10 Genius Movie Tricks You Totally Take For Granted
1. Building An Actual Tilting Bar Set - Inception
There's no denying that Christopher Nolan's Inception is one of the most brilliantly audacious blockbusters of the last 20 years - a mesmerising marvel of VFX and practical trickery working in harmonious tandem.
And while it's widely known that Nolan had an actual rotating hallway set built for the iconic gravity-defying hotel fight scene, it ultimately ended up overshadowing another of the film's most impressive in-camera effects sequences.
Mid-way through the movie, Fischer (Cillian Murphy) is approached in a hotel bar by Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio), and because this is a dream taking place inside another dream, the laws of physics start breaking down, causing objects in the bar to start swaying around.
While it would've been "easy" for a filmmaker to just shoot the scene in a regular bar and do the tough stuff digitally in post, Nolan instead decided to have an entire tilting bar set built to execute it for real.
The set could be mechanically tilted by the crew, ensuring that light fixtures and the liquid inside of glasses would realistically sway around.
However, it was also a little more complicated than that - camera equipment had to be bolted to the floor to stop it moving around, and extras for the scene had to be auditioned to ensure they could remain seated while the set was tilted from side to side.
In the grand scheme of things it's a fairly subtle effect in a relatively short scene - at least compared to the more flashy hallway fight - yet Nolan being Nolan, he did it as practically as possible regardless.