.5 weeks from getting NBC's green light to the first day of shooting to prep the piece.
All the news bulletins etc. were shot on the first day of filming, at KTTV LA, so that they could be played live into subsequent scenes (rather than being keyed in during post production).
The location of the archaeological dig at the start of the mini-series and the Resistance camp in the hills are one-and-the-same.
All the shots of the Motherships swooping in are the same matte painting with different live-action elements.
Elias turns on the tv to make sure it is a colour set, not black and white.
At the time of production, V was the most expensive mini-series ever made.
Dominic Dunne, murdered four weeks into filming by her boyfriend, still appears in one scene. As the Mothership flies over Pacific Palisades and the Maxwell family look up, it's Dunne on the reverse angle effects shot.
Pacific Palisades suffered from a fog problem which created some stylish scenes but also some continuity problems.
A continuing visual motif throughout the mini-series is water, keep 'em peeled!
Johnson added the alien quality to their voices to stop them infiltrating humans too easily. He was never completely satisfied with the end result.
The sunglasses proved to be a bit of a problem when Johnson realised there were times when he wanted to see the actors eyes. The solution was to create a selection of glasses, some darker than others.
Johnson deliberately mixed the voices of the newscasters during coverage of the UN first-contact sequence, he assumed people would be watching coverage on a variety of news outlets.
When the shuttle lands on the roof, it's the camera that moves not the ship.
Dunne died the day that the New York sequence was shot. Johnson had to leave her family to shoot that night's material.
Two stages at Warner Brothers were used just to build the various Visitor craft. They were designed over one weekend.
Johnson read War and Peace, a great inspiration for him, a year before writing V. In his first story treatment he didn't bother to name the characters, he just described them by their roles or job titles. Once Johnson had completed his treatment, he spent more than two hours reading it to Brandon Tartikoff and the NBC top brass.
Christine's apartment is Bunker Hill, LA being passed-off as New York.
The Mothership landing bay is Warner Brothers stage 25. For the wide shot the right-hand side of the shot is physical set, the centre of the shot (with the hatch) is a matte painting and the left-hand side is another shot of the physical set but reversed.
Along with Singer, Jane Badler was another late addition to the cast. Filming had already begun when Johnson met her. She was cast, at least in part, for her eyes.
The Mothership tanks seen on the initial tour are really the Budweiser brewery.
The refinery location is a generating station in Long Beach.
When the shuttle lands and the Visitor personnel disembark at the refinery, a split-screen is used to double the number of aliens and the marching band.
Rehearsal time on the picture was only two days, the weekend prior to the first day of filming (and the day after Marc Singer was cast).
The actor who looses his arm in the refinery accident really was an amputee with a fake arm that shatters on impact. It's grapes stuck to Robert England's face to create the blistering caused by exposure to the extreme cold.
The action figures that Sean plays with aren't real toys or prototypes, they were one-off's specifically made for the scene.
Johnson had already hoped to make the landing bay and other public areas of the Mothership darker to reflect the light sensitivity of the Sirians but the time-scales of the shoot didn't allow for more complex lighting.
The shoot's Production Meeting took place on 21 September, just before shooting begun.
The infamous swallow scene was shot in two chunks: The live-action elements, including Diana's expanding neck, were shot first with the prosthetic head (with extending jar) shot at a later date (against a slightly different background) because it wasn't ready for the initial shoot days. Another prosthetic head was built for the stuntman who discovers, and fights, Donovan for the shots where he uses his alien tongue.
The alien eyes contact lenses had a tendency to rotate slightly leading to Sirian wonky-eye syndrome.
The very first shot of the production is the scene, shot at KTTV Los Angeles, where Donovan and the anchorman walk across the studio floor just prior to the aborted newscast which would have revealed the true nature of the aliens. NBC's Standards and Practices, concerned about viewer confusion, wouldn't allow the NBC News logo to be used at the top of the breaking news bulletin sequence hence the generic caption slide.
Three weeks before the mini-series aired, “The Visitors are our Friends” posters, without reference to V or NBC, started to appear across America. Two weeks ahead of transmission, all the posters were defaced with a spray-painted “V” just as in the programme. One week later, transmission details were added.
