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Ever wondered how they made the Titanic look so...titanic? You were being TRICKED, that's how!
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00:00Filmmakers have found a ton of different ways to gloriously fool those opting to take in their
00:06picture. Some of the finest directors of their generation made their sets look massive, and
00:11actors looked like they were speeding through the streets via some truly wonderful tools and tricks.
00:17So I am Gareth, this is WhatCulture, and here are 8 even more movie scenes you didn't realize
00:23were tricking you. 8. Sophia Lillis
00:26wasn't available for the ending, so they blue-screened her in.
00:30Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves
00:32Last year's Dungeons & Dragons Honor Among Thieves turned out to be one of 2023's biggest pleasant
00:39surprises, with the fantastic big-screen adaptation of the titular role-playing game containing a ton
00:45of charming characters, thrilling action, and just the right amount of silliness. One pleasant surprise
00:51no one actually spotted during that Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daly-directed flick,
00:56however, popped up towards the end of the D&D ride. As noted by Francis Daly on X, almost a
01:03year
01:03after the critical hit underperformed at the box office, the wonderful Sophia Lillis wasn't actually
01:08available to shoot the ace hero shot involving her druid Doric, Justice Smith's sorcerer Simon
01:14Omar, and Michelle Rodriguez's barbarian Holger Kilgore. So to get around her absence due to having to shoot
01:20Wes Anderson's Asteroid City, Lillis shot her moments in front of a blue screen. The film's
01:25masterful VFX team then seamlessly added her into the scene afterwards. If you didn't know any better,
01:31you'd assume Lillis was very much there on the day, jogging alongside her co-stars when this brief
01:36team-up moment was originally shot. But you were actually just being brilliantly tricked via some
01:41good ol' movie magic. What was your favourite flick of last year? Was it Dungeons & Dragons,
01:46Honor Among Thieves, or something else? You let me know in the comments section down below.
01:51Number 7. They used Selena's voice instead of J-Lo's. Selena
01:55The prior version of this secret trick stuff list mentioned how Ben Affleck once found his voice
02:01being surprisingly dubbed over during one of his first real big screen roles. And it turns out his
02:06equally famous wife, Jennifer Lopez, also experienced something similar during the making of the 1997
02:12biographical musical Selena. Lopez played the titular singing superstar in the movie that told the story
02:18of Selena Quintanilla's meteoric rise and eventual death at just 23 years old. However, though Lopez would
02:25go on to forge her own rather iconic music career, she didn't actually perform the majority of the
02:30warbling seen in the scenes in the finished flick. Unlike Affleck, Lopez was well aware of the fact the
02:36production had opted to dub Selena's real singing over the actor's performances in the movie. But the majority of
02:42those who have sat down to watch the flick since its release in the mid-90s, though, likely had no
02:47idea they largely weren't actually listening to Jenny from the Block's impressive voice here.
02:51J-Lo sang just three words in the entire movie, kicking off the Como LaFleur song at the Monterey
02:57concert. Other than that, all of the magnificent singing heard in the movie that helped make Lopez
03:02herself a superstar came from the late, great Selena.
03:06Number 6. An inflatable crowd was used. The King's Speech
03:09In a perfect world, just about every director on planet Earth would prefer to bring in an entirely real
03:15capacity crowd for those big-screen moments involving a large group of people sitting in one place.
03:21But gathering over a thousand extras together for the shooting of one scene sometimes just is not possible.
03:27So when it came time to capture the moment, Colin Firth's King George VI stuttered his way through a speech
03:33at Wembley Stadium during Tom Hooper's 2010 eventual Oscar winner The King's Speech, the call was made to
03:39bring in some blow-up backup. That's right, many of the folks seen watching The King in this opening
03:44scene weren't actually folks at all. They were inflatable extras. These full-of-air extras were
03:50first used for Seabiscuit in 2002, with Joe Biggins being the person behind what would ultimately become
03:56known as the Inflatable Crowd Company. Each blow-up doll is given a mask and costume before being
04:01seamlessly added into the background, alongside some real people to fool you into thinking you
04:06were watching a fully alive crowd. So next time you check out This King's First Speech in the flick,
04:12just know that he's also being watched by 1,500 Inflatables.
04:165. Giant Rings Were Used For Close-Ups
04:19The Lord of the Rings
04:21It's no secret that the marvellous Peter Jackson and the rest of the terrific crew who helped bring
04:25The Lord of the Rings trilogy to the big screen were fond of a little tool known as Force Perspective.
04:30These optical illusions help fool folks into believing that what they're seeing is either
04:35bigger or smaller than it actually is in reality, with the great Sir Ian McKellen often being positioned
04:40much closer to the camera in order to make his Hobbit co-stars look smaller, for example.
04:45But one lesser-known use of that magical trick can be found during a few of the scenes involving the
04:50one ring the Fellowship are trying so desperately to destroy once and for all.
04:54For some of the moments that required the process to be in a close-up shot,
04:58a massive version of the little gold piece of jewellery was made,
05:02though not in the fires of Mount Doom, presumably.
05:05In fact, a staggering 40-plus different versions of the one ring were created by
05:09Jen's Hanson jewellery for the iconic features in the end,
05:13with viewers being tricked into thinking they were watching a little ring of power during the movie's
05:17opening, for example.
