Helicopter
The helicopter is so out of place in this film. Not even needed. I wonder if it was there just to demonstrate the ability to superimpose it over the set.
shareit's so obvious it's a miniature.
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MovieChat Forums > Rear Window (1954) Discussion > Helicopter
Bizarre and the special effects were almost as bad at the sequence where Jeff falls from the balcony
shareJeeze, I don't remember any helicopter. Hitchcock was always misusing special effects, though, to get just the right angle or precisely the composition he imagined... Leading to bad composites that just look worse as time goes by. Mostly I just try to tune that sort of thing out. When does the helicopter show up?
shareI think it had something to do with studio's budgetary excessiveness. Some 40 years later, Ben Affleck talked about the appearance of a helicopter in the disaster movie Armageddon in the Criterion commentary:
"This is where you just have a random helicopter in the background for no real reason, just because you’re a big movie and you’re expensive and you can,” he says. “You have no idea how much of a headache having a helicopter in the background causes us—safety this and money that, only so many hours they can fly, they’re on walkies, winds blasting everywhere. If I hadn’t brought it up you probably would’ve forgotten about that yellow helicopter in the background by now.”
Here is the link: https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/7/2/17524984/armageddon-dvd-commentary-20th-anniversary
Probably the same situation in this movie too, since Paramount apparently replicated a whole Manhattan apartment block in the studio's LA plot. Must have been expensive.