Director James Cameron informed us of a trick he used to make the Titanic set look bigger. It involved hiring short extras.

The director of the Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet movie about the doomed ship revealed this in a recent interview for the Los Angeles Times, Variety reported.

Director James Cameron hired short extras for Titanic

When talking about the cost of the movie and how massive it was, everyone was pretty skeptical. After all, it was the most expensive film when it was produced in 1997.

“The scale of everything was beyond anything we could imagine in terms of our prior experience,” Cameron said. “At the time, we thought, wow, there's no way this movie could ever make its money back. It's just impossible.”

That said, they had to figure out how to keep the budget in check and reduce some costs. It included a strategy to make the set look bigger by casting short people.

“We only cast short extras so it made our set look bigger,” the director said. “Anybody above five foot eight, we didn't cast them. It's like we got an extra million dollars of value out of casting.”

The movie became a massive success. It was the highest-grossing film of all time. That was the case until Avatar, another Cameron film, broke that record.

All of the James Cameron statements about casting short people are coming out due to the release of the 25th anniversary 4k Blu-ray Titantic two-disc box set. There is no word for it if only short people can sell the box set in person to make it look bigger.