MISTAKES/GOOFS

TRIVIA

• For the shower scene in the teaser, production designer Bernard Hides built not only the bathroom and shower set in which Liza Valenti (Austin Highsmith) hid, but a second, identical shower inside a massive glass tank. Under the supervision of special-effects coordinator Kelly Kerby, that tank was filled with 1650 gallons of water. A 4000-gallon water tank was standing by, along with heaters to keep the water warm. Stunt coordinator Danny Weselis supervised the action while Austin simulated drowning in the water, filmed by director of photography Robert Primes using a variety of cameras placed in and outside the water.
• For the scene where Professor Carr (Yancey Arias) walked off a sidewalk that magically became a skyscraper, a set piece was constructed to look like a sidewalk, so that his foot could seem to walk right off the pavement and into the abyss. Our shots looking down were captured from a real skyscraper, while the angles showing Carr hanging from below were accomplished by building a set piece that matched the face of the building. For Carr's fall itself, Yancey was hung on a device called a "hip pick" in front of a "green screen," which created the illusion that he was falling away from camera. Mat Beck and his visual-effects team at Entity FX then composited the actor with "plates" we'd shot downtown to create the illusion that he was falling to his death.
• For the episode "Three", in the climax, which involved Jack Mercer (Gil McKinney) being transported back in time to a dilapidated house from 1994, was staged by building the inside of the house on a sound-stage in Hollywood. To show the before and after, we filmed all the scenes where the house looks as it did in 1994, then our production design and art department teams went to work, making the same set look rundown and dilapidated, as if it had been abandoned for the past 11 years.
• The sequence that involved the least visual trickery for the episode "Three" was the one in which Craig Borten (Lane Garrison) is crushed by a giant snake in his jail-cell bed. In fact, Lane was in bed with a real 16-ft. Burmese python. While at first Lane seemed understandably uncomfortable having a giant snake wrapped around his body, within a few minutes he was gamely wrapping the snake around his own throat and pushing its head toward his own face to make it look like it was slowly crushing him to death.
• For the episode "Three", in the climax it looked particularly convincing when Jack was being chased by the memory of his ax-wielding father and then hit his head against a glass cabinet. There's a reason for that. He did, in fact, accidentally bang the back of his head against the wood, requiring stitches.