The Production Guide
Script To Screen: Force Of Life
by Martin Willey

Script To Screen

• Script: Hook
• Script: Puddles
• Script: Scan
• Call Sheet: NGA3
• Call Sheet: Burnt
• Call sheet: running
• Progress Report

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The 13th day of shooting for Force Of Life was on Thursday 4th July 1974. The cast and crew finished the Main Mission scenes, added a couple of office scenes that originally had been set in Bergman's quarters (described here), and started running through corridors, shots which would be finished the following day.

As the last full day of filming, this was going to be an extended day, filming on into the evening to complete the necessary scenes. As we'll see, filming finished on schedule at 5:20pm.

The next scenes have Koenig, Bergman and the others running into Main Mission (scene 93), experiencing the explosion (scene 95), and then checking reports and watching the blue light leave Alpha (scene 96). The call sheet specifies the blue light through the windows on Koenig and Bergman as they look out ("the birth of a star?")

Next we have two scenes in Koenig's office, and as the parenthesis reveals, they were originally intended to be in Bergman's quarters (see the script). The other three scenes set in Koenig's office were shot on Tuesday 2nd July. It would have been practical to have filmed these scenes at the same time, as it's just Landau and Morse again, and the radiographic plate for scene 22 was also seen in scene 31. The set for Bergman's quarters was also required for Alpha Child and used for filming on Monday 8th July, just a few days later. Perhaps it was not ready; whatever the reason, it was a last minute decision to switch the set location.

The episode had started doing corridor scenes, back on Tuesday 28th May, continuing Wednesday and Thursday. The corridor scenes for 4th July were stand-by (on a different stage, H, not mentioned on this call sheet), and the crew were not confident they would film any of them, even on an extended day. Instead, they completed all the shots, all by normal finishing time of 5:20pm.

The big scene here is 85, which begins with Bergman stumbling ("not the best of climates for a mechanical heart.") and the confrontation with Zoref - but Ian McShane is not present today. All the shots with Zoref for scene 85 were filmed on Monday 1st July, in front of the generating area doors. The reverse view, of Koenig, Alan, Bergman and the guards, was filmed today, on 4th July.

Finally there are more running scenes, as Koenig and the others run away from the nuclear generating area, falling over as the explosions are felt.

There was just one "running" scene left for the following day, with an assortment of earlier corridor scenes from the episode, all finished in the morning before the crew moved to the next episode, Alpha Child in the afternoon. See the call sheet for Friday 5th July.