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A sneaky CGI trick was key to selling Tom Cruise hanging off the side of a plane.
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00:00What is cinema if not a grand mega budget act of tricking the audience, of making them suspend
00:06their disbelief and simply accept the reality with which they're presented with on screen?
00:11When that full immersive effect kicks in, there's nothing better. And while there are many typical
00:17tricks filmmakers employ to get viewers' defenses down, sometimes they have to think way outside
00:23the box to make it happen. Filmmaking is above all else the art of problem solving,
00:28and these filmmakers all proved they had the nows to come up with mesmerizingly creative solutions
00:32to the issues they fought with on set. Let's get stuck into it, shall we?
00:36I'm Ewan, you're watching WhatCulture, and here are more bizarre ways directors tricked audiences.
00:42Children in spacesuits made the space jockey look bigger. Alien
00:47One of the easiest ways to cheat scale in a movie? Just use children. That's precisely what Ridley
00:52Scott did in his masterpiece, Alien, when he wanted to convey the awe-inspiring scale of the
00:57space jockey discovered by the crew of the Nostromo. Rather than build a large model comparable to the
01:03movie's adult cast, Scott had his two young sons and also the son of cinematographer Derek VanLint work
01:09as stand-ins wearing smaller spacesuits, as was surely both the cheaper and easier option.
01:15And you'd certainly never guess it from the end result. The sense of scale is manipulated quite
01:20perfectly with smart use of camera perspective, in turn leaving us all mesmerized by the space
01:25jockey's gigantic skeleton. Snow White's echoey singing was re-recorded in the toilet. Snow White
01:32and the Seven Dwarfs The first song featured in Snow White
01:36and the Seven Dwarfs is undeniably one of its most memorable and iconic, with Adriana Cazalotti's
01:42eponymous character belting out I'm wishing above a wishing well, where many of her sung lines are
01:48echoed back to her. If you assume that the sound team behind the movie either simply had Cazalotti
01:53record her lines in an echoey environment, or even edited them in post-production to give off
01:58the appropriate reverb, neither is actually true. Hilariously, the sound team were struggling to
02:04create an appropriate echo, and so resorted to taking Cazalotti's vocal recordings into a bathroom,
02:10playing them through a speaker, and then recording the resounding echo, allowing them to create the
02:15famous call and response within the well. This unorthodox sound recording technique is best known
02:20today as worldizing, a term coined by legendary sound designer Walter Murch, who described re-recording
02:27existing sounds in a sonically appropriate place to make them feel more real and lived in. Jar Jar
02:32Binks's hand was practical for one shot only. Star Wars Episode 1, The Phantom Menace.
02:39Here we go in, some Phantom Menace content to make this list appropriately Ewan branded.
02:43There are very few shots in Star Wars Episode 1, The Phantom Menace that don't contain some measure of
02:49CGI, and where Jar Jar Binks is concerned, it's fair to assume that every single glimpse of him is
02:54entirely digital, right? Well, not quite. There's a single shot you almost certainly never noticed
03:01where a practical Jar Jar is featured when he gets his hands stuck in one of the engines on Anakin's podracer.
03:07My tongue is nervous.
03:08Cinema. This was achieved by simply having Ahmed Best, who also provided the visual reference
03:14for Jar Jar on set, complete with a costume, act out the motion with the practical Jar Jar sleeve
03:20worn over his arm. While George Lucas clearly could have just rendered the shot digitally,
03:24he probably saved the production a few thousand books by having Best do it the old-fashioned way.
03:29And though it would have been easy for the practical on-set arm to stick out like a sore thumb,
03:33it actually blends impressively well into the scene. Tom Cruise walked through a rear-projected New
03:38York City on a treadmill, eyes wide shut. Rear projection is a classic Hollywood trick
03:44that I really love, and it's kind of sort of come back into fashion as of late, albeit in a highly
03:49advanced form, with so many major productions now using LED walls in favour of conventional green screen.
03:56Rear projection has typically been used to place actors in environments that weren't logistically
04:00feasible, too dangerous for the talent, or that don't actually exist. And in the case of Stanley
04:06Kubrick's masterful final film, Eyes Wide Shut, the notoriously exacting filmmaker used the technology
04:12to put Tom Cruise on the streets of New York City. Due to Kubrick's fear of flying, the entire movie
04:17was shot in England, with London doubling for the Big Apple. But for the scenes where London simply
04:22would not pass muster, such as when Cruise's protagonist Dr. Bill Harford walks down a street in New
04:28York, rear-projection was used instead. Incredibly, behind-the-scenes images show Cruise standing on
04:33what's effectively a treadmill as footage of the street is projected behind him. Because Kubrick
04:38lit Cruise incredibly well, the end result is startlingly impressive, enough that most would
04:44surely never realise that Cruise didn't in fact shoot the scene in New York itself. Ah, the movies.
04:50Tilt-shift photography made objects appear miniature. Game Night
04:54Game Night is a rare studio comedy with a keen visual sensibility, as it's perhaps best exemplified by
05:02the inspired use of establishing shots that depict the film's central neighbourhood as though it
05:06resembles toy pieces on a game board. This wasn't achieved by creating an actual miniature of the
05:11town where the story takes place, but rather by employing tilt-shift photography. This is a technique
05:17by which a camera lens's plane of focus can be shifted, and yes, tilted beyond what we typically expect
05:23to see produced on a camera sensor. And so, it allows photographers to make large objects appear
05:28miniature by narrowing the depth of field, as you would expect to see on a picture of an actual small
05:33object. This can be done both in-camera or in post-production digitally, but in the case of this
05:39movie, the filmmakers did it for real, using a tilt-shift lens to capture the startling images.
