Hollywood is a money machine, yes, but such alluring entertainment is also sometimes a cash cow. Some series and movies have to face exorbitant budgets. Many productions have to calculate if the cost per minute ratio of the shoots will be too high. And that is precisely what is leading many production companies to make more and more use of CGI and special effects, which save a lot of money and resources.
In the history of cinema we have witnessed how that very special magic that is created on the screen has also been the product of millionaire disbursements. Whether building replicas of titanic ships, destroying high-end cars, creating sets of an overwhelming magnitude or emptying the streets of a crowded city. All those scenes have cost millions of euros and deserve special recognition.
Because making movies is not easy. Not cheap.
Now, if we had to say which scene cost the most (economically speaking) to shoot, what can you think of? Although its cinematographic quality is not really up to par, the remake of a certain Spanish film, Vanilla Skystarring Tom Cruise and released 21 years ago, includes a scene that demystifies the popular belief that the most expensive shots in the cinema are those where gigantic explosions or spaceships appear.
The film, whose approach questions the nature of reality and our relationship with dreams, begins with the song by Radiohead Everything In Its Right Place and we can see Cruise waking up and leaving his house. He drives his Ferrari through the streets of New York, but these they are completely empty. One of the busiest metropolitan areas in the world, with approximately 330,000 daily commuters, has become an enigmatic desert. Finally, the protagonist wakes up abruptly. All was a dream.
No CGI was used to shoot the scene, instead director Cameron Crowe made an agreement with the mayor and the NYPD to close and vacate the entire Times Square area and surrounding streets between 5 and 8 a.m. on a Sunday in November. All that effort (financial and media) resulted in a scene of 30 seconds of footage. Cost? One million euros.
“Tom was running for three hours all over Times Square,” director Cameron Crowe recounted in an interview in The New York Times in 2002. “We closed 20 blocks!!! No cars, no pedestrians, without public transport. That had never been done before in Times Square. The scene she wanted was the nightmare of a man who is desperately alone.”
Paula Wagner and Tom Cruise, two of the producers, had numerous conversations with the Film Commission and the mayor’s office, as well as the NYPD until they were given permission: “We’re going to give you 4 hours, on a Sunday, from 4:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., at the beginning of November. You will have to work quickly, you will not have another second,” they were warned.
He relates that that morning there were 200 agents and members of the team helping block all traffic, and even offering coffee and food to people passing by. As soon as the first rays of the sun appeared, they took seven takes with a crane camera and then Tom Cruise had to run for 3 hours around the entire perimeter of Times Square while being filmed. The scene will be remembered. Not so much for the film, but for the feat of filming and the money that was invested in it.
Other shootings at checkbook
Throughout the history of cinema, other shoots have been extremely expensive. Another well-known example is the scene of the destruction of a bridge in I’m legend. A substantial part of its €150 million budget was allocated to a single scene, in which the military bombs the Brooklyn Bridge, which collapses, tragically killing the wife and son of the protagonist (Will Smith).
A lot of effects were used to give realism to the impact of the missile. But what was really costly was the surrounding evacuation that was filmed on location over six nights and that required the cooperation of 1,000 extras, 14 government agencies, an expansive lighting rig, and a crew of 250. The scene alone cost about 5 million.
Another scene in which a million-dollar budget was invested takes place in the movie Spectre, from the James Bond saga, in which a chase takes place where luxury cars, including some of them, have to be destroyed. Aston Martin DB5. Finally, we cannot forget the mythical scene of the landing of the allied troops on Omaha beach during World War II, in the film Saving Private Ryan, by Steven Spielberg.
Unable to film on the actual Omaha Beach, Spielberg relocated to the east coast of Ireland, at Curracloe Strand. Most of the shots were “improvised”, as Spielberg would later recount, something that helped to give more realism and a sense of chaos in the scene. Having gone to the Olympus of film scenes, we can say that its budget of around 12 million euros was actually a good value for money investment.