James Cameron: Titanic director only cast extras shorter than 5’8 for cost-cutting trick
Titanic director James Cameron has said he only used short people as extras in the film to emphasise the enormous size of the set.
“We only cast short extras so it made our set look bigger,” he told the LA Times in an interview.
“Anybody above 5ft 8, we didn’t cast them. It’s like we got an extra million dollars of value out of casting.”
The Titanic leaves Southampton on her maiden voyage. Pic: AP
The Hollywood blockbuster, released 26 years ago next week, became the highest-earning film of all time – until Cameron beat his own record with Avatar in 2009.
The fictionalised retelling of the famous 1912 sinking cost a then record $200m (£159m) to produce because of the huge scale of the sets and sequences that needed complex engineering and massive resources.
But Cameron insisted he “never panicked… the studio panicked. It’s our job not to panic.”
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in Titanic. Pic:
20th Century Fox/Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock
One way in which Cameron and producer Jon Landau cut costs during production was by scrapping an entire set planned to be tilted at a three-degree angle – which they said saved $750,000 (£600,000)
The producers made do with two sets, one for pre-iceberg scenes that was level, and a second, tilted at a six-degree angle to replicate the sinking of the ship after it hit the iceberg.
“If the studio had had their way, they would have cut the entire ship sinking,” Cameron said.
James Cameron won the Best Director Oscar for Titanic. Pic: AP
“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.”
The director also admitted there were miscalculations in logistics even before the cameras rolled.
“It was hundreds of miles of cabling, all the Musco lights [sports lighting] in Hollywood at the time,” Cameron said.
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A model used in the filming of Titanic. Pic: 20th Century Fox/Paramount/Digital Domain/Kobal/Shutterstock
“The scale of everything was beyond anything we could imagine in terms of our prior experience.
“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?”
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Titanic took more than $1.8bn (£1.4bn) during its initial run, and that figure has grown to $2.2bn (£1.7bn) with subsequent re-releases, Box Office Mojo said.
The movie was nominated for 14 Oscars and won 11, including Best Picture.
Taylor Swift has revealed the release date for her new album, The Life Of A Showgirl.
The pop megastar announced her 12th studio album earlier this week but didn’t give many details.
Now, in social media posts and an appearance on boyfriend Travis Kelce’s sports podcast, Swift revealed just what fans can expect from the new album.
Taylor Swift and boyfriend Travis Kelce on the New Heights podcast. Pic: New Heights
The Life of Showgirl, written during the European leg of her record-breaking Eras tour, will be released on 3 October.
It consists of 12 songs, including the title track that features pop star Sabrina Carpenter.
The full track list is:
1. The Fate Of Ophelia
2. Elizabeth Taylor
3. Opalite
4. Father Figure
5. Eldest Daughter
6. Ruin The Friendship
7. Actually Romantic
8. Wi$h Li$t
9. Wood
10. Cancelled!
11. Honey
12. The Life Of A Showgirl (featuring Sabrina Carpenter)
Long-time collaborators Max Martin and Shellback, two Swedish producers who worked with Swift on some of her biggest hits, joined the pop star for this album.
Within four hours of posting the full podcast episode on YouTube, it had already gathered 4.7m views.
The cover of Taylor Swift’s newly announced album. Pic: Republic Records
The back cover of Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album The Life Of A Showgirl. Pic: Republic Records
‘The hardest-working star in pop’
The album follows last year’s The Tortured Poets Department, which was released during the Eras tour.
That tour, with shows on five continents and in 51 cities, raked in more than $2.2bn (£1.62bn) and was the highest-grossing tour of all time.
Read more about Taylor Swift:
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“This album is about what was going on behind the scenes in my inner life during this tour, which was so exuberant and electric and vibrant,” Swift said during her podcast appearance.
Sky News culture and entertainment reporter Gemma Peplow said after her globe-trotting tour and a swathe of re-releases over recent years, the new album cemented Swift’s reputation “as the hardest-working star in pop”.
Disgraced US film producer Harvey Weinstein is to be tried for a third time in a sexual assault case.
A jury in New York could not reach a verdict in June against the 73-year-old who was accused of raping actress Jessica Mann, and a mistrial was declared.
Judge Curtis Farber has said he wants the new trial to happen before the end of this year.
The same jury found Weinstein guilty in June of sexually assaulting former Project Runway production assistant Miriam Haley in 2006 and not guilty of assaulting Polish former runway model Kaja Sokola the same year.
Weinstein will be sentenced for the guilty verdict in Ms Haley’s case on 30 September.
He denied all of the charges. Throughout the retrial, his lawyers insisted the sexual encounters with his three accusers were “transactional” and “consensual,” and labelled the women as opportunists.
Weinstein was originally convicted of rape and criminal sexual act by the same court in 2020 and sentenced to 23 years in prison for the crimes.
Last year, however, New York’s highest court overturned the conviction, prompting Weinstein’s retrial this summer.
Weinstein was once one of the most powerful people in Hollywood – the co-founder of film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company, who produced films such as the Oscar-winning Shakespeare In Love, Pulp Fiction, and The Crying Game.
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In 2017, a series of sexual misconduct allegations against him propelled the #MeToo movement.
Some of those accusations later led to criminal charges and his convictions in New York and California.
Before the retrial, Weinstein was also serving a 16-year prison sentence after being found guilty of rape in California in December 2022. He has also denied this charge.
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