9 War Movie Tricks That Totally Fooled You

Shooting on location can cause any number of different problems for different movie productions. While Full Metal Jacket required bringing onto set an abundance of trees to lend a heightened feel of authenticity, Hacksaw Ridge had to deal with quite the opposite.

Mel Gibson's 2016 effort was filmed in Australia. Naturally, this is a very different landscape to Okinawa, Japan, where much of the movie was set. One of the biggest issues production had to tackle was how to shoot without the eucalyptus trees in the background shattering the idea of the scene taking place in Asia.

With a limited budget, VFX wasn't a sustainable option, so instead the crew dug a pit, essentially a huge bowl in a field 12-14 feet deep. This allowed for the cameras to have a full 360-degree turning circle without any trees cropping up.

Then, there was the titular ridge itself. Though an actual cliff was scouted in Australia, it was impossible to get cameras to where they needed to be. Again, the production team began to dig, creating their own ridge on the same field 30 feet deep and 60 feet wide, with scaffolding in place to accommodate the positions of the cameras.