James Cameron increased the spectacle of ‘Titanic’ by only casting “short extras”
James Cameron’s Titanic was the most expensive film ever made at the time of release, with a budget of around $200million. But in a recent interview, the director revealed one way they cut costs.
Promoting the film’s 4k remaster release, Cameron has been reflecting on the film. Released in 1997, the real-life drama movie had difficult requirements. Involving large sets with complex engineering and a lot of resources, it’s been said that the movie costs over $1million for every minute of screen time.
“The scale of everything was beyond anything we could imagine in terms of our prior experience,” Cameron told the Los Angeles Times. “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.
Titanic has more than made the money back, as it currently has an estimated box office profit of $2.257 billion. This was helped by some savvy money-saving moves by the production team.
They saved $750,000 by scrapping an entire set and instead doctoring two other sets together – one for pre-iceberg scenes and the second one tilted at six degrees, replicating the ship sinking.
The most unusual money-saving move was Cameron’s approach to extras. To maintain the massive scale of the sets, ensuring the boat and the landscape looked looming and terrifying, they only cast short extras.
“We only cast short extras so it made our set look bigger,” Cameron told the publication. “Anybody above five foot eight, we didn’t cast them,” he added, admitting that the decision worked, “It’s like we got an extra million dollars of value out of casting.”
When it was released on 19th December 1997, Titanic became the highest grossing film of all time until Cameron built his own record with Avatar. Celebrating its 25th anniversary, the movie is being rereleased with a 4K Blu-ray and limited edition box set.
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