20 Things You Probably Missed In Speed

20. The Elevator Shaft In The Opening Titles Is A Miniature

Who can forget the movie's iconic opening titles, where we travel down a soon-to-be-tampered-with elevator shaft while Mark Mancina's pulse-racing musical score blares out?

Though you'd be forgiven for assuming that director Jan de Bont just... did it for real, by rigging up a camera and passing it down the elevator shaft, this actually wasn't the case at all.

The sequence was achieved with use of elaborate miniatures: de Bont had the production build a 35-foot miniature of the shaft, which was then laid horizontally as the camera dollied along it.

This is especially impressive considering that the shot ends with the camera dollying away from the shaft towards the maintenance entrance, which is presumably also part of the miniature.

De Bont is a huge fan of practical filmmaking wherever possible, so it certainly follows that he'd rather "go miniature" than resort to CGI if it wasn't possible to use a real elevator shaft.