When The X-Files was commissioned, series creator Chris Carter had originally planned for filming to be done in his home city of Los Angeles. Most television productions at the time were filmed in LA, and Carter was already familiar with this due to his earlier TV work for Disney.
What cut this short was Carter's insistence on realism; he had wished for an alien abduction premise set in the Pacific Northwest (also the setting of
Twin Peaks, which Carter named as an inspiration), and nowhere in California was able to pass as the region.
Carter opted to move all filming to Vancouver, both for British Columbia's landscape and to save on the budget. This raised a new problem as, in 1993, Vancouver did not yet have any established makeup effects studios the same way California did.
Instead,
The X-Files makeup effects were handled by Toby Lindala, who had been brought on the show by makeup artist Fern Levin. Lindala to that point had no real experience in the industry for doing special makeup effects, as he explained to Fangoria;
'I started out on a pretty low-budget scifi/horror show called Xtro II, creating a bunch of effects gags of a creature mutilating people. I also did a lot of straight make-up which gives you more of a connection with real skin tones and facial features rather than going way over the top in sculpture and painting. It helps when you study the actual anatomy of people and things'.
In the series first season, Lindala worked entirely alone, with his 'studio' being his basement! Lindala's duties on the first season were mostly simple 'straight makeup' jobs, such as a nosebleed gag in the pilot episode, and burn wound makeups in 'Fire' and 'Miracle Man'.
Lindala's burn wound makeup on Dennis Lipscomb in 'Miracle Man'
Lindala's first special makeup job was the episode 'Ice', which required shots of parasitic worms crawling under people's skin. Lindala explained how he achieved the effect in Cinefantastique;
'
I wanted to keep it really subtle so you could see the shadow of something moving under the skin. We made casts of the backs of the actors’ necks, and [when] reproduced, would match into all the wrinkles and folds of their necks. Underneath that we made this channel, a kind of S-curve on the one side and an arc on the other, which housed a cable. On the S-curve we had two monofilaments coming off a row of beads which we drilled holes into. We rigged it up so you could puppeteer these beads under the skin and make them inch along, so they would spread out. By pulling the other cable you could make them contract. It worked quite effectively.'
For the sequence of an infected dog - much harder to do a makeup appliance job on - Lindala utilized the same technique but instead with a hair-punched gelatin appliance stretched over a jug, and the resulting effect was shot in close-up
Even with these simple makeup jobs, Lindala ran into problems; early takes of the nosebleed gag in 'Pilot' would fail causing fake blood would gush from the actress' hair instead, and the 'Ice' appliances often kept tearing. Lindala feared that his first major gig would also be his last.
After 'Ice', Lindala started tackling more complicated makeup effects; for the episode 'Young at Heart', Lindala had to make a salamander-like hand prosthetic.
Later on, Lindala was tasked the werewolf-themed 'Shapes', an episode that was made because, as director David Nutter said, 'We need a monster show, the masses want a monster show.' So that was a monster show for the (first) season.'
Lindala was able to realize the 'manitou' transformation via simple means; actor Ty Miller's forehead and cheekbones were built up with makeup to imply his skull structure was changing, with fake teeth and contact lenses completing the look.
To give the transformation a grisly touch, Lindala made a a gelatin hand puppet, that was built so that the 'skin' would rip, with the hair-punched appliance underneath showing through the tears, echoing myths of werewolves having wolf hides under their human skin.
Lindala's 'Shapes' transformation puppet, with the actor of course out of shot!
There was still not enough money nor time to fabricate a proper 'manitou' suit. To solve this, Carter hired bits and pieces from Greg Cannom back in LA. Cannom provided Lindala with a suit Cannom's team had fabricated for 1987's Werewolf series, and a mask Cannom had made for the barn sequence in The Howling.
To polish up the mask and suit for its
X-Files guise, Cannom also sent over Steve Prouty (now owner of Fusion FX), who assisted Lindala in redressing the
Howling mask with a new hairdo.
The Werewolf suit and Howling mask supplied by Greg Cannom in 'Shapes'
The Howling mask being redressed by Prouty and Lindala for 'Shapes'
Lindala also had the task of creating corpse props, such as the dessicated corpse in 'Darkness Falls', and the frozen alien fetus in 'The Erlenmeyer Flask'. This would become a recurring job for Lindala in later seasons.
Lindala used medical books for inspiration when sculpting the 'Erlenmeyer Flask' fetus, and made three different designs. Lindala explained in Cinefantastique;
'We wanted it big enough that we could have some detail in it, have it definitely discernible and have it at the stage where it was beyond embryonic. The first one was a wet glaze sculpture to give us our basic dimensions.
The second sculpture looked a lot like Gazoo from The Flintstones (...) Since it was an alien you don’t really have to follow any particular physiology, so I made a rendition where we had a body just bordering the embryo stage. Chris Carter was really happy about it.'
Even this more relatively simple effect gave problems for Lindala, as the sculpture would have to be pulled out of liquid nitrogen on camera. Lindala recalled in Fangoria;
'When you pull something out of (liquid nitrogen), it's still quite wet and frosts over, then steam comes off of it because of the vast temperature change. We ended up making the embryos out of a clear-casting resin. Thank god we had several, because there are a few scenes you won't see in the show.
Gillian pulled out one of the alien fetuses, and it cracked and the back of the head went flying off, all because of the temperature change and the studio lights. Thankfully, we had a couple of back-ups, and I was standing on the side, frantically gluing pieces back on. It was a drastic effect, but it was worth it.'
Sources:
- Cinefantastique Vol 26 No. 6 / Vol 27 No. 1 (October 1995)
- 'F/X EFFECTS LINDALA'S SPECIALTY', Vancouver Sun, October 1997
- 'The FX Files', Fangoria #142
- The Truth is Out There : The Official Guide to the X Files (Brian Lowry, 1998)
- Assorted 'Behind the Truth' featurettes.
