How Jim Popped the Question

Jim’s proposal to Pam at a gas station rest stop may have looked spur-of-the-moment, but a top creative on The Office says it took weeks of planning and high-tech special effects. To create the 52-second scene, the production team built a replica of a rest stop on Merritt Parkway and brought in huge rain machines—for a whopping $250,000 shot, executive producer Greg Daniels tells the Washington Post.

"But it's also sort of the highlight of five years of storytelling," said Daniels, who wanted the scene to feel “like Edward Hopper’s painting in a diner, very dark and dramatic.” He considered removing the dialogue but made a last-minute call to leave it in. “It was kind of artier to remove their voices,” Daniels said, “but I felt like after this length of time, you deserve to see what was going on and hear it.”
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