Top 10 film sets ever built
Before camera, lights and action you have to start with location.
These are the top ten movie sets that have ever been built.
10. The Atoll - Waterworld
Adding water to the mix is always a surefire way to make the set of a film a little more dramatic. This $22 million, 1,000 tonne set used up every single bit of steel in the whole state of Hawaii. While most of the filming was done on the shoreline, using clever camera angles, they did eventually tow the whole thing out to sea to shoot the 360 shots.
9. Gotham City - Batman
This set was as staggering 4.1 million square foot in size! The set took up 18 sound stages and nearly all of the 95 acre back lot at Pinewoods Studios. This became the largest ever fake city to be committed to film.
8. The Roman Forum - Cleopatra
This was allegedly twice the size of the original Forum and even more expensive. They even built the set twice, once in London and once in Rome, nearly bankrupting 20th Century Fox in the process.
7. Metropolis - Metropolis
It was estimated this was 60,000 square feet in size and was built at miniature scale. This was the originator of futuristic cities created for film.
6. Dogville - Dogville
Size and scale isn't everything and sometimes the simplest sets are the most impressive. The township was made up of white lines on a black background with pieces of furniture accompanying certain areas.
5. Bricksburg - The Lego Movie
Not only are we taking the simple into the equation but also CGI. The set was made entirely of lego bricks by the 3D modellers at massive scale in Lego's digital designer.
4. Hobbiton - The Lord of the Rings
Sometimes films go a step further and create the place their filming, for real. After spotting the perfect Shire-like location from a helicopter, the nine month set build began at a sheep farm in New Zealand. Today it's a major tourist attraction and visited by tourists from all over the world.
3. Moscow - Dau
The director created a beautiful reconstruction of 1950s Moscow, about two football fields in size and five storeys tall. It was then populated with an entire city's worth of extras who were talking, dressing and walking like people of that time every day for three years, despite the fact they won't have been on film a lot of the time.
2. Apollo 13 - Apollo 13
Ron Howard didn't quite built a set in space, but he did the next best thing, they built the set inside NASA's zero gravity area. For this film there were no fly-wires or CGI needed to create weightlessness.
1. Deep Core - The Abyss
The director and designer built a diving platform in a seven million gallon at an abandoned nuclear plant, filled it with water and shot the entire film underneath. The whole film was made between 30 and 50 feet underwater.
