When time is tight on a shooting schedule, you have to grab props from wherever you can. When you get the opportunity to snag a blue laser light that The Who was testing out next door, you can't turn that down! Talk about luck that they would be practicing in the sound stage next door and have sci-fi like equipment handy.
Cash shouldn't have been a problem for the production, however. The film was originally budgeted for $4.2 million, but when 20th Century Fox saw Ridley Scott's storyboards they instantly doubled it. The plans were so strong, the studio became confident enough to throw $8.4 million at the film, a huge cost at the time of the film's making.
