10 Making-Of Movie Secrets Hidden In Plain Sight
A Rebel pilot's shoulder straps are held together with bubble wrap. Seriously.
What is the magic of filmmaking if not transporting audiences to another world and making them truly believe in the reality of that world?
Hollywood is built on selling the beautiful lie to viewers en masse, of so convincingly faking a fantasy that we forget we're watching an artificial construction.
But sometimes, whether for practical reasons or because the filmmakers want to wink at the audience, films actually leave some of their production tricks and secrets hiding in plain sight.
These 10 movies, largely accepted to be technically marvelous entries into their respective genres, all left a majorly telling technical flourish in clear view, yet only the most observant of viewers would likely ever know quite what they're looking at.
From strange and unexpected visual effects tricks to set props sneaked into shot, fascinating production shortcuts, and everything in-between, these secrets were all ingeniously hidden in the frame while most audience members were totally unaware.
Above all else, they're a testament to the fact that sufficiently talented directors and craftsfolk can get away with truly ridiculous things, because they're just that damn good at immersing you...
10. Roger Moore Was Painted Into A Scene To Prevent Reshoots - The Spy Who Loved Me
Though reshoots are typically factored into shooting schedules these days, that wasn't always the case, and so in decades past if the director realised a piece of footage was missing while editing their film, they could be left in a real spot of trouble.
But director Lewis Gilbert got creative during post-production on Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me, when he realised that he needed a shot of 007 propped against a wall while sneaking around Egypt.
Rather than bring Roger Moore back for reshoots at presumably considerable expense, Gilbert simply had a matte painting created of Moore leaning against a rock and composited it into the rest of the shot.
Thanks to the scene's generally low-lighting it's surprisingly difficult to spot, though if you crank the brightness up on your TV it sticks out like a sore thumb.
The fact that so few viewers have noticed this more than 40 years later speaks to how ingeniously it solved the problem, really.
As noted on the splendid @SMERSHPOD, a painting of Roger propped against a rock in Spy Who Loved Me, to save a reshoot. Impossible to unsee. pic.twitter.com/80aFaSVpjH
— ali catterall (@AliCatterall) August 1, 2017