conceived and wrote the
X-Filess pilot episode, taking inspiration from the 1970s series
Kolchak: The Night Stalker.
Pre-production When conceiving the episode,
Chris Carter wanted to "scare people's pants off." A notable influence on the episode's conception was
Kolchak: The Night Stalker, a series from the 1970s. This led to the idea of two agents investigating paranormal events. When creating the characters of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, Carter decided to play against established
stereotypes, making the male character a believer and the female a
skeptic, as the latter role had traditionally been a male one on television. When casting the actors for the two main roles, Carter had difficulty finding an actress for Scully. When he cast Gillian Anderson for the part, the
Fox network wanted to replace her. Carter believed they responded negatively towards the casting because "she didn't have the obvious qualities that network executives have come to associate with hit shows." During Anderson's audition, Carter felt that she was a "terrific actress," and in a later interview, he noted: "She came in and read the part with a seriousness and intensity that I knew the Scully character had to have and I knew [...] she was the right person for the part." David Duchovny, on the other hand, was met with a more positive response from Fox, with Carter even saying he was an "early favorite."
Filming Principal photography for "Pilot" took place over fourteen days in March 1993, with a budget of
US$2 million. Filming for the episode took place in and around
Vancouver,
British Columbia, Canada. The series would use the Vancouver area for production for the next five years, although production would move to
Los Angeles from the beginning of the
sixth season at the behest of Duchovny. The scene set in the Bellefleur graveyard was shot in
Queen Elizabeth Park, marking the first time the location had been used to represent a graveyard; the location would later be used for the same purpose in the
fourth season episode "
Kaddish." The interior shots of the psychiatric hospital were filmed in a disused building owned by
Riverview Hospital in
Coquitlam, marking the first time the crew met producer
R. W. Goodwin. The episode's final warehouse scene was filmed in a document warehouse belonging to the headquarters of the Canadian television network
Knowledge. An office in the same building was also used for Scully's briefing at the beginning of the episode. The scenes involving the Smoking Man required special permission to film, to allow actor Davis to smoke in a public building. All of the interior shots of
FBI headquarters were filmed in the main newsroom of the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as the production crew found that the
open plan offices they wished to represent no longer existed, having typically been converted into
cubicles. However, it was found that working around the CBC's broadcast schedule was too unwieldy, and later episodes of the series replicated the location on a
soundstage. The forest scenes were shot on location in
Lynn Valley, in the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve—formerly known as the Seymour Demonstration Forest. The crew spent $9,000 building wooden pathways for equipment, cast, and crew to move easily through the area. Additional scenes were filmed at
BC Hydro headquarters, whilst Scully's apartment was represented by a location used only in this episode and the third episode, "
Squeeze"—use of this location was discontinued once it became apparent that most reverse angles would show a large parking lot across the street. Make-up effects artist Toby Lindala was tasked with creating a prop which would allow actress Sarah Koskoff to simulate a nosebleed on-camera, rather than using off-screen make-up and editing tricks. However, during test shots, the prop's tubing burst, causing the stage blood to begin dripping down Koskoff's forehead, rather than from her nose.
Post-production Post-production work on the episode was completed by May 1993, Stock footage of the exterior of the FBI headquarters was added to the episode, though later episodes would film new exterior shots using
Simon Fraser University as a stand-in location. Two filmed scenes were cut from the final version of the episode. Both featured Tim Ransom as Scully's boyfriend, Ethan Minette. In the first, Minette and Scully meet, with Scully cancelling the vacation plans they had arranged because of her assignment to the Bellefleur case. The second scene briefly shows Scully answering a telephone call from Mulder whilst asleep in bed with Minette, though the latter has no dialogue. The addition of Scully's boyfriend was an attempt by Fox executives to create the romantic interest they felt was missing between Mulder and Scully. Carter ultimately found that it was "very easy" to remove the character from the episode, both because his appearances seemed to slow down the scenes in which Mulder and Scully are together and due to the fact that Carter found Scully's relationship with her FBI partner to actually be more interesting and exciting than her relationship with her boyfriend. ==Broadcast and reception==