Because of a mistake during shooting, Johnson didn't have the right coverage of the scene where David sits down. As a work-round, Johnson reverses the shot where David sits so he appears to be standing again. If the shot ran any longer, it would be obvious he was walking backwards.
The first Resistance meeting, at the laundry, was shot on 1 November, the 16th day of shooting.
Johnson himself comes from, by his own account, a very anti-semetic household.
Each laser blast cost $1,000. The full visual effects budget clocked in at around $1.3 million.
When Julie spins her VW, it's a stuntman in a blond wig doing the turn. Faye Grant did much of the driving, of the lorry and the car, in this sequence.
V's 'heroic theme', first introduced at the conclusion of the first night, comes from the 4th movement of Beethoven's 5th. The score was recorded by a 60 piece orchestra.
The small town where Donovan's ex-wife and son live is filmed in Monrovia. The damage to the street is all dressing.
There's a reflection of the boom mike in the glass of the picture as Daniel uncorks the champagne.
Katie is heard crying even when the young actress obviously isn't.
The production clocked up a lot of overtime to hit its airdates.
The El Tepiac reference is (or was) a Mexican restaurant in East LA frequented by cast and crew.
The tunnel HQ is the old Belmont tunnel, part of LA's underground railway system, running from the city to Pasadena and built in 1925. After its closure as a subway it was used to store emergency provisions intended to feed the inhabitants of the city after a nuclear attack. In the late 1960s the tunnel started leaking so the food supplies were removed and cars, captured from criminals, were stored instead. The interiors were filmed at an old abandoned bank building. The production had to return to the location to reshoot scenes already in the can featuring Dunne. Johnson painted the red V's on the walls himself.
The only dissolve in the whole mini-series is when Daniel sits alone at the dining table.
Donovan's semi-fall from the walkway at the Visitor plant was improvised by Singer (not a stuntman) on the night of the shoot.
Johnson wrote the lyrics for the Choral music while the human prisoners are loaded onto the Visitor transport (and reused for the climax at the mountain camp). In English, before Johnson had them translated, they are “Don't take my children, don't hurt my children. Don't bring harm to them.”
Johnson's original plan to use an oil refinery for the alien plant was nixed when the owners wouldn't allow the production team to set-off assorted explosions. The steam plant proved to be a more accommodating alternative. The explosives fitted by the Resistance were really propane-fuelled which created a big explosion but little damage. Some of the explosions at the plant were stock miniature effects from another production.
Diana's hair is made to look deliberately serpent-like.
The Mothership's corridors and quarters were filmed on stages 8 and 9 at the CBS studios. As previously noted, the docking bay was filmed at Warner Brothers. The sets were designed so they could be lit by the 'natural' lighting on the set ('hidden' behind tracing paper). The hatches deliberately have a turtle-shell design.
The lighting on the Landing Bay set was so intense that, on one occasion it triggered the stage's sprinkler system and, another time, overloaded the Warner Brothers fusebox.
Barbara (the Visitor who gives her uniform to Donovan and gets semi-naked in the process) would have become a recurring character, developing a relationship with Donovan, had Johnson continued to oversee the show beyond this initial mini-series.
It isn't Singer in the scene in the ally. Because of the lengths of the shooting days he couldn't appear in the night shoot and a double had to be used.
Some of the laser rifles were “working” props with small working monitors fitted as gun sights.
As Donovan walks the Mothership corridor before entering the crafts darker areas, we see almost the entire corridor set built for the production. As he walks through the dark corridor of the hold area with Martin after finding out the truth about the alien mission, almost the entirety of that set is shown.
As the Skyfighter explodes after Ruby's attack it is visible darker than the other shots in the sequence because it was completed late in the evening after the day's shoot ran late.
As the truck approaches the STOP sign outside the Visitor facility the sequence was originally shot in reverse so the truck started at the sign and reversed away. The stuntman playing the Visitor trooper walked backwards to complete the illusion when the shot was reversed. The whole Resistance attack was filmed in one day on 14 December 1982.
