James Cameron reveals genius reason he only cast short people as extras in Titanic-Tori Brazier-Entertainment – Metro

Director James Cameron shared an amazing hack about the making of Titanic (Picture: Getty)

Even over 25 years after its release, director James Cameron is still coming up with priceless gems when it comes to the making of his blockbuster film Titanic.

Released back in 1997, the movie shot lead actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet to stardom and scooped a record-equalling (to Ben-Hur) 11 Oscars – a haul that is yet to be beaten but has since been matched by Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

For a long while Titanic, which has received a new 4K remaster for an anniversary Blu-ray re-release, was also the highest grossing film of all time.

It has only been surpassed by Cameron’s own Avatar, released in 2009, as well as its 2022 sequel, plus some small movie called Avengers: Endgame.

The filmmaker is known for his absolutely massive budgets, but while discussing his sweeping fictionalised tale of the sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912, he did offer an absolutely fascinating hack that was used as a way to save money.

Titanic boasted enormous sets – including the matter of a partially reconstructed 800-foot-long full-scale replica ship – which, combined with complex sequences, made it the most expensive film ever made at the time.

Cameron had a lot of complicated and expensive sets to contend with on Titanic (Picture: 20th Century Fox/Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock)

Alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, there were hundreds of extras (Picture: 20th Century Fox/Everett/Shutterstock)

Cameron insisted that he and co-producer Jon Landau ‘never panicked’ as the budget ballooned to $200million (£159m), but the studio certainly did.

‘It’s not our job to panic,’ he added.

However, one incredible cheat they did employ certainly helped stretch that movie magic: Cameron and Landau requested that only short people be hired for background roles.

‘We only cast short extras so it made our set look bigger,’ Cameron told the LA Times.

 ‘Anybody above 5’8”, we didn’t cast them. It’s like we got an extra million dollars of value out of casting,’

That is… impressively simple.

Landau also revealed that they scrapped an entire set planned to be skewed at a three-degree angle, using just a level one for scenes shot ahead of the collision with the iceberg, and one at six degrees for replicating the sinking of the vessel.

These big set pieces didn’t include anyone over 5’8” (Picture: 20th Century Fox/Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock)

‘We compromised the three degrees and we saved $750,000 (£596K),’ he shared.

Much as Titanic still remains a great feat of filmmaking, in July a snipped of it when viral on TikTok when a viewer clocked the slightly unconvincing CGI in the background when Cameron wasn’t employing his short extras.

CGI had been used to reconstruct the ship and its passengers, shortly after the Titanic sets sail, with the camera panning over the ship before zooming into the captain (played by Bernard Hill).

Not quite standing up to the rigours of high-resolution and special effects today, compared to watching on VHS tape in the 1990s, the people are tiny, their faces are obscured, and there’s a distinct air of video game graphics at play.

However, alongside joking descriptions of it as a ‘Sims 4 Titanic expansion pack’, others defended the ‘cutting edge’ visuals of the time.

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