The series began as four two hour made for TV movies.
The success of the movies spawned 20 one hour episodes.
Now in its third season LEXX has mutated once again.
The making of the LEXX
Prior to season III, lexx was shot in studios in both Halifax and Germany.
It had always been ironic to me to move from a studio in Canada
a show which is primarily shot in the... totally shot in studio
to yet another studio thousands of miles away across the ocean
and so I thought why not to take advantage of what Berlin has offered in terms of locations.
Let's find some places and break the show out of the studio
and try to find some interesting locations to take some of the episodes on to.
It's a little tough for all the crew shoot in location
than it is within the certain comfort of the studio where is a lot of control
because - as you know - there're a lot of green screen, a lot of special effects down in the show.
Instead of this we tended to rely on the location to tell the magic of the visuals
rather then creating a lot of camera effects… you know kind of CGA effects.
We let the location kind of to tell us where we are and to understand that location.
We are in the Rudesdorf near Berlin. The very decayed location.
We will soon start to shoot.
We shot in a place called Rudesdorf which was an abandoned cement factory.
And it was abandoned in the late sixties.
And it was pretty hard for all the cast and all the crew, we spent two weeks shooting there.
And snow outside, no windows and there was no way to actually heat the place
that was totally impossible, out of the question…
Scene 9 E take 4
Brian, action
It was a horrible miserable place in many ways
it was dark, dusty so there the problems were…
the crew you know inhaling the bad air and it was dark.
You know the building was kind of falling apart but it wasn't.
So you know under those circumstances things go wrong, things are slow down.
But we were very well propped
so whatever went wrong we could handle.
Scene 12 take 3.
Thank you.
Brian and Xenia action.
Come on, this way!
Cut!
And quiet, please, stop this joking around here we gotta concentrate!
Please keep quiet!
Giggerota… you're alive..
Who's Giggerota?
Underneath here… this is not fake that is a real fire.
So the tub was ending up to be so hot
that the first time I wasn't sure what temperature it had, the tub
So I asked for warm water but in the twelve hour I was starting to hallucinate
because that was so hot
So basically they set this kind fire and the tub would boil
And in the meantime that would also have the dry ice effect
and a smoke effect on top of there
So we're dealing with an old building
with smells and rats and bats,
fire, smoke, dry ice, water
costume that weight eight hundred pounds
and I was still smiling!
Drumsticks, drumsticks, drumsticks, drumsticks!
It was fun and it was challenging
I thing Lexx for an actor is the most incredible experience
I'm laughing at how much fun I had on this because I can basically do everything
I mean, usually you're told 'less is more'....
more is not enough on this show!
Council time, your majesty!
Oh, boring, boring, boring, boring!
Here we are, chilly Thursday morning in Fort Hahneberg
preparing for a run-for-head shot with Stanly Tweedle
running from the psychopathic homicidal maniacs
We're like in the shadows
Underneath this fortress there are these tunnels
a maze of tunnels that are quite beautifully build
this is round beautiful brickwork in kind of a little labyrinth of tunnels
So we spent… yes, two weeks shooting in these tunnels
So we achieved some interesting visual elements with these tunnels
It was really fun to backlight, you know…
Play the sound in these tunnels…
play the maze of running through
It was wonderful cos there… it was an amazing building
There were these long, long tunnels which would go up.... and then down
into nothing, into nowhere, just into darkness
And a couple of shots… we've done long shots of us walking
just walking, walking, walking toward the camera
which looked amazing
But it was just freezing. I remember one time I meant to be on Fire
which is very hot and I'm talking down into a hole to Stanly
And all I can see is my breath coming out all the time
And they say "Can you see it on the camera?" "Yeah, we can…"
Well, you can stay down there if you want to, Stanley,
but I have to tell you that They never come up here
So we had a big heater down in the hole
and a fen blowing it up so that I didn't have a cold breath
Crazy
We'll be at hell soon and we'll be in heaven on Monday mourning
- I feel exactly the same way. - You do?
Yeah. Lily, I wanna water your garden.
Will you let me do that?
I wanna water your garden…
We shot in the botanical gardens in central Berlin
which is an old Jules Verne's architecture of glass and steal structure
Inside - house with these beautiful lush tropical plants and flowers
We were really relieved when we moved into the botanical gardens
It was: oh, god… it's all the way up to ten degrees Celsius here so this is great…
And it was a lovely location
But unfortunately we were there only for a week
I'm enjoying this so much I'm starting to think I must be a little bit autistic
Now.. I gotta say either I'm autistic or my character is autistic whatever...
but being buried in the earth for my character was...
I think that's close to a nice erotic sensation
that Kai has ever... kind of... experienced...
And except for the misadventures of that episode
I think he happily would've stay there,
seriously and very very very determinately
trying to decompose there, under the earth
Why are you buried in the dirt?
It is the natural way of all dead things
Jesus Christ… I almost..
I was just wondering…
what * was I wondering? What was the * line?