Johnson said he wanted the hold of the Mothership to sound like a whale and ultimately created the sound himself in a cupboard.
The water and human storage areas were small sets enhanced by matte paintings.
One Skyfighter interior was built, all the other ships are hollow shells. A separate set, divided into front and rear sections, was built to film the interiors against bluescreened exteriors.
When the Skyfighter loops-the-loop, Robin's hair defies gravity.
The flying footage, filmed with a helicopter, is speeded-up slightly. Look out for the waves crashing onto the beach.
One of the most expensive visuals of the piece (cost: $75,000) is as the Skyfighters fly over the Jeep as everyone heads for the Resistance mountain camp.
The exploding Skyfighter as it collides with the hillside is a post-production effect as the crew weren't allowed to detonate any explosives at the location.
When Julie is firing at Diana's Skyfighter, she is really firing at a helicopter so that Grant has something to relate to.
The very final shot of the production is where Diana's mask is partially destroyed by Donovan's surprise attack on her Skyfighter.
Broadcast standards wouldn't allow the gun to be put straight to the head so the finished shot is a compromise. The reunion scene had already been shot with Dunne and had to be remounted.
Johnson's cut, allowing for commercials, overran by 15 minutes. Unable to find a cut, he handed his over-long edit to Brandon Tartikoff at NBC for his input. Rather than hack into the first night, Tartikoff allowed it an extra 15 minutes, airing from 9pm to 11.15pm.
The mini-series had a 40% share and over 80 million viewers each night, the highest rated show NBC had aired in more than 2.5 years.
Chuck Davis, V's production designer and long-time Johnson collaborator died shortly after the mini-series was created. Johnson still has his pencil and eraser displayed in a small glass case so that he always remembers him, his advice and creative contributions.
The GTE radio telescope facility was used for numerous small scenes and pick-up shots with various small and partial sets constructed in the lobby area.
The production added Latin lyrics to Beethoven's music (a combination of the Fifth and Seventh symphonies) for the closing credits. Translated they are: Glory to the cause, glory to the fallen, glory to the fighters for freedom. Victoria! Victoria!
Johnson had intended the prospect of help from a second alien race to be a false alarm. The signal would be intercepted by the fleet and a false message of hope and assistance sent to make the humans believe that relief was on its way when, really, none would ever come. When Johnson left the project, the whole idea of a second alien race was quietly forgotten.
Over 300 people (on camera and off and at the network) were involved in the creation of 'V”.
Johnson's first draft of what would, ultimately become V was called Stormwarning and didn't contain any aliens. Johnson wanted to tell a straight-forward story about how people would react to a fascist takeover from within the United States. NBC boss Brandon Tartikoff suggested that the American viewing public wouldn't accept a fascist takeover from within and suggested a Soviet or Chinese occupation. Johnson thought such a scenario unlikely (how would they mount a successful invasion and maintain control for a prolonged period?) so created the alien threat.
Johnson's first story treatment, the one he read to the studio brass, was completed 23 July 1982. The first draft of the screenplay was completed 12 August that year. The 230 page script was completed in only 19 days (in longhand). Filming started 11 October.
To save money, many of the sets and props designed for the first mini-series were designed to be modular, allowing them to be multi-purpose and adapted as the script demanded. The Skyfighters could be split into two along their centre-line and the fore and aft sections attached to other mid-sections (tanker, transporter, squad car etc.). This approach was used on both the full-sized and miniature versions of the craft. The alien laser pistol, based on a German luger, could have extra sections added to form the larger laser rifle.
Rushed production is the reason that not all the Visitor Motherships around the globe look the same in the television coverage. They should do.
Actress Dominique Dunne was originally cast as Robin Maxwell and had already started filming when she was strangled and killed by her abusive ex-boyfriend. The role was recast but one shot featuring the original actress survived into the final edit. A dedication to the late actress appears on both parts of the original mini-series.
