“How we did it was Jeff Beecroft, my amazing production designer, designed this ramp under a small kiddie pool of corn,” Krasinski explained. “So there were only 12 inches of corn the entire time for these kids to look like they were drowning in.” You can watch a behind-the-scenes clip below, in which the perfectly safe Noah Jupe and Millicent Simmonds are pretending to nearly drown in a shallow pool of corn. Admittedly, this pool looks far bigger than the average kiddie pool, but it’s definitely much smaller and less dangerous than an actual grain silo. (It also helps that dry corn, unlike water, is a lot easier for a film production to work with.)
“They could walk up and down the ramp at any time, and look like they were above the corn or below the corn,” Krasinski continued. “If they ever got nervous, they could just duck below the corn and gasp for air.” The result was hard to argue with; in the finished version of the film, it’s impossible to tell that the corn the characters are wading in is as shallow as it really is. Even in the behind-the-scenes clip, the illusion’s hard to shake. As a whole, the scene has ended up serving as a much-needed PSA about the dangers of mucking about in a corn silo … even if it, admittedly, took some creative liberties along the way.