Over a quarter century after its release, Titanic remains a crowning achievement for Oscar-winning director James Cameron and for the film industry as a whole. It earned Academy Awards in categories including cinematography, sound, film editing, and visual effects, speaking to the technical accomplishments that brought the entire world of the famed ocean liner to life.
Though the movie had a hefty $200 million budget, the team still cut corners to save costs wherever they could. Part of that process included finding the right background actors that would make the set look as impressive as possible.
“We only cast short extras so it made our set look bigger,” Cameron admitted in a new interview with The Los Angeles Times. “Anybody above five-foot-eight, we didn’t cast them.” By axing an additional $750,000 set designed for sinking scenes, they were able to work with what they had. “It’s like we got an extra million dollars of value out of casting,” he confessed.
Titanic was a massive gamble during filming as there was no way of knowing just how successful it would be at the box office. Of course, it would go on to break records and remain the highest-grossing movie of all time until Cameron outdid himself with Avatar in 2009.
“The scale of everything was beyond anything we could imagine in terms of our prior experience,” Cameron reflected. “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?”
Source: The Tribune
