Resident Evil began eleven weeks of principal shooting on March 5, 2001, at the Studio Adlershof in East Berlin and on location at the Reichstag U-balm station, Landsberger Allee, Kaserne Krampnitz and the Schloss Linstedt. Producer Jeremy Bolt notes, "We did scout locations all over Europe from Latvia to the Ukraine and looked at underground bunkers in Great Britain and the old German nuclear one in Bonn. The hunkers would have needed a lot of set decoration because they were all too Second World War period looking for our purposes. But it was the Reichstag station that sold us on making the movie in Berlin although we had done some prep at London's Shepperton Studios. The production value in using the Reichstag as the underground entrance into the Hive was so in tune with Richard Bridgland's overall design we just had to make the film in Berlin."
"When you write the script you have an idea of what the picture is going to be and in post-production you can only change things to a certain extent," says Anderson. "But actually creating on set is what makes me happy. I love coming on set every day with a total plan worked out knowing it can completely fall apart in seconds. It's stressful and crazy, yet incredibly thrilling and energizing."
Milla Jovovich can attest to that. "Paul always suggests character elements and personality traits that I'd never even thought of. He knows what he wants; yet he will give you the leeway to experiment. A case in point is an early choice I had to make which turned Resident Evil into one of the most difficult challenges of my career. There's a pivotal scene where Spence and Alice jump for a gun at the same time. I reach it first, but to make the scene really work, it made sense for Alice to fall in a pool of water. Did I want to spend the rest of the movie soaking wet and having to be doused down before every scene just to supply the buzz of total authenticity? I told Paul I would do what was best for the picture and then, of course, a whole wet eternity stretched out before me.
"Paul is thoroughly prepared," notes Martin Crewes, "And he has a great phrase he uses when you make suggestions and he doesn't like them - 'Not in my Army.' He's very open to ideas from the actors but is also very quick to decide if they are right or wrong. A case in point is some ad-libbing I did when I disarmed the Red Queen computer. I kept using the term 'baby' as in 'Don't do this, baby' and 'Be good to me, baby' but Paul axed that. The same thing happened over the sideburns on my face. The hairdresser loved them, but the moment Paul said, 'Not in my Army' we both knew they had to go!"
"Prior to principal photography we all took part in three weeks of commando training," says Crewes. "Former Navy Seal Jaymes Butler is our collective personal trainer and he put us through our Boot Camp paces and gave us character-building assignments. It was important that we looked like a team who would rely on each other in times of stress. Resident Evil has been physically draining for all of us from a stunt point of view."
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