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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,
00:27and these filmmakers all proved they had the nows to come up with mesmerizingly creative solutions
00:32for the issues they fought with on set. Let's get stuck into it, shall we?
00:36I'm Ewan, you're watching WarCulture, 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
00:57the space jockey discovered by the crew of the Nostromo. Rather than build a large model comparable
01:02to the movie's adult cast, Scott had his two young sons and also the son of cinematographer
01:08Derek VanLint work as stand-ins wearing smaller spacesuits, as was surely both the cheaper and
01:14easier option. And you'd certainly never guess it from the end result. The sense of scale is
01:19manipulated quite perfectly with smart use of camera perspective, in turn leaving us all mesmerized
01:25by the space jockey's gigantic skeleton. Snow White's echoey singing was re-recorded in a toilet.
01:32Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
01:34The first song featured in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is undeniably one of its most memorable
01:39and iconic, with Adriana Casalotti's eponymous character belting out I'm Wishing above a wishing
01:45well where many of her sung lines are echoed back to her. If you assume that the sound team behind
01:51the
01:51movie either simply had Casalotti record her lines in an echoey environment or even edited them in
01:57post-production to give off the appropriate reverb, neither is actually true. Hilariously,
02:03the sound team were struggling to create an appropriate echo, and so resorted to taking
02:07Casalotti's vocal recordings into a bathroom, playing them through a speaker and then recording
02:13the resounding echo, allowing them to create the famous call and response within the well.
02:17This unorthodox sound recording technique is best known today as worldizing, a term coined by
02:23legendary sound designer Walter Murch, who described re-recording existing sounds in a sonically
02:29appropriate place to make them feel more real and lived in. Jar Jar Binks's hand was practical for
02:34one shot only. Star Wars Episode 1 The Phantom Menace
02:38Ah here 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 hand stuck in one of the engines on Anakin's
03:06podracer.
03:10This was achieved by simply having Ahmed Best, who also provided the visual reference for Jar Jar
03:15on set, complete with a costume, act out the motion with the practical Jar Jar sleeve worn over his arm.
03:21While George Lucas clearly could have just rendered the shot digitally, he probably saved the production
03:26a few thousand books by having Best do it the old fashioned way. And though it would have been easy
03:30for
03:30to make the practical onset arm to stick out like a sore thumb, it actually blends impressively well into the
03:35scene.
03:36Tom Cruise walked through a rear projected New York City on a treadmill, eyes wide shut.
03:41Rear projection is a classic Hollywood trick that I really love, and it's kind of sort of come back into
03:47fashion as of late,
03:48albeit in a highly advanced form, with so many major productions now using LED walls in favour of conventional green
03:55screen.
03:56Rear projection has typically been used to place actors in environments that weren't logistically feasible,
04:01too dangerous for the talent, or that don't actually exist. In the case of Stanley Kubrick's
04:06masterful final film Eyes Wide Shut, the notoriously exacting filmmaker used the technology to put Tom Cruise
04:13on the streets of New York City. Due to Kubrick's fear of flying, the entire movie was shot in England
04:18with London doubling for the Big Apple. But for the scenes where London simply would not pass muster,
04:24such as when Cruise's protagonist Dr. Bill Harford walks down a street in New York,
04:28rear 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
04:55Game Night is a rare studio comedy with a keen visual sensibility, as it's perhaps best exemplified
05:02by the 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 when the story takes place, but rather by employing tilt-shift photography. This is a technique by
05:17which a camera lens's plane of focus can be shifted, and yes, tilted beyond what we typically expect to
05:23see produced on a camera sensor. And so, it allows photographers to make large objects appear miniature
05:29by narrowing the depth of field, as you would expect to see on a picture of an actual small object.
05:34This can be done both in camera or in post-production digitally, but in the case of this movie,
05:39the filmmakers did it for real, using a tilt-shift lens to capture the startling images.
05:45Buzzing bee sound effects were included to induce anxiety. The Exorcist
05:50In addition to genuinely terrorising his cast while shooting The Exorcist, director William
05:56Friedkin deployed some uniquely oddball tactics to keep audiences uncomfortable and on their toes.
06:02Beyond flashing 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
06:18a primal fear in the audience's lizard brain. Buzzzzzz.. Am I getting too old yet?
06:24Friedkin also included quote-unquote, disturbing industrial sounds during the demon sequences to
06:31try and trigger a fight or fight response in those watching by making them anticipate coming danger.
06:36Truly, one of our greatest all-timers.
06:38Actual bowel movements were secretly recorded in a truck stop.
06:43Harold and Kumar go to White Castle Ooh, well, nobody who's seen Harold and
06:48Kumar go to White Castle will ever forget the infamous battle sh** scene, where two
06:53twin sisters, Clarissa and Chrissy, are shown competitively evacuating their bowels because
06:59that's the movie.
07:00Beyond 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
07:12else, 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, oh god no, the film sound engineer Jeff
07:33Kushner reveals that after struggling to find existing recordings fit for his purpose, he
07:40went out into 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, unless Kushner secured release signatures from the quote-unquote participants,
08:06and certainly isn't something a major Hollywood movie would get away with today.
08:11But 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
08:28been influenced by the film's contents, namely that the iconic shower scene might have
08:33been too 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.
08:42Most 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.
08:59But 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.
09:20Digital camera shake was added to the practical plane stunt.
09:23Mission Impossible Rogue Nation
09:25The fifth Mission Impossible film, Rogue Nation, kicks off with a mesmerizing 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, aside from Cruise's
09:49tether being digitally removed in post-production.
09:51Yet, a comparison between the raw footage shot on the day and the final completed image reveals
09:56a most curious difference.
09:59The 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
10:11that audiences might think that Cruise was simply digitally composited into the background
10:16and hanging from a plane on wires.
10:18But, 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.
10:30The final scene used little people and a cardboard plane.
10:34Casablanca
10:35If you thought Ridley Scott using children as stand-ins for adults in Alien was bold, it's
10:41got nothing on Casablanca, which almost 40 years earlier, dared to toy with scale during
10:45its single most iconic and important scene.
10:49At the very end of the movie, when Rick, Humphrey Bogart, makes Ilsa, Ingrid Bergman, port the
10:54plane to Lisbon, there'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.
11:03It 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.
11:11And so, to sell the scale of the plane as being further away from Rick and Ilsa than
11:16it actually was, director Michael Curtis hired a group of little people to portray the flight
11:21engineers tending to the plane.
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