20 Things You Didn't Know About Saw

Astoundingly, the entire film of Saw was shot in 18 days. Isn't that mind-blowing? The actors must've rehearsed the scenes like crazy to make sure they didn't make any mistakes, right?

Nope. Only five days was spent on pre-production and there was no time for rehearsals. Sometimes, the director, James Wan, only shot one take of some shots before moving on.

As Wan looked at the dailies, he noticed glaring errors e.g. boom mic popping into the shot, visible shadows from the crew members, etc. Although Wan had to reshoot scenes, he didn't have the time to fix every mistake and so, had to get creative.

While Wan looked back on his original short of Saw, he had an idea. For the short film, Wan used an editing effect where the shot moved at top-speed while being interspliced with erratic cuts. Although this was done to make the scene more chaotic, Wan decided to implement the technique in the film to hide errors in the scenes.

Also, if a mistake occurred while characters were giving exposition, the shot usually cut to evidence photos, flash-backs, or newspaper clippings. Basically, Wan proved a film can get away with glaring errors if the director is really sneaky.