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The Fifth Element(1997)
Director:Luc Besson
Cinematographer:Thierry Arbogast
2nd unit DOP:Nick Tebbet
Production Designer:Dan Weil
Key grip:Joe Celeste
Camera grip:Jean Pierre Mas
Stunt coordinator:Marc Boyle
Costume Designer:Jean-Paul Gaultier
Visual Effects supervisor:Mark Stetson
Creature Effects supervisor:Nick Dudman
Miniature Effects supervisor:Niels Nielsen
Visual Effects DOP:Bill Neil
Special Effects supervisor:Neil Corbould
Pyrotechnics supervisor:Thaine Morris
Luc Besson said he started writing the screenplay when he was 16, creating the vivid fantasy universes to combat the boredom he experienced living in rural France. But it didn't reach the screen until he was 38 years old; by that time, he felt he was old enough to actually have something to say about life.
According to costume designer Jean Paul Gaultier, the enfant terrible of the fashion world who once gave Madonna conical breasts, designed the futuristic costumes for The Fifth Element—more than 1000 of them. He didn't just design them, either For crowd scenes, where there might be hundreds of extras wearing his costume designs, he'd go around making adjustments to ensure everyone looked right before the cameras rolled.
According to Gaultier, Besson had lined up Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts, and Prince to play the leads in 1992, before financial problems delayed the project. (It's not clear whether any of them had officially signed on or were merely considering it.) Besson arranged for Gaultier to meet with Prince when the singer was in Paris so he could show him sketches of his designs. The meeting proved awkward (as one assumes many meetings with Prince are), and The Purple One later told Besson that he found the costumes "a bit too effeminate." It's entirely possible that the production delays would have prevented Prince from committing anyway, but it's fun to think about what Ruby Rhod would have been like in different hands. Gaultier had also unwittingly offended Prince with his description of one proposed outfit, a mesh suit with a padded, fringe-bedecked rear. Gaultier kept referring to this part of the suit as a "faux cul" ("fake ass"), but because of his thick accent, he said Prince misheard him as saying, "F-\-\- you!" Tucker has said he took inspiration from both Prince and Michael Jackson in crafting his performance as Ruby Rhod.
When filming began, the production decided to dye Milla Jovovich's hair from its natural brown color to her character's signature orange color. However, due to the fact that her hair had to be re-dyed regularly to maintain the bright color, Milla's hair quickly became too damaged and broken to withstand the dye. Eventually a wig was created to match the color and style of Leeloo's hair, and was used for the remainder of the production.
Luc Besson, an admitted comic book fan, had two famous French comic book artists in mind for this movie's visual style when he started writing the movie in high school, Jean Giraud (Moebius) and Jean-Claude Mézières. Both artists have long-standing comic book series in France. Moebius is best known for "Blueberry" and the (French) Magazine and (U.S.) movie Heavy Metal (1981). Mézières is best known for the "Valerian" series. Both series are still in production today. Moebius and Mezieres, who attended art school together but had never collaborated on a project until this movie, started renderings for this movie in the early 1990s and are responsible for the majority of the overall look of the movie, including the vehicles, spacecrafts, buildings, human characters, and aliens. However, only Giraud is credited, and even then, he wasn't even granted a premium when the movie was eventually produced.
Some of the most memorable moments from the film are views of a future New York, complete with flying cars and a mass of new and old skyscrapers. The film was one of Digital Domain’s huge miniature shows released that year – the others being Dante’s Peak and Titanic – while also heralding the fast-moving world of CGI in the movies. The New York scenes were created using a combination of CGI (for the flying cars), live action (the people), and scale models (the buildings). A crew of 80 on the production design team spent five months building dozens of city blocks at 1/24th scale.The visual effects for The Fifth Element were realized with a masterful combination of motion control miniatures, CG, digital compositing and effects simulations by Digital Domain. The flying traffic created by the visual Effects team allowed artists to create personalized license plates. Though never visible in the movie, the state slogan printed on all license plates reads "New York, The F***-You State."The people populating the roofs, decks, and windows during the visual effects sequences in New York City are the artists and employees at Digital Domain.
