5

Shell Cottage In Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Was Ridiculously Overbuilt

At the end of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows -- Part 1 (Of 72), the gang escapes the wizard-Nazis by teleporting to a relative's beach house, Shell Cottage. There, Dobby the house-elf promptly dies from the revelation that airborne knives can teleport too. It's a moment so devastating that you were reasonably distracted from everything else going on in the scene, which was arguably also devastating for a few key people. Almost everything in the background of that scene had to be created from scratch, including Shell Cottage itself, the outside of which we only see in two brief glimpses in Part 1. See it? No, all the way back there.

Warner Bros PicturesYou may not have been able to see it through all your tears.

The cottage was mostly constructed at Leavesden Studios, carted to Wales, then dragged by tractor up the coast, along with a trail of confused Welsh motorists. Once there, the setmakers then individually glued 4,500 scallop shells to the roof.

Warner Bros Pictures"Wait, I see a nautilus shell there! Tear it down, start over."

Like Batman's pecs, that's a lot of work for not much screen time. But hey, since they split the story into two parts, we get to see all the production designers' hard work up close in the next film, right? Not really. We only see the cottage from the outside again very briefly (three seconds) in Part 2, when Harry goes to pay his respects at Dobby's grave.

Warner Bros Pictures*tears continue to impair vision*

4

It Took Six Years Of Research To Make Pompeii

Pompeii is the story of gladiator/slave Milo (Kit Harrington) falling in love with aristocrat Cassia (Emily Browning) right before Mount Vesuvius destroys the titular city. It's the worst-timed love story since Titanic. There are big explosions, a tsunami, and lots and lots of volcano-related death. You probably don't remember that, because if you're reading this, that means you're human, and almost no humans watched Pompeii.

If you happen to be one of the outliers, there were still some quieter moments that you may not recall, like when Cassia and her friend Ariadne arrive in Pompeii and get out of the cart to walk through the crowded market streets.

TriStar PicturesIt was a lot like malls are today, only with a stronger fart smell.

That innocuous scene required as much work as anything else in the movie. Director Paul W. S. Anderson wanted complete authenticity, so he hired craftspeople to recreate all of Pompeii digitally -- and for some scenes, physically. Right down to the exact type of bread that people ate back then.

TriStar PicturesBut only stared at briefly in the movie.

She's thinking what we all are: "Why did they even bother?"

Even the cobbles were handmade to be as accurate as possible, based on information gleaned from years of onsite digging, all in order to create the most realistic setting for the stupidest story. We only see those laboriously handcrafted cobblestones in the background, and only for a second or two at a time.

TriStar PicturesThose raised white stones are also the proper width for a Roman chariot to pass through. Not that you care.

3

Children Of Men Is Full Of Subtle Futuristic Quirks

Children Of Men is a 2006 film set in a dystopian world in which humans can no longer reproduce, which is either bleak as hell or ideal, depending on your faith in humanity today. We meet the main character, Theo, in London in 2027. He grabs a coffee, pushes his way past the crowd (including two policemen), then stops outside to booze up his drink, like we all do every single morning, even though we're not supposed to mention it. He only narrowly misses being blown up by his ex-wife and her militant friends. Like we all do every single morning, even though we're not supposed to mention it.

But while we're following Theo in the foreground, we're ignoring all the fun the filmmakers had with the background. There are tons of details to assure you that this is in fact the future, predicted as accurately as possible from the vantage point of the Bush administration. Let's return to that opening shot.

Universal Pictures"I wonder what my ex is up to these days."

See the pointy buildings in the distance? The one on the left is St. Paul's Cathedral, the other is the Shard, modern London's tallest building, and one of its most iconic. Here's a real photo from roughly the same spot:

Haha, they mixed up the locations of the buildings! Idiots!

2

Blade Runner Financially Crippled Itself With Background Details

One of the many reasons Blade Runner is considered a classic is the level of detail you'll never catch unless you watch the whole thing in slow motion (almost certainly while high, trying and failing to sync it to Pink Floyd). Those details overrun your brain the first time you see it -- the neon umbrellas, the Gaudi-inspired Aztec architecture, the Millennium Falcon building ...

Warner Bros Pictures

Warner Bros PicturesWorth it.

That copious background hides all kinds of amazing details, which required hours upon hours of hard work to create. Like when Roy Batty is walking down the street with fellow replicant Leon Kowalski on their way to kill Lo Pan.

Warner Bros Pictures

1

Everything You See In Signs Was Built (Or Grown!) For The Movie

M. Night Shyamalan's flawless tale of hydrophobic aliens intentionally visiting the Solar System's wettest planet is set almost entirely at Mel Gibson's farmhouse and the surrounding cornfields. So the crew probably spent a few weeks scouting for the perfect farmhouse/cornfield combo, offered the folks living there some cash to film, then went and added some CGI for the crop circles, right? Naive fools. Nothing is ever that simple when Shyamalan is involved.

Everything we see in the movie was built entirely from scratch. The only thing on the set put there by God was the dirt, and the producers presumably had to explain to Shyamalan that they couldn't make it themselves. This is what the set looked like months before shooting started:

Touchstone Pictures"And over here, we will grow my plot twist."

Not only did they grow the corn themselves, but they also built the house, the barn, the backyard, and probably Abigail Breslin. (Seriously, this was her first movie. You prove she existed before 2002.) Supposedly, all of this was necessary because they couldn't find an existing Midwest farmhouse that the set designers were allowed to paint red, white, and blue. That was symbolically important to the story, for reasons, surely.

Touchstone Pictures

Touchstone Pictures'Murica reasons.

Then there are the crop circles. We all thought those were CGI, didn't we? Hell, in the film, Gibson himself says, "It can't be by hand, it's too perfect." But it was, because Shyamalan demanded it. Production designer Larry Fulton wanted to CG most of it, "but Night doesn't like CGI, he wants everything practical." That meant his team had to spend weeks making real crop circles by hand -- and not just the one on the farm set. In the movie, the family watches a news report showing other crop circles popping up around the world.

Touchstone Pictures

Touchstone PicturesFor the last one, the crew just did a middle finger with the initials "MNS" next to it.

Sure, they could have used stock footage, but that wouldn't be insane, would it? Instead, the production team created two more crop circles -- which, by the way, was "as tough as chopping down trees."

All for a few shots, spanning a few seconds.

In a movie.

Which turned out to be Signs.

Matt Cowan makes geeky T-shirts you didn't notice (which took a lot of work) when he's not writing for Cracked or watching Disney movies with his daughter.

If you're looking for an unforgettable holiday gift that requires very little work, check out the Miracle-Gro Aerogarden.

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