Movies & TV Facts for Kids
Behind-the-scenes facts from film and TV
Filming at night requires massive artificial lighting rigs to illuminate scenes. A large night shoot might use generators the size of lorries just to power the lights needed to make a single scene look realistic.
A documentary is a film about real events, people, or places rather than fictional stories. David Attenborough's nature documentaries are among the most watched films ever made on British television.
When a character in a film speaks directly to the camera or acknowledges they are in a film, it is called 'breaking the fourth wall'. Deadpool (2016) is famous for doing this constantly and comedically.
The Matrix (1999) introduced the 'bullet time' effect, where action appears to freeze or slow while the camera sweeps around it. The technique used up to 120 still cameras arranged in a curve to capture the scene from every angle simultaneously.
A major Hollywood blockbuster can involve over 3,000 different jobs during production, from the director to the catering team. The credits at the end of a big film can take several minutes to scroll past.
The Muppets, created by Jim Henson, began as television characters before starring in their own films from 1979 onwards. Kermit the Frog's original body was made from a ping-pong ball and one of Jim Henson's mother's coats.
Science fiction films explore imaginary futures, outer space, time travel, and technology. Many inventions first imagined in sci-fi films — such as video calls and tablet computers — have since become real.
Before filming begins, directors often plan every shot using storyboards — a sequence of hand-drawn sketches showing how each scene will look. Alfred Hitchcock was famous for preparing such detailed storyboards that he claimed he found filming boring.
Pixar hides the code 'A113' in almost all of their films as an inside joke — it was the number of the animation classroom at the California Institute of the Arts where many Pixar animators studied.
Musical films, where characters sing and dance to advance the plot, were enormously popular in Hollywood from the 1930s to 1960s. La La Land (2016) revived the genre for modern audiences and won six Academy Awards.