The Production Guide
Script To Screen: Earthbound
by Martin Willey

First the crew finishes the Diagnostic Unit scenes from Friday. Anton Phillips and the Kaldorian are not present, so this is likely to be close-up reaction shots. All this would be completed within one hour.

Next, the Power Station, which is actually the standing set of Koenig's Command Office redressed. The same set was seen in Black Sun, and they brought two of the actors on the set back too, Jack McKenzie (the bearded actor who is held hostage), and Richard Eden (at the end desk, we only see the back of his head). The security guard who is shot is George Leech, normally Barry Morse's stunt double. McKenzie, Eden and the third technician, Guy Croen, were also in the corridor crowd scene the previous day.

This publicity shot is from the missing scene 79, showing Zantor in the power station and described here.

Next, we move to M stage, with the first scenes in the alien spaceship. The initial scenes are supposed to be a lunar gravity, so they are filmed with a high speed camera (you can see the lights on their chest packs flashing much faster in these shots; when Helena and Koenig talk, the lights slow are normal speed). The camera pans across the set as the astronauts look at the transparent caskets; the crew use an Elemack Spyder dolly, a type of camera mount with a single hydraulic column, probably mounted on rails.

Preparing one of the early shots in the spaceship, either 18th or 19th March. Left to right, in the casket is Christopher Lee, then director Charles Crichton, cameraman Neil Binney, lighting cameraman Frank Watts, assistant director Ken Baker, art director Keith Wilson. In one of the shots below you can see Martin Landau in the background, sitting as he waits for filming to start.