The first mini-series, along with The Final Battle, were novelised in a single 400 page volume by A.C. Crispin. Crispin's second novel (writing with Howard Weinstein) covers the same time period as the first book but from the perspective of the populations of New York City and Washington DC. According to that book, the Fleet first arrives in October (p.10). Despite being written after the first mini-series was shot and aired, the book does take some liberties with what is established on-screen. The New York Mothership landing bay (which MAY be a different design than the LA craft) is described as having blue-grey walls and being dimly lit in contrast to the bright bays seen throughout the TV version.
Both mini-series were purchased by the UK's ITV network and aired in the summer of 1985 as a schedule filler when the network's planned coverage of the Olympic Games collapsed over budgets and staffing, leaving hours of airtime to fill at short notice. The two mini-series were stripped over 1 week and delivered ratings of around 10 million viewers.
Filming began in October 1982. Shooting took 54 days, almost all of which were on location.
The opening scene, at the South American rebel camp, was filmed at Indian Dunes, north of Los Angeles. The sequence was shot in 2.5 days. The helicopter accident that killed Vic Murrow and two children during the shoot of TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE had happened at the same location shortly before V started filming.
Multiple camera shots were used during the helicopter sequence which allowed several shots to be repeated from different angles, creating the impression of separate events (watch for the duo climbing into the old wreck several minutes before they do it for real).
Two jeeps were used for the sequence, neither of which were very mechanically sound.
Marc Singer was a last-minute casting decision. He got the role on a Friday and started on-set the following Monday.
The musical sting from Beethoven's Fifth Synthoney, the first music (other than the main theme) heard on the mini-series (as the Mothership sweeps over Donovan) spells out 'V' in morse code.
There are 56 speaking roles in the mini-series.
Johnson only had 2.5 weeks from getting NBC's green light to the first day of shooting to prep the piece.
All the news bulletins etc. were shot on the first day of filming, at KTTV LA, so that they could be played live into subsequent scenes (rather than being keyed in during post production).
The location of the archaeological dig at the start of the mini-series and the Resistance camp in the hills are one-and-the-same.
All the shots of the Motherships swooping in are the same matte painting with different live-action elements.
Elias turns on the tv to make sure it is a colour set, not black and white.
At the time of production, V was the most expensive mini-series ever made.
Dominic Dunne, murdered four weeks into filming by her boyfriend, still appears in one scene. As the Mothership flies over Pacific Palisades and the Maxwell family look up, it's Dunne on the reverse angle effects shot.
Pacific Palisades suffered from a fog problem which created some stylish scenes but also some continuity problems.
A continuing visual motif throughout the mini-series is water, keep 'em peeled!
Johnson added the alien quality to their voices to stop them infiltrating humans too easily. He was never completely satisfied with the end result.
The sunglasses proved to be a bit of a problem when Johnson realised there were times when he wanted to see the actors eyes. The solution was to create a selection of glasses, some darker than others.
Johnson deliberately mixed the voices of the newscasters during coverage of the UN first-contact sequence, he assumed people would be watching coverage on a variety of news outlets.
When the shuttle lands on the roof, it's the camera that moves not the ship.
Dunne died the day that the New York sequence was shot. Johnson had to leave her family to shoot that night's material.
Two stages at Warner Brothers were used just to build the various Visitor craft. They were designed over one weekend.
Johnson read War and Peace, a great inspiration for him, a year before writing V. In his first story treatment he didn't bother to name the characters, he just described them by their roles or job titles. Once Johnson had completed his treatment, he spent more than two hours reading it to Brandon Tartikoff and the NBC top brass.
Christine's apartment is Bunker Hill, LA being passed-off as New York.
The Mothership landing bay is Warner Brothers stage 25. For the wide shot the right-hand side of the shot is physical set, the centre of the shot (with the hatch) is a matte painting and the left-hand side is another shot of the physical set but reversed.
Along with Singer, Jane Badler was another late addition to the cast. Filming had already begun when Johnson met her. She was cast, at least in part, for her eyes.
The Mothership tanks seen on the initial tour are really the Budweiser brewery.
The refinery location is a generating station in Long Beach.
When the shuttle lands and the Visitor personnel disembark at the refinery, a split-screen is used to double the number of aliens and the marching band.
