15 Times a Movie Didn’t Spend the Money You Thought They Did
Movies are very good at making expensive things appear even more expensive. A massive spaceship only exists one room at a time, and a sinking ocean liner only needs one finished side. A futuristic computer display can be made with reflective tape, and one of cinema’s most famous explosions can happen in a parking lot using a model truck. Sometimes the trick comes from a tight budget, sometimes from practicality, and sometimes because an old-fashioned illusion simply works better than throwing more money at the problem. The result is usually invisible until somebody explains how it was done. Here are 15 times filmmakers got something huge onscreen without spending nearly what the finished scene makes you assume.
Titanic Only Needed One Good Side
The enormous Titanic set was primarily built on one side, so James Cameron sometimes flipped footage horizontally instead of constructing an equally detailed second side of the ship.
Alien Used Children to Make the Ship Look Bigger
Ridley Scott put three children in scaled-down spacesuits for wide shots, making the Nostromo’s already substantial landing gear and the derelict spacecraft appear even more enormous.
Gandalf Was Not Actually Sitting Beside a Tiny Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings used carefully arranged forced perspective, split furniture, camera placement, and moving rigs to make actors appear dramatically different in size without relying entirely on digital effects.
Elf Built Two Rooms Instead of Shrinking Anyone
To make Buddy tower over the North Pole elves, Elf relied heavily on forced perspective and differently scaled sets rather than digitally resizing Will Ferrell in every shot.
Psycho Used Chocolate Syrup for Blood
The shower scene did not require elaborate artificial blood. In black and white, watered-down chocolate syrup photographed convincingly enough to become one of horror’s most famous visual tricks.
Independence Day Blew Up a Much Smaller White House
The White House destruction in Independence Day was created with a detailed scale model, practical pyrotechnics, and compositing rather than demolishing anything remotely close to the real building.
Stay Puft Was Basically a Guy Stomping Through a Model City
The giant marshmallow monster in Ghostbusters was a performer in a foam suit walking through a miniature Central Park West set, filmed at high speed to make him feel enormous.
Indiana Jones Was Running From Fiberglass
The giant boulder chasing Indy in Raiders of the Lost Ark looked lethally heavy, but the famous prop was made from lightweight materials including fiberglass rather than solid stone.
Eternal Sunshine Made Jim Carrey Small With Perspective
For the scene where adult Joel appears child-sized beneath a kitchen table, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind used forced perspective instead of digitally shrinking Jim Carrey.
Star Wars Blew Up a Parking-Lot Death Star
Parts of the Death Star trench were physical miniatures, and some explosion shots were filmed outdoors with high-speed cameras, including a camera mounted on a moving truck.
Escape From New York Faked Computer Graphics With Tape
The futuristic wireframe Manhattan display was not expensive CGI. The effects team outlined a miniature city with reflective tape and photographed it under controlled lighting.
Deadpool Forgot His Guns Because the Movie Needed to Save Money
A late budget cut helped turn an expensive planned gunfight into a joke, with Wade conveniently leaving his bag of weapons behind before the final battle.
Rocky Could Not Afford the Crowd at the Ice Rink
The skating scene was originally envisioned with hundreds of extras, but the production could not afford them, helping turn the nearly empty rink into one of the movie’s most intimate moments.
Godzilla Destroyed a City Built at a Fraction of the Size
The original Godzilla relied on a performer in a monster suit stomping through carefully constructed miniature buildings after extensive stop-motion proved too costly and time-consuming.
The Terminator Blew Up a Seven-and-a-Half-Foot Truck
The tanker explosion near the end of The Terminator looks full-sized, but the production actually destroyed a roughly 7.5-foot model on a miniature street set in a parking lot.