pre-production, the first month of filming RoboCop 2 were for night filming and Vistavision-camera background plates for Phil Tippett's animated special effects of the final battle scenes. A week spent filming a major sequence at an abandoned steel mill established how Kershner would direct the film's other scenes in terms of acting, lighting, and camera movements. The second unit was directed by Conrad Palmisano and mostly shot in Los Angeles, although a stunt sequence by the unit was reported to be filmed near the entrance of the Wortham Theater Center. it got so busy it was unable to produce all the shots Kershner wanted; this meant the director had to film at the unit for a few weeks. A magazine article published at the time of filming described the environment on set as "hell on earth," with the cast and crew rebelling against Kershner's "obsessive finickyness" and "costly reshoots." However, this was debunked by Weller who said, "Kersh didn't delay anything, he's very, very instinctive - he had his mind made up, usually ahead of time." Kershner said "I didn't shoot a lot of film at all. You see, if I'd tried to do a lot of coverage, I would never have finished. I would have been 120 days. I had to pretty much lock it in, piece by piece by piece, giving myself an out here and there, a variation, so I wasn't totally locked in. That way, I could finish. If I didn't do that, this would have gone on forever. I never would have gotten each day's work done." Although, at the time, Allen praised Kershner for his creativeness and attention to detail, she later criticized the director as antagonistic and ruining the humor and "heart" of the screenplay. Peter Weller was also critical of the script: "RoboCop 2 didn't have a third act. I told the producers and Irv Kershner up front, and Frank Miller. I told them all. I said, 'Where's the third act here, man? So I beat up a big monster. In the third act, you have to have your Dan O'Herlihy. Somebody's got to be the third act.' 'No, no, the monster's going to be enough.' 'Look, it's not enough!'" Despite the script problem, he enjoyed working on the movie with Kershner: "I had a good time making RoboCop 2 but the script did not have the code, the spine, or the