10 Movies That Took Extreme Measures To Shoot Scenes
1. The Director Told NASA They Were Filming A Documentary (Not A Found Footage Film) - Operation Avalanche
2016's found footage conspiracy thriller Operation Avalanche follows a pair of CIA agents who infiltrate NASA to investigate a Soviet mole, only to find themselves caught up in a plot to fake the 1969 Moon landings.
Incredibly, the film's NASA-set scenes were actually shot on-location at NASA, with director Matt Johnson concocting the ruse that he and his crew were student filmmakers making a documentary about the Apollo program.
In turn, NASA not only granted them access to their facilities, but even put them in touch with real NASA personnel whose interviews actually appear in the final movie. Johnson said:
"It was hard as you think it would be to shoot the center of the movie inside Mission Control at NASA. There were like, 40 people watching us through soundproof glass while we were on a tour, and nobody could know that's what we were shooting, so we had to sneak into rooms and rejoin our tour group before it moved on.
I can’t describe how intense those scenes were, filming during a behind-the-scenes tour of Mission Control. While the room is pretty well preserved, it also has a lot of modern signage, so we had to disassemble stuff with screwdrivers and then put it back where we found it."
And because that wasn't crazy enough, Johnson also flew to London's Shepperton Studios and undertook some guerrilla filming at the studio's 2001: A Space Odyssey exhibit.
No matter what you make of the film itself - it's pretty good, by the way - it's hard not to admire Johnson's sheer ballsiness in conducting such a sneaky, potentially distastrous shoot.