05:18It was actually a huge 8-inch one ring to rule them all here.
05:23Cheers for checking out this video today, hit that subscribe button down below if you want
05:26to see more Watt Culture on that screen.
05:29This is not a trick.
05:31Number 4.
05:31The actors weren't actually driving during certain moments.
05:35Baby Driver.
05:36Baby Driver.
05:37While it may have often looked like Ansel Elgort's baby was doing much of the drifting and speeding
05:42himself through our Edgar Wright's exhilarating ride that is Baby Driver,
05:46that was largely just one big high-speed trick.
05:49You see, though the actors seen reacting within these vehicles during the various chase and
05:53escape scenes were very much present within the cars during the shooting of the scenes,
05:58they weren't actually required to do as much driving as you think.
06:01Instead, the majority of the perilous screeching and flying down roads was performed by stunt driver,
06:06Jeremy Fry, who often found himself strapped into a cage above the vehicle as he genuinely
06:11pushed the pedal to the metal above the actors being shot on camera below.
06:16Having Fry be the one in control of everything the car did during these moments meant that
06:20Elgort, Jon Hamm, and whoever else was seated in the automobile could purely concentrate on
06:24their performance.
06:25Sure, the star bringing Baby to life did get to perform a few of his own stunts, ones that
06:30didn't put his co-stars at risk at least, but a ton of that close-up getaway driving action
06:35was actually done by a fearless person sat on top of, or the side of, the speeding car.
06:40Now you know.
06:42Number 3.
06:42The Pencil Trick Wasn't Actually CGI The Dark Knight
06:46Easily one of the most iconic magic tricks ever to pop up on the big screen.
06:50Heath Ledger's ability to make a pencil suddenly disappear in The Dark Knight is about as chilling
06:55as it gets.
06:56For such an utterly sickening moment of brutality then, you'd be forgiven for assuming that
07:01even the very much anti-CGI Christopher Nolan would have had no choice but to resort to
07:06using digital wizardry to pull off the moment head med-led.
07:09Or maybe they used prosthetics to achieve the gruesome killing of a henchman by the clown
07:13prince of crime.
07:14Nope.
07:15The team behind the project actually just shot a version of the scene with the pencil very
07:19much on the table, and then one without it.
07:21When head hit table, no pencil was present of course, though a few of the shots Nolan
07:26wanted did still require actor Charles Jarman to quickly knock the pencil away before his
07:31skull came crashing down on the table, a move that resulted in Jarman being knocked out a
07:35few times.
07:36Thanks to the magic of editing, most viewers were left presuming they'd simply witnessed
07:40some rather slick CGI in the finished flick, when in reality this was actually a surprisingly
07:46real trick created through masterful editing and a bit of occasionally painful stunt work.
07:51Number 2 Short Extras Were Cast To Make The Set Look Bigger
07:55Titanic
07:56Joining Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack and Kate Winslet's Rose on the doomed ocean liner known as the
08:02Titanic were an awful lot of guests and crew members.
08:05So James Cameron was always going to require a ton of extras to fill out the background in
08:10various scenes during his eventual 1997 hit.
08:13Instead of booking a great many inflatable dummies to chuck into these moments, however, Cameron
08:18had to hire the real deal, didn't he?
08:20But it was during that extras casting process when the director had a brilliant idea.
08:25The mind behind Avatar and Aliens obviously wanted to get as much value as possible out
08:30of his rather expensive and already quite large set.
08:33His plan?
08:34Only casting extras that were under 5'8".
08:37With these shorter actors tricking audiences into believing they were taking in a set that
08:41was even bigger than it actually was.
08:43In Cameron's own words to the Los Angeles Times,
08:46we only cast short extras so it made our sets look bigger.
08:50Anybody above 5'8", we didn't cast them.
08:53It's like we got an extra million dollars of value out of casting.
08:56Though even that creative casting trick still couldn't stop the movie from becoming the
09:00most expensive one ever made at the time.
09:031.
09:04A fully CGI horse was secretly used at points.
09:07Mulan 2020
09:08Make no mistake.
09:10A lot of very real horse riding definitely went down in the 2020 live-action remake of
09:15the Disney classic known as Mulan.
09:17And a ton of said travelling via horse was performed by the star bringing the titular
09:21warrior to life on screen, Ife Lu.
09:23However, there was a moment there when the actor wasn't actually able to hop on her steed.
09:29With Mulan being required to jump onto her horse, Black Wind, and ride it through rough
09:33snow at one point in the movie, it was clear that this was a sequence that needed to be
09:37created digitally.
09:39So Ife ultimately hopped onto a mechanical book as she galloped in front of a green screen
09:43for the scene, involving Mulan escaping an incoming avalanche.
09:47From here, the geniuses at Imageworks went about creating a super realistic digital version
09:52of Black Wind that Ife would then be seen convincingly moving on in the end.
09:56The end results are so damn believable, it's still tough to accept that the gorgeous horse
10:01seen racing away from the digital snow here is also an entirely CG creation.
10:06But you better believe that particular horse was anything but real, folks, and you were
10:11being remarkably tricked during this particular ride.
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