For every carefully planned script or crystal-clear director’s vision, there’s an unplanned
twist or total accident that ends up being just as important to a finished film.
Sometimes, that means an unforgettable movie moment has nothing but luck to thank, or that
audiences will never know what really went on behind the scenes – until now.
Here is Screenrant’s look at How it Was Shot: 10 Most Iconic Movie Scenes.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
The Indiana Jones series has featured plenty of movie magic, but not all of it is glamorous
special effects or stunt work.
In the Last Crusade, Indy and his father take a wintery trip on a German zeppelin.
Since the scene was actually filmed in the summer, the extras covered in fur coats and
hats were dripping sweat.
Sean Connery made a veteran decision, and removed his pants, making sure that his lower
half wouldn’t be visible on screen.
Harrison Ford followed suit, and their entire scene – filmed with them in their underwear
below the table – made it into the finished cut.
Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park has been scaring and thrilling fans ever since it was released in 1993.
In the most iconic scene, a T-Rex terrorizes a brother and sister trapped in a flipped
jeep.
Designed and developed by a team at Industrial Light and Magic, the dinosaur model weighed
12,000 pounds and packed enough power to pose a serious threat to the crew.
To be safe, an alarm would sound when the dinosaur went live.
But the heavy rain on set took the real toll on the beast, eventually causing it to malfunction,
coming alive all on its own, further terrifying crew members.
In an effort to ease tension on set during the T-Rex’s scenes, director Steven Spielberg
would give his best dinosaur roar into his megaphone, keeping the cast and crew too busy
laughing to be worried.
The Shining
The Shining is famous for its slow, building tension and suspense, taking a turn when Jack
Torrance spirals into madness after months holed up with his family at The Overlook Hotel.
Discovering his wife and son have barricaded themselves in the bathroom, Jack tears down
the door between them in one of the film’s most iconic scenes.
Tensions were high on set, with Jack Nicholson and co-star Shelly Duvall at the mercy of
the unpredictable director, Stanley Kubrick.
Nicholson, an ex-volunteer firefighter, was so efficient at breaking down the doors, the
props department was forced to build thicker ones.
Add Kubrick’s love of retakes, and a total of sixty doors were destroyed.
Jaws
One of the scariest films ever made, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws terrified audiences when
it was released in 1975.
A giant shark terrorizing Amity Island was a nightmare on and off-screen, going far beyond
its schedule and budget.
The biggest problem: three animatronic sharks named Bruce.
Despite being designed by some of the best in the business, the sharks often sank, required
nightly repainting, and their internal mechanisms needed weekly replacement thanks to the saltwater.
It wasn’t all bad, since the delays forced Spielberg to get creative.
The shots from the shark’s point of view were the solution, but ended up so integral
to the suspense it’s hard to imagine what kind of movie Jaws would have been if everything
went smoothly.
Mad Max: Fury Road
George Miller is the definition of a hands-on director.
So when it came time to make his vision for a modern Mad Max a reality, he was glad his
150-person stunt team felt the same way.
Fury Road was years in the making, but the constant delays were a blessing in disguise
for stunt co- ordinator Guy Norris.
With so much time to prepare, the team figured out how to execute the stunts safely and flawlessly.
Never one to cut corners, Miller also had the safety team for the Olympic Opening Ceremony
on hand, erasing enough danger to let the actual actors perform some of their own stunts.
While the entire end chase is is visually stunning, it’s the “polecats” who stand
out, swinging like pendulums and plucking victims out of their seats.
It’s not CGI trickery either: the Polecat team trained for 8 weeks with former members
of Cirque du Soleil, becoming experts by the time the cameras started rolling.
Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam epic is considered one of the greatest films ever made, but it
didn’t come easy.
The production ran into too many problems to count, but Martin Sheen being struck with
a heart attack from the grueling schedule was easily the worst.
The director kept it quiet, and flew Sheen’s brother to the set to act as his stand-in
until the star could recover.
To see the toll it took, audiences just have to watch the opening scene, where Martin Sheen
isn’t acting – he really was drunk, really did slice his hand open on a broken mirror,
and really did collapse in tears, later attacking the director off camera.
A Nightmare on Elm Street
There are plenty of reasons to stay alert in the tub, and this scene reminds us of two:
drowning, and Freddy Krueger.
The movie has too many gruesome scenes to count, thanks to writer and director Wes Craven.
One of the most unforgettable kills comes when a young girl falls asleep in the bath
and is pulled underwater by a clawed hand from below, with the audience watching her
grasp for something solid.
The creepy stunt was pulled off by placing a bottomless bath tub over a swimming pool,
and then building the set around it.
Luckily for the actress, her stuntwoman was called in to do the really scary stuff, giving
her one less thing to have nightmares about after seeing the finished movie.
Superman Returns
You can’t have a Superman story without a trip to Smallville Kansas, but when the
movie was set to be filmed in Australia, director Bryan Singer was faced with a serious problem.
To show the Kent farm with a full field of corn as a young Clark learned his superpowers,
the filmmakers had to build one from scratch.
That meant building a road in the middle of nowhere, and planting and growing an entire
field of corn for four months before shooting could start.
Since most of the footage using the setting was cut from the movie, only one sequence
remains.
Probably not the best use of the film’s budget.
Alien
No fan of science fiction will ever forget watching as the cast of Alien first stumbled
their way onto the dark, deserted spaceship that started all the madness.
The remains of the fan-titled Space Jockey steal the show, but to make sure that the
corpse carried enough weight on film, director Ridley Scott replaced the actors with children
for the longer shots – specifically, his and cinematographer Derek Vanlint’s kids.
Their faces are hidden, but the movements are clearly those of younger astronauts.
In fact, it was only when the kids began passing out from the overheating spacesuits that the
director decided to make them a bit more comfortable – something his adult cast members had been
demanding since the start of the film.
The Exorcist
Sometimes even a great scene can end up on the cutting-room floor, and that’s exactly
what happened in The Exorcist.
After a young girl is possessed, her mother enlists two priests to perform an exorcism,
with problematic results.
The possessed girl can rotate her head a full 360 degrees, but her best trick was only revealed
to audiences when the film was re-released in 2000 for its 25th anniversary.
The scene shows Regan arched backward and skittering down a flight of stairs, a technique
referred to as “spider-walking.”
The stunt was performed by contortionist Linda R. Hager, who was clipped into a harness suspended
by wires and lowered down the stairs.
The wires were too hard to remove in post-production, so the scene was cut from the original release.
After being cleaned up with some modern day CGI, fans finally got to see the scene as
it was intended.
So what do you think of our list?
Any trivia you want to share with us about how other classic movie scenes were filmed?
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