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James Cameron told the Los Angeles Times the trick he used to save some money making “Titanic.”
- He only cast background performers shorter than 5-foot-8 to make the sets look bigger.
- “We got an extra million dollars of value out of casting,” he said.
When James Cameron’s epic “Titanic” was released in 1997, it was the most expensive movie ever made. But that doesn’t mean the Oscar-winning director didn’t come up with a cost-saving trick while making it.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times for the movie’s new 4K remastered release, Cameron revealed the simple decision he made during casting to make the sets of the “Titanic” ship look massive.
“We only cast short extras so it made our set look bigger,” Cameron told the paper. “Anybody above 5 foot 8 inches, we didn’t cast them. It’s like we got an extra million dollars of value out of casting.”
Before the movie was released, it made headlines for its huge budget, which at the time was reported at $200 million, making it the most expensive movie ever made at that point. And Cameron admits that at the time, it felt quite daunting.
“The scale of everything was beyond anything we could imagine in terms of our prior experience,” he said, as with CGI in its infancy in the late 1990s, most of “Titanic” was done with practical effects and giant sets.
“At the time we thought, wow, there’s no way this movie could ever make its money back. It’s just impossible. Well, guess what?” he added.
The blockbuster that follows a love story between characters played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet on the doomed ship became the highest-grossing movie of all time.
It was beaten decades later by another Cameron movie: “Avatar.”