Rehearsal time on the picture was only two days, the weekend prior to the first day of filming (and the day after Marc Singer was cast).
The actor who looses his arm in the refinery accident really was an amputee with a fake arm that shatters on impact. It's grapes stuck to Robert England's face to create the blistering caused by exposure to the extreme cold.
The action figures that Sean plays with aren't real toys or prototypes, they were one-off's specifically made for the scene.
Johnson had already hoped to make the landing bay and other public areas of the Mothership darker to reflect the light sensitivity of the Sirians but the time-scales of the shoot didn't allow for more complex lighting.
The shoot's Production Meeting took place on 21 September, just before shooting begun.
The infamous swallow scene was shot in two chunks: The live-action elements, including Diana's expanding neck, were shot first with the prosthetic head (with extending jar) shot at a later date (against a slightly different background) because it wasn't ready for the initial shoot days. Another prosthetic head was built for the stuntman who discovers, and fights, Donovan for the shots where he uses his alien tongue.
The alien eyes contact lenses had a tendency to rotate slightly leading to Sirian wonky-eye syndrome.
The very first shot of the production is the scene, shot at KTTV Los Angeles, where Donovan and the anchorman walk across the studio floor just prior to the aborted newscast which would have revealed the true nature of the aliens. NBC's Standards and Practices, concerned about viewer confusion, wouldn't allow the NBC News logo to be used at the top of the breaking news bulletin sequence hence the generic caption slide.
Three weeks before the mini-series aired, “The Visitors are our Friends” posters, without reference to V or NBC, started to appear across America. Two weeks ahead of transmission, all the posters were defaced with a spray-painted “V” just as in the programme. One week later, transmission details were added.
Because of a mistake during shooting, Johnson didn't have the right coverage of the scene where David sits down. As a work-round, Johnson reverses the shot where David sits so he appears to be standing again. If the shot ran any longer, it would be obvious he was walking backwards.
The first Resistance meeting, at the laundry, was shot on 1 November, the 16th day of shooting.
Johnson himself comes from, by his own account, a very anti-semetic household.
Each laser blast cost $1,000. The full visual effects budget clocked in at around $1.3 million.
When Julie spins her VW, it's a stuntman in a blond wig doing the turn. Faye Grant did much of the driving, of the lorry and the car, in this sequence.
V's 'heroic theme', first introduced at the conclusion of the first night, comes from the 4th movement of Beethoven's 5th. The score was recorded by a 60 piece orchestra.
The small town where Donovan's ex-wife and son live is filmed in Monrovia. The damage to the street is all dressing.
There's a reflection of the boom mike in the glass of the picture as Daniel uncorks the champagne.
Katie is heard crying even when the young actress obviously isn't.
The production clocked up a lot of overtime to hit its airdates.
The El Tepiac reference is (or was) a Mexican restaurant in East LA frequented by cast and crew.
The tunnel HQ is the old Belmont tunnel, part of LA's underground railway system, running from the city to Pasadena and built in 1925. After its closure as a subway it was used to store emergency provisions intended to feed the inhabitants of the city after a nuclear attack. In the late 1960s the tunnel started leaking so the food supplies were removed and cars, captured from criminals, were stored instead. The interiors were filmed at an old abandoned bank building. The production had to return to the location to reshoot scenes already in the can featuring Dunne. Johnson painted the red V's on the walls himself.
The only dissolve in the whole mini-series is when Daniel sits alone at the dining table.
Donovan's semi-fall from the walkway at the Visitor plant was improvised by Singer (not a stuntman) on the night of the shoot.
Johnson wrote the lyrics for the Choral music while the human prisoners are loaded onto the Visitor transport (and reused for the climax at the mountain camp). In English, before Johnson had them translated, they are “Don't take my children, don't hurt my children. Don't bring harm to them.”
Johnson's original plan to use an oil refinery for the alien plant was nixed when the owners wouldn't allow the production team to set-off assorted explosions. The steam plant proved to be a more accommodating alternative. The explosives fitted by the Resistance were really propane-fuelled which created a big explosion but little damage. Some of the explosions at the plant were stock miniature effects from another production.
