News culture “No taller than 1.70 meters” James Cameron had a good reason for banning tall actors from the Titanic
James Cameron banned people over 1.70 meters from entering the set of “Titanic”. And the reason is completely justified.
An extraordinary film
“Titanic” is still one of the greatest successes in cinema history. James Cameron’s 1997 film has grossed more than $2.2 billion at the box office over the years. A breathtaking success that now makes it the fourth biggest box office success of all time. At the time of filming, Titanic already showed excessive ambition and had an estimated budget of more than $200 million, which was a record for the time.
James Cameron wanted to recreate the sinking of the liner as best as possible and was not afraid to use the best technologies of the time for his feature film. But the filmmaker also knew how to show ingenuity to cut costs when he could.
A million dollar trick
With a few clever ideas, it’s possible to make drastic savings on a film set. Proof of this is the set of “Titanic”, where actors over 1.70 meters were rejected for cost reasons. In fact, James Cameron wanted to enhance the immense grandeur of the boat. To do this, he simply asked his teams to only cast extras under 1.70 meters in order to be able to create this impression on the screen. This saved production almost a million dollars.
We only chose small extras to make our set appear larger. We turned away everyone who was over 1.70 m. And thanks to this (electoral) cast, we won almost a million dollars in image playback.
In fact, with small actors, the entire setting appears more impressive, deeper and larger in the picture. A brilliant idea that certainly helped add to the film’s awesomeness.