05:45Buzzing B sound effects were included to induce anxiety. The Exorcist
05:50In addition to genuinely terrorising his cast while shooting The Exorcist, director William Friedkin
05:56deployed some uniquely oddball tactics to keep audiences uncomfortable and on their toes. Beyond
06:03flashing up some more images throughout the horror classic, he also toyed around with viscerally
06:07unnerving sound effects to unconsciously unnerve the viewer. Case in point, many of the movie's
06:12earlier scenes feature the sound of buzzing bees subtly layered into the soundscape, which activates a
06:18primal fear in the audience's lizard brain. Buuuuzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz lessons.
06:22Am I getting too old yet? Freedkin also included quote unquote
06:26DISTURBING INUSTRIAL sounds during the Demon sequences, to try and trigger a fight
06:32or flight response in those watching, but making them anticipate coming danger. Truly one of our
06:37greatest tall timers. Actual bowel movements were secretly recorded in a truck stop. Harold and
06:43and Kumar go to White Castle.
06:45Eww.
06:46Well, nobody who's seen Harold and Kumar go to White Castle will ever forget the infamous
06:51battle sh** scene, where two twin sisters, Clarissa and Chrissy, are shown competitively
06:57evacuating their battles because that's the movie.
07:01Beyond the expectation defying hilarity of these two prim and proper ladies taking some
07:06gnarly dubs, what really makes the scene is the evocative sound design, which if nothing
07:13else delivers some poop splat sound effects so authentic sounding you can practically smell
07:18it coming through the screen.
07:20And the reason for that?
07:21There are actual sounds of people going to the toilet.
07:24Oh dear.
07:25In a featurette on the DVD entitled Art of the Fart, the film sound engineer Jeff Kushner
07:33reveals that after struggling to find existing recordings fit for his purpose, he went out
07:40into the field and just secretly recorded actual bowel movement sounds from a truck stop.
07:46And this folks, this is why you don't go and poop in a public toilet.
07:50You never know when that rascally Jeff Kushner might be around the corner.
07:54Now obviously on a serious note, this represents a massive legal and ethical minefield for any
08:00film production.
08:02Chris Kushner secured release editors from the quote-unquote participants, and certainly
08:07isn't something a major Hollywood movie would get away with today.
08:10But alas, it was a different time and the guys were just out there recording people's
08:14poops.
08:15Chocolate syrup was substituted for blood.
08:18Psycho
08:19Though it's generally accepted that Alfred Hitchcock shot Psycho on black and white film
08:23primarily for budgetary reasons, it's also been suggested that his decision may have been
08:28influenced by the film's content, namely that the iconic shower scene might have been
08:33too much for audiences of the day in colour.
08:36All the same, the monochromatic film stock required Hitchcock and his crew to think differently
08:40about how scenes were staged and shot.
08:43Most of all, the shower scene in which Marion Crane, Janet Leigh, is shockingly offed.
08:48Traditionally, the Hollywood recipe for blood consists of corn syrup and red food colouring.
08:53It's a tried and true formula for realistic looking blood that also looks great on camera.
08:58But that recipe didn't look quite so good on black and white film, and so to produce
09:02blood which popped and contrasted with the sheer white at the porcelain bathtub, Hitchcock
09:07opted for Hershey's chocolate syrup instead.
09:09With its darkness of colour and viscosity, it was a perfect substitute, and audiences largely
09:14remained on the wiser.
09:16Really cool example of how different it is shooting a film with black and white as opposed
09:19to colour.
09:20A full camera shake was added to the practical plane stunt, Mission Impossible Rogue Nation.
09:26The fifth Mission Impossible film, Rogue Nation, kicks off with a mesmerising feat of practical
09:31stunt work in which the president of movies himself, Tom Cruise, hangs off the side of
09:35a plane as it takes flight thousands of feet into the air.
09:39While Cruise was obviously safely tethered to the plane at all times, it was nevertheless
09:43a breathtaking stunt sold entirely on its practical in-camera achievement.
09:48It was a good idea, to decide from Cruise's tether being digitally removed in post-production.
09:51Yet a comparison between the raw footage shot on the day and the final completed image reveals
09:57a most curious difference.
09:58The version of the shot featured in the movie contains a ton of camera shake that wasn't
10:03in the original shot, and therefore must have been added in digitally.
10:07The reason for this?
10:08Well, the raw version of the shot is butter smooth to the point that there was concerns that
10:11audiences might think Cruise was simply digitally composited into the background and hanging
10:17from a plane on wires.
10:19But by adding some subtle yet effective digital camera shake to the shot, it cleverly settles
10:24it as more real, that we're watching a camera reacting to wind resistance and jostling around
10:29a little in the air.
10:31The final scene used little people and a cardboard plane.
10:34Casablanca.
10:36If you thought that Ridley Scott using children as stand-ins for adults in Alien was bold,
10:40it's got another thing on Casablanca, which almost 40 years earlier dared to toy with
10:45scale during its single most iconic and important scene.
10:49At the very end of the movie, when Rick makes Ilsa, Ingrid Bergman, port the plane to Lisbon,
10:55there's an extremely impressive magic trick going on in plain sight.
10:59While the scene appears to have been shot in a natural airport, that's not quite the case.
11:04It was instead filmed on a soundstage, with the plane in the background being a mere cardboard
11:08facade due to space limitations inside the studio.
11:12And so, to sell the scale of the plane as being further away from Rick and Ilsa than it actually
11:17was, director Michael Curtis hired a group of little people to portray the flight engineers
11:22tending to the plane.
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