Diana's hair is made to look deliberately serpent-like.
The Mothership's corridors and quarters were filmed on stages 8 and 9 at the CBS studios. As previously noted, the docking bay was filmed at Warner Brothers. The sets were designed so they could be lit by the 'natural' lighting on the set ('hidden' behind tracing paper). The hatches deliberately have a turtle-shell design.
The lighting on the Landing Bay set was so intense that, on one occasion it triggered the stage's sprinkler system and, another time, overloaded the Warner Brothers fusebox.
Barbara (the Visitor who gives her uniform to Donovan and gets semi-naked in the process) would have become a recurring character, developing a relationship with Donovan, had Johnson continued to oversee the show beyond this initial mini-series.
It isn't Singer in the scene in the ally. Because of the lengths of the shooting days he couldn't appear in the night shoot and a double had to be used.
Some of the laser rifles were “working” props with small working monitors fitted as gun sights.
As Donovan walks the Mothership corridor before entering the crafts darker areas, we see almost the entire corridor set built for the production. As he walks through the dark corridor of the hold area with Martin after finding out the truth about the alien mission, almost the entirety of that set is shown.
As the Skyfighter explodes after Ruby's attack it is visible darker than the other shots in the sequence because it was completed late in the evening after the day's shoot ran late.
As the truck approaches the STOP sign outside the Visitor facility the sequence was originally shot in reverse so the truck started at the sign and reversed away. The stuntman playing the Visitor trooper walked backwards to complete the illusion when the shot was reversed. The whole Resistance attack was filmed in one day on 14 December 1982.
Johnson said he wanted the hold of the Mothership to sound like a whale and ultimately created the sound himself in a cupboard.
The water and human storage areas were small sets enhanced by matte paintings.
One Skyfighter interior was built, all the other ships are hollow shells. A separate set, divided into front and rear sections, was built to film the interiors against bluescreened exteriors.
When the Skyfighter loops-the-loop, Robin's hair defies gravity.
The flying footage, filmed with a helicopter, is speeded-up slightly. Look out for the waves crashing onto the beach.
One of the most expensive visuals of the piece (cost: $75,000) is as the Skyfighters fly over the Jeep as everyone heads for the Resistance mountain camp.
The exploding Skyfighter as it collides with the hillside is a post-production effect as the crew weren't allowed to detonate any explosives at the location.
When Julie is firing at Diana's Skyfighter, she is really firing at a helicopter so that Grant has something to relate to.
The very final shot of the production is where Diana's mask is partially destroyed by Donovan's surprise attack on her Skyfighter.
Broadcast standards wouldn't allow the gun to be put straight to the head so the finished shot is a compromise. The reunion scene had already been shot with Dunne and had to be remounted.
Johnson's cut, allowing for commercials, overran by 15 minutes. Unable to find a cut, he handed his over-long edit to Brandon Tartikoff at NBC for his input. Rather than hack into the first night, Tartikoff allowed it an extra 15 minutes, airing from 9pm to 11.15pm.
The mini-series had a 40% share and over 80 million viewers each night, the highest rated show NBC had aired in more than 2.5 years.
Chuck Davis, V's production designer and long-time Johnson collaborator died shortly after the mini-series was created. Johnson still has his pencil and eraser displayed in a small glass case so that he always remembers him, his advice and creative contributions.
The GTE radio telescope facility was used for numerous small scenes and pick-up shots with various small and partial sets constructed in the lobby area.
The production added Latin lyrics to Beethoven's music (a combination of the Fifth and Seventh symphonies) for the closing credits. Translated they are: Glory to the cause, glory to the fallen, glory to the fighters for freedom. Victoria! Victoria!
Johnson had intended the prospect of help from a second alien race to be a false alarm. The signal would be intercepted by the fleet and a false message of hope and assistance sent to make the humans believe that relief was on its way when, really, none would ever come. When Johnson left the project, the whole idea of a second alien race was quietly forgotten.
Over 300 people (on camera and off and at the network) were involved in the creation of 'V”.
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