How hard can it be?

I just read Movie Magic, by John Brosnan. (Now out of print.) Whenever you start to think that making movies is getting complicated, sheesh, just go and read a book on special effects. That should put everything into perspective. The lengths some people will go to to get a single shot is just awesome, particularly in the early days of film.

For Cecil B de Mille's Ten Commandments, they had a team of 80 people working for 6 months on the parting of the Red Sea. That's 40 man-years of effort for a single moment of movie magic, folks! (Not including the time it actually took to shoot, post-produce, and edit the scene.)


All of a sudden, "can I be arsed to spend an hour redoing that shot?" seems like a damn stupid question.