It’s The X-Files: “Fight The Future” Day! The movie premiered…27 years ago already. On that topic, here is an excellent and comprehensive interview with one person that was important in the making of that movie but that we had never heard of previously: storyboard artist Gabriel Hardman, who has had a very full career since! Courtesy of the “Hey Danny It’s Mulder” podcast.

Some notes and highlights:

He did pencilling for comic books. He started doing storyboards when the comic book industry contracted in the mid-1990s. As a huge “Twin Peaks” fan, he went to a book signing with Mark Frost; in the line, he met a guy, they almost collaborated in doing a CD-ROM of what would have been season 3 of “Twin Peaks” [wow TP fans are just as dedicated as TXF fans!]; he introduced him to who became his agent, and got him his X-Files job. He was just 22 years old, it was the first big movie he worked on. The recommendations he got from working on FTF were what got his career going.

In a bungalow in the Fox lot that became Carter & Bowman’s office for the whole shoot, he came in to read the script for what was then called “Blackwood“, it was printed on red paper. He was essentially the first person recruited, and was present for all the shooting until the very last day (not just for pre-production).
Robb Bihun was the other storyboard artist.

He draws visual storyboards, including camera cues, lenses, movement of camera, the frame… He submits an idea to the director, who gives notes, he refines it, does another pass… The storyboards were updated as various design decisions were being made.
Nobody could come up with a good design for the big ship at the end; production designer Chris Nowak told him to give it a shot, this is the drawing that is in the making of book.
He learned a lot from director Rob Bowman, practical things about filmmaking, visual storytelling tricks and ideas, how to design shots interestingly and economically.

He had a good collaboration with director of photography Ward Russell — but it can be that there can be tension between storyboard artist and DP. The DP was who said it was OK for him to direct the second unit. [This was great that he was given this opportunity!]
What he shot was with a helicopter, driving the car in the desert, coming to a stop on a crossroads — the shots without the actors.

He got along well with producer Dan Sackheim — stories about Dan having trouble unboarding a helicopter, and about Dan being stung by a bee!
He flew to the glacier for location scouting. Going on location makes it specific, allows to adjust the storyboards.
Shooting the hives scenes: they needed a wide lens to show the big space, but it was impossible to capture the small bees at the same time. The bees ended up being computer generated, the shooting was complicated by the bees that ended up not being needed.

Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was a big visual influence: the shot of Mulder & Scully in the desert, pull out to reveal a road barricade; or the shot with kids going over a berm, revealing the secret base.
There was going to be a car chase à la “French Connection” (Mulder after the ambulance that got Scully, instead of being shot in the head). The script specifically said “the car chase of Rob Bowman’s dreams”. But it got cut as there was too much in the movie already.

He still has the boards. They were pen & ink and grey marker on paper. The criterion was whether it could be photocopied and faxed well. For references for likenesses he only had some magazines and production photos — no internet, no computers.

About Carter:
Carter stayed in a producer role, he didn’t get in Bowman’s way.
Carl Sagan’s “The Demon-Haunted World” had just come out, and Carter was not thrilled, he thought Sagan got bitter at the end — it turns out 30 years later Sagan was correct. [That magnificent 1995 book about tending the fragile flame of scientific thought against lack of education and superstition came out shortly before Sagan died in 1996.]

https://www.heydannyitsmulder.com/episodes/episode6

Gabriel’s storyboards, in sequence, were included in the Blu Ray for the movie, the whole thing lasts for an hour and it’s like a mini-movie previsualisation itself! The intermediate level between script and what became the image that was captured by the camera.

Can also be found on YouTube: