A person with an eye to detail, whether it’s a filmmaker or a regular employee, can spend hours on the minutest thing to achieve perfection. Heck, even Steve Jobs called up Google and asked them to fix the yellow gradient of their second ‘O’. Similarly, the following directors went out of their ways to get the perfect shot even if it was the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. However, one better not start a debate with them over it. These Mr and Ms Perfectionists will not settle for anything less even if it is an insignificant detail. Here are the 10 times when directors put extra efforts into minor movie moments.
Blade Runner
The interiors of the apartment in “Blade Runner” were shot inside a real office building. This meant that the filming ran from 6 pm-6 am and the crew had to clean and mop up the place every morning before the office hours. All this, just for an apartment building shot.
Guardians of the Galaxy
How much hard work can put behind a pair of underpants? Apparently, showing space pants requires a lot of brainstorming. They had to look like underpants but not like those of regular humans from Earth. So, the costume department created one in a gigantic size and left no space for the crotch.
Alien
When the concept artist and visionary illustrator Ron Cobb was told to visualize symbols in the sci-fi horror “Alien” for Nostromo ship, he didn’t use random designs. Cobb created an intricate but well-illustrated set of symbols and icons which came to be known as the Semiotic Standard.
Eyes Wide Shut
Everyone familiar with director Stanley Kubrick is aware of his infamous obsession with perfection. “The Shining” actress, Shelley Duvall, is still battling her traumatic experience with Kubrick, who made her do 127 takes of a scene. When it came to “Eyes Wide Shut”, Tom Cruise had to walk through a door 95 times. The shot had no impact on the film and the audience hardly remember it appearing.
Titanic
After, Stanley Kubrick, it is the iconic James Cameron who is known for his fastidious methods. Before the filming of the legendary last scene began, Cameron wanted to make sure that the wood plank was rightly weighed. He dedicated two days to the piece of wood by making every member of the crew climb on it and float.
Home Alone
The black and white movie on the TV that saved Kevin’s life in “Home Alone” required more hard work than you can imagine. The filmmakers wanted to achieve 100% accuracy with the film “G Men” from 1935. They were determined to use James Cagney’s Tommy gun for the TV scene and spent days tracking it down.
City Lights
Charlie Chaplin was not as delightful to his costars as he was to his audience. Poor Virginia Cherrill who played a flower girl in “City Lights” had to do a scene over 342 times. It was a silent film where she had to perfectly say “flower, sir?”.
Star Wars
“Star Wars” has charmed its fans with many things; one of them is its signature crawl. It turns out that it took three hours to shoot the opening crawl scene. The shot consisted of three versions along with translations in foreign languages.
Gravity
The Sci-Fi thriller, “Gravity” is a critically-acclaimed film with numerous Academy Awards under its belt- starting from the best music to the best cinematography, directing, visual effects, film editing, and more. The movie was meticulously created since the first stage. It began with the animation department producing the VFX two years before the actual filming. However, after the shooting was completed, they had to trash out the original animation and start all over again to adjust it with the live-action scenes.
Return of the Jedi
Instead of using CGI or any other digital effects, George Lucas made the creative team rebuild Jabba’s original palace to film Oola’s death scene for merely a few seconds in the “Return of Jedi” special edition.
Hot Fuzz
You may not have noticed but the DVDs at the gas station in “Hot Fuzz” were personally picked out by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright. That’s surely no hard work for them. But someone in the crew had to find out who owned the rights to the films and get them legally cleared.
The Princess Bride
Instead of using stunt doubles, “The Princess Bride” made Carey Elwes and Mandy Patinkin do the sword fight for real. Given their lack of experience, it took ten days to film Inigo and Westley’s sword battle.
