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[–] [S] 389 points 4 months ago* (48 children)

They used real human skeletons because it was cheaper to pick them up from medical suppliers.

The actors, including JoBeth Williams (pictured) weren't informed that they were interacting with genuine human remains until filming wrapped.

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  • [–] 92 points 4 months ago (22 children)

    The crazy thing is that this isn't limited to human remains.

    Fake cameras often cost more than actual cameras. Fake food is more expensive than real food, which is then wasted.

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  • [–] 28 points 4 months ago

    Fake food is often designed to survive heat from sets and lights. Filming for ads is different than filming movies, but the same idea applies. They also make low-sound versions of things like paper bags as to not ruin takes when things get carried by actors, moved around, or dragged on the set floor.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Fake food can be reused and real food can't, mkaing fake food cheaper in the long run.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    It always pissed me off how in the Big Bang Theory, you always see them with food, but you never see them eat. I can probably count on one hand the number of times in the whole series someone actually takes a bite off camera.

    I hope the crew got to eat all the stuff they never touched on camera, cause that shit always looked good. I got so many cravings watching that...

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    Actors will try to avoid eating in scenes, because if they end up having to do multiple takes, they have to take a bite of the food at the same point in the scene every take for continuity reasons. This can result in them getting sick of the food quickly.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Not me, if I was acting in a food scene and we had to do multiple takes, the viewers would notice my plate suddenly getting emptier every few seconds

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Chris Pratt would do this on P&R.

    But honestly I can't tell the difference.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    He was famous for spewing in a bucket, because he'd keep eating

    Unfortunately, he's a dumb, religious moron who isn't actually a role model at all, unlike Aubrey Plaza and Nick Offerman

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  • [–] 43 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    I heard that they just used real ghosts 👻 too 😱 /s

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  • [–] 24 points 4 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 41 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    The more interesting tidbit is that this is actually pretty common. The prop house using real skeletons was actually pretty common and not unique to this production. The notable thing about this film was the sheer number of skeletons that they used, so they basically scooped up everything that was out there, and how much the live actors actually interacted with the skeletons. It wasn't particularly unusual for skeletons to be used as props.

    Really, just about any time you saw a skeleton on screen before the 90s or so, it was probably real. A lot of real world props and decorations also used real skeletons, sometimes to the surprise of the people using them. For example, if you rode the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney Land, you saw real human skeletons.

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  • [–] 40 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyland also used medical skeletons. It wasn't that long ago that they were really easy to purchase, a couple instructors at my university had full skeletons and would bring them in for class. I wanted to buy one just to keep in my closet as a joke, but beer came first.

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  • [–] 27 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    In Germany a school recently held a funeral for their school skeleton, which was an actual human. They suspected that this was a young Indian man. Up to the 20th century, you could easily buy a dead person from India. There are still schools with actual human remains.

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  • [–] -3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Wtfff wtf did they at least contact the people this persons remains got stolen from?? Fucking boil this country good lord

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    It was pretty common up till the 60s and maybe later to get human skeletons form South Asia, they were often obtained from flood or landslide victims, and have no identifiers except maybe an inventory number.

    Modern stuff however, is obtained when someone donates their remains, and is often only held for a limited time before interred. They are anonymized to the student / researcher, but there is a record of who they were. The med school's anatomy lab here has some pretty neat stuff (or did 20 years ago when I went), including a woman's plasticized torso that had been sliced into 1 inch wafers, and an autopsied man who was born with his organs rotated in his body so that everything was on the wrong side. I still have the illustrations I drew from that anatomy class somewhere.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago*

    It may have been a donation. Donating your body to science can result in you becoming a classroom skeleton, or blown up in the sky with a rocket. If you're lucky enough, they put you in a field and let your body rot, while observing the process. You don't really get a say in it, but cadavers are used for all sorts of things.

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