The text scrolling across a Times Square theater marquee as Korben dives down through traffic is actually an excerpt from an e-mail dispute between several artists at Digital Domain. Other signs on digital and practical, miniature buildings contain similar in-jokes and references and the large cylindrical tanker truck that Korben's cab almost hits at the end of his descent is decorated with the logo of a Venice, California, pizza parlor that was a favorite of Digital Domain artists.
‘You know, Mark, I don’t want to do these ‘fancy panning around and seeing the whole world shots’. I’d much rather set a camera looking down a street, having a cab rush towards me, and cut as it passes by, and then cut to a reverse of it passing by, and construct my film that way.’ – The Fifth Element visual effects supervisor Mark Stetson relates what director Luc Besson said to him about staging the film’s New York City shots.
This was Mark Stetson’s first visual effects supervisor role, this is what he had to say about it in a VFX blog article
Mark Stetson: I wasn’t afraid of the size of it. I didn’t think it was huge at the time. I mean, it was sort of standard tent pole-ish at the time and I was confident that I could do that, but it was my first one and there was a ton I had to learn, especially about digital visual effects. And I was very supported by Digital Domain. It was Digital Domain 1.0 back then, and they really gave me a great team. It was a great experience all around.
During the prep period, cinematographer Thierry Arbogast worked extensively with production designer Dan Weil to integrate various lighting units — primarily fluorescent and occasionally ultraviolet fixtures — within the sets themselves. More often than not, the futuristic spaces dictated the types of fixtures that could be used.
Arbogast had some challenges on the film he said this about the opera scene.
“Most of the lights you see in the opera house were already there. The difficulty was in lighting the people in the audience without illuminating the white facades of the balcony. Therefore, we used a lot of flags to focus our lighting precisely on the people.”
Gary Oldman played Zorg as a cross between then-Presidential candidate Ross Perot and Bugs Bunny.
In most shots of Gary Oldman, there is a circle around his head. In fact, a circle in the middle of the frame is a nearly constant motif in this movie. Bruce Willis, on the other hand, is more often framed by a rectangle or doorway behind him.
In keeping with the hands-on approach Besson established on Le Dernier Combat and has practiced on all of his successive films — Subway (1985), The Big Blue (1988), Atlantis (1990), La Femme Nikita (1991) and The Professional (1994) — the filmmaker operated the camera himself throughout the entire shoot. While such a working situation is rare for directors working within the Hollywood system, Besson prefers it because he can maintain better control of the onscreen action. "I create the frame and the movement within it," he explains. "Why lose time explaining everything to someone else? He's going to be slightly off, and then I'm going to freak out and say, 'No, this is not what we discussed. I want the camera here!' So it's better for everyone involved if I just do it myself.
"I write each action scene as if it is a ballet; the movements fit with the music. Generally, I'll shoot a fight sequence for 10 days using just one or two cameras and a very small crew. I've already written out the fight scene in my head, shot by shot. I do this for each and every sequence so that we can just shoot it, and then put the scene together in the editing room. At the same time, when you're on the set, you can have an idea at the last moment; you realize that from a different angle the light might be better, so you change the perspective [of the shot]. But I'll always write down and block out this [new] progression."
The explosion in the Fhloston main hall was the largest indoor explosion ever filmed. The resulting fire almost went beyond control. It took twenty-five minutes to put out.
At the time, it was the most expensive movie ever produced outside of Hollywood, most expensive French production history, and at $80 million USD, the visual effects budget of the movie was the highest of its time.
The wonder on Bruce Willis' face when the Diva sings is real. That was the first time he'd heard it and seen the actress in full make-up.
Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Chris Tucker and Gary Oldman are all left-handed.
The director had been married to Maïwenn Le Besco, who plays the Diva Plavalaguna, since 1992 (when she was 16 and he was 33, but that's another story). She didn't want to be in the film, adhering to the old adage that married people shouldn't work together and co-workers shouldn't marry each other. But when the actress Besson had cast as the Diva dropped out, Le Besco took the part got painted blue and gave a memorable performance. Alas, Besson didn't share his wife's policy of not mixing work with relationships. He left her during the production for Milla Jovovich, whom he married at the end of 1997 and divorced two years later... then that happened
From Mental floss,vfx blog,ASCmag article,IMDb,YouTube visual element doc.
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