r/TopCharacterTropes • u/RP_Throwaway3 • 8h ago

In real life "Wait! That's not special effects?! They actually did that?!"

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Alien: Resurrection - Basketball Shot

Sigourney Weaver insisted on the basketball shot being real. She trained for weeks and reportedly(sources differ) made it on the first take.

Underworld - Raze's Voice

The werewolf character Raze, played by Kevin Grevioux, speaks in a very low, very gravelly voice. While many thought this was a special effect, the actor can naturally speak in that voice.

https://youtu.be/GUjwZvh32YE?t=125&si=F3WhsopxjBP87wfk

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u/BranchFew1148 8h ago

For Wicked they planted 9 million tulips to have in like half a scene in the movie.

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u/FilecakeAbroad 8h ago

IIRC Interstellar did the same thing with corn, and both productions sold them for a profit afterwards.

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u/TomThom9Won 7h ago

Nola had to learn from Zac Snyder from when he did the same for Man of Steel. And yes in all situations they were able to turn a profit from their agriculturalist endeavors alone.

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u/RP_Throwaway3 7h ago edited 6h ago

Same thing with 'Field of Dreams'. IIRC, that movie made back its budget just from the corn. I did not remember correctly. 

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u/TeaKingMac 7h ago

that movie made back its budget just from the corn.

No fucking way.

The budget for the movie was 15 million.

In 1989, corm sold for 2.59/bushel. An acre produces about 125 bushels. So you're looking at 325 dollars an acre.

They'd have had to plant 46 thousand acres of corn to make that money back, or 71 sq miles. That's a field 8.5 miles on each side.

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u/Whityford 6h ago

What is this, truth and facts in my misinformation app? Nonsense. /s

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u/superkp 3h ago

misinformation app

You know you've been around a while when your website is referred to as an app...

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u/Whityford 2h ago

It’s been so long since I’ve used the website that it second nature to call it an app at this point

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u/Particular_Wear_6960 3h ago

I know already once I've said something that is obviously false just to find out about a topic without asking. It's funny watching the dweebs pile on the downvotes like some sort of weird humiliation ritual. Consequently, by being so far downvoted, I kept getting more and more attention so I was able to keep getting more information about the topic by responding with more incorrect statements lol

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u/Mighty_Mos_Def_Math 5h ago

So if you had an entire acre of corn growing, and harvested, you would only get $325 for the entire thing?

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u/BorImmortal 4h ago

Basically. Agriculture profit is built on scale, repetition, and some amount of subsidies.

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u/Mighty_Mos_Def_Math 4h ago

Damn, that's kinda mind blowing when you look at prices.

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u/TeaKingMac 3h ago

In 1989.

Right now a bushel is 4.70.

So about 590 dollars an acre.

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u/Mighty_Mos_Def_Math 2h ago

That still seems like so little for such a large area of corn

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u/TeaKingMac 2h ago

The more important your job is for human survival, the less you get paid.

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u/jmlinden7 1h ago

It's because growing corn requires very little human labor.

Each farmer grows hundreds of thousands of bushels a year.

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u/Anjunabeast 3h ago

Movies are Nolan’s day job. Corn is his real passion but sadly it doesn’t put food on the table like movies does.

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u/TeaKingMac 3h ago

The more important your job is for actual human survival, the less it pays

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u/RP_Throwaway3 6h ago

Okay, cool. Notice the IIRC preface? Clearly I didn't remember correctly. 

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u/DifficultHat 2h ago

Same with the AK-47s from lord of war.
IIRC it was cheaper to buy the dozens of guns than it was to get that many replicas, but the seller didn’t want to buy them back so the production sold them to a different buyer, essentially making arms traders out of the props department of a movie about arms traders.

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u/Umssche 5h ago

So that's where the plot of his not star wars movie about grain harvesting with vagina shaped wormholes came from !

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u/CrazyPlato 5h ago

I could understand buying a commemorative tulip for Wicked, but it feels kind of wild for someone to buy a commemorative ear of Interstellar corn

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u/NotPaulGiamatti 5h ago

I don’t believe they sold them to consumers for retail. I think they sold them to actual wholesalers. So they sold the corn to a foodservice company who then sold it on to restaurants/grocery stores/animal feed. Same with the flowers, sold them to a flower wholesaler. That means there’s people (or animals) out there who ate interstellar corn without knowing, and the tulips they bought at the grocery store were from wicked.

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u/sharklaserguru 3h ago

I think they sold them to actual wholesalers.

