Luc Besson demanded that most of the action shots in “The Fifth Element” (1997) take place in broad daylight, as he was reportedly tired of the dark spaceship corridors and dimly lit planets common in science fiction movies, and wanted a brighter “cheerfully crazy” look as opposed to a gloomy, realistic one.
Besson wrote the original screenplay when he was in high school. He had conceived the story of this movie and invented the world of the movie as a child so he could escape his lonely childhood. He began writing the script when he was 16, though it was not released in theaters until he was 38.
Besson made his hero a taxi driver because his own father worked a second job as a taxi driver. He did this to support Luc going to art school. Luc has a taxi driver in almost all of his movies to honor his father.
At the time, “The Fifth Element” was the most expensive movie ever produced outside of Hollywood, most expensive production in the production company Gaumont’s history, and at $80 million USD, the visual effects budget of the movie was the highest of its time.
The “Divine Language” spoken by Leeloo was invented by Besson, and further refined by Milla Jovovich, who had little trouble learning and developing it, as she was already fluent in four languages. The language had only 400 words. He and Jovovich held conversations and wrote letters to each other in the language as practice. By the end of filming, they were able to have full conversations in this language. (IMDb)