8 Even More Movie Scenes You Didn’t Realise Were Tricking You
2. Short Extras Were Cast To Make The Set Look Bigger - Titanic
Joining Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack and Kate Winslet's Rose on the doomed ocean liner known as the Titanic were an awful lot of guests and crew members.
So, James Cameron was always going to require a ton of extras to fill out the background in various scenes during his eventual 1997 hit. Instead of booking a great many inflatable dummies to chuck into these moments, however, Cameron had to hire the real deal.
But it was during that extras casting process when the director had a brilliant idea.
The Avatar and Aliens director obviously wanted to get as much value as possible out of his rather expensive and quite large set. His plan? Only casting extras that were under 5ft 8", with these shorter actors tricking audiences into believing they were taking in a set that was even bigger than it actually was.
In Cameron's own words to the Los Angeles Times, "We only cast short extras so it made our set look bigger. Anybody above 5’8”, we didn’t cast them. It’s like we got an extra million dollars of value out of casting."
Though even that creative casting trick still couldn't stop the movie from becoming the most expensive one ever made at the time.