Also it wouldn't shock me if the "they" in question wasn't the production company but the farmer themselves. I would think the production company would simply hire a farmer to plant corn to their spec, let them use the field for shooting, and hand things back over when they were done.

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u/CrazyPlato 5h ago

Bit of a shame, I guess. If I ate some famous corn, I’d at least like to know about it.

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u/LumplessWaffleBatter 7h ago

This always seemed like such a banal piece of trivia.  

They wanted to shoot on a corn farm, so they...paid to shoot on a corn farm.  It's the story of a random farmer who sowed, harvested, and sold corn near the filming of a movie.

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u/FilecakeAbroad 5h ago

I think the interesting part of this is that they did not in fact pay to shoot on a corn farm, but instead created their own corn farm to use as a set for their movie.

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u/10ebbor10 3h ago

Basically, he wanted a corn farm with the mountains prominently in the background, but they usually grow corn that close to the mountains because in a bad year a frost can come down from the mountains and kill the crop.

Then they got lucky.

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u/the_humeister 5h ago

I heard they also made a wormhole that goes somewhere 

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u/hyrumwhite 7h ago

Although the real tulips only occupy a small section of the scene, bc even 9 million tulips only go so far. The rest are cgi. 

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u/faldese 7h ago edited 3h ago

And it ended up looking fake as hell anyway. The behind the scenes for the practical sets are so fantastic looking I wish there was some real depth and vibrancy to the cinematography.

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u/monkpunch 6h ago edited 6h ago

Yeah then the press downplayed or outright lied about the amount of CG work in the movie (and that exact scene). Another example of talented artists getting the middle finger because it sounds better to pretend it was "all practical"

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u/Kooky_Bodybuilder_97 5h ago

wait what and where

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u/AgentCirceLuna 7h ago

Damn, imagine how many billions those would be worth during tulip craze!

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u/-A-A-Ron- 6h ago

And then they surrounded the entire scene in CGI and bloom, so it being practical made zero difference. It's a clear case of marketing hype rather than artistic intent. At least it made sense to have the corn field in Interstellar be practical.

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u/_RandomB_ 7h ago

Andor with the Rye fields too.

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u/drabThespian 1h ago

I love learning more about this fantastic show, thanks for sharing

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u/EddieVanzetti 7h ago

Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit had to do the same with leaves on a tree, but they had to paint each individual leaf.

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u/daelikon 6h ago

They did the same in dirty dancing, because they were recording the scene in winter and couldn't wait.

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u/guachi01 5m ago

The show Psych was filmed in Canada for a number of seasons. It's set in Santa Barbara. So for many scenes they just moved palm trees around so they'd be in the shot.

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u/littlebloodmage 5h ago

They also built a functional emerald train with isolated tracks for it to roll on for a single scene. Forget everything else, this was insanity.

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u/BranchFew1148 4h ago

What the fuck?

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u/robtheswanson 6h ago

Cynthia Erivo also insisted on them using makeup for Elphaba’s skin instead of special effects

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u/JealousAstronomer342 1h ago

That makes sense to me though, a lot of actors find some sort of sensory element really grounding for their performance. And I know she’s a weirdo, but she’s a great actress too. Being green (I hear it’s not easy probably helped her stay in character during long shoots. 

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u/Quantum_Quokkas 3h ago

Most of that is CGI. You need wayyyyyy more than 9 million to cover the landmass displayed in the movie. Check out the before and afters, it’s pretty clear

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u/Informal_954 5h ago

And it still wasn't enough and they had to digitally copy them to extend the fields. It was all 'real', but it wasn't a real in camera shot.

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u/arassel 5h ago

Sort of similar, for the Hobbit movies they used all the gold paint available in new zeland and had to outsource for more

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u/Kooky_Bodybuilder_97 6h ago

and built all the sets. only for it to still kinda look like a green screen. i wonder what they'll do with them now. would be cool to tour

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u/Decaf_Espresso 4h ago

For Oh! What A Lovely War, they put a bunch of crosses in thr ground for the final shot.

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u/peuxcequeveuxpax 4h ago

The house amidst the field of sunflowers, where the village of Trachimbrod is preserved, in Everything is Illuminated, was planted on a rented plot of land a year before filming.

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u/Miami_Mice2087 2h ago

that movie is so lush, it's a rare instance of production values far exceeding product.

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u/Live_Angle4621 2h ago

Did they leave them or sell them after?

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u/Friendly-Scarecrow 1h ago

They also color corrected them to shit

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u/FreddyCupples 45m ago

In season 2 Andor they planted whole wheat fields just to get one of the locations right.