James Cameron says he only cast short extras on ‘Titanic’ to make it look bigger

nme.com:

James Cameron has reflected on the making of Titanic in a new interview, where he also revealed that he only cast short extras on the set in order to make the ill-fated ship look bigger.Cameron was talking to the Los Angeles Times for the film’s 4K remastering and home video release as part of the film’s 25th anniversary celebrations before he opened up about the casting and the size of the set.“The scale of everything was beyond anything we could imagine in terms of our prior experience,” he told the publication. “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 joked, reflecting on the box office smash that the film became.Titanic became the highest grossing film of all time until 2009, where Cameron’s Avatar broke Titanic’s record.Speaking about the film’s casting, he continued: “We only cast short extras so it made our set look bigger.

Anybody above five foot eight, we didn’t cast them. It’s like we got an extra million dollars of value out of casting,” he said, explaining how the strategy helped them to also save money.“If the studio had had their way, they would have cut the entire ship sinking,” Cameron continued. “The smartest thing we did was do the sinking last.

It wasn’t because of strategy — it was simply because you sink the set last because otherwise it doesn’t look so good the next morning when you bring it back up.” Back in July, Cameron said he first warned the world of the threat AI posed in 1984, but the industry “didn’t listen”.