Movies - TV
How The Twilight Zone Used Its Bare-Bones Budget To Set The World On Fire
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
The “Twilight Zone” episode titled “The Midnight Sun” follows a painter named Norma as the Earth drifts closer to the sun, causing the world to burn from the overwhelming heat.
From a filmmaking perspective, the episode had much to cover. However, writer Rod Serling and director Anton Leader only had a few days to shoot and a meager budget of $52,577.
In Marc Scott Zicree’s book “The Twilight Zone Companion,” Leader recalled some of the low-budget ways he and his crew depicted extreme heat in a pinch.
In one of the episode’s climatic moments, Norma’s painting of a waterfall melts off the canvas and is distorted. Leader revealed this was done by painting on a hot plate with wax.
The director also employed make-up tricks to make the actors look like they were sweating. TV sets were generally hotter in 1961 due to a lack of air conditioning.
Leader asked the electrical grip to add heat to some scenes, saying, “It made us distinctly uncomfortable, but I think it helped us develop the feeling that we had of heat.”
However, he ensured not to overdo it with additional heat, saying, “We would have just been plain simply miserable and angry with each other for being involved in this thing.”