September 21, 2021 2.7k votes 436 voters 30.2k views
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Vote up your favorite behind-the-scenes facts and stories.
Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow is a nostalgic favorite amongst fans of both the director and gothic horror in general. With its dark storyline, creepy atmosphere, and a great cast featuring the likes of Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci, there's a reason it's still a Halloween-season staple today.
So go behind the scenes, see how the filmmakers brought all the spooky details to life, and don't forget to vote up your favorite details and trivia from the making of Sleepy Hollow.
Johnny Depp apparently felt a little awkward playing Christina Ricci's love interest, since they first met when she was 9 and he was 27. Depp said, "When you have to regard that person you met at the age of 9 as a love interest, it's a little uncomfortable, unsettling. Working on Sleepy Hollow, we gradually allowed ourselves to get to the stage where it wasn't so... twisted."
Ricci later expanded on this feeling, saying, "It’s kind of bizarre... But we get along so well that we could both laugh it off and say, 'This is really irritating.'"
Although Sleepy Hollow is a real-life village in New York, the film was shot in England. In just three months, the crew built the town from the ground up on 20 acres of land. They also populated the area with their own livestock, which lived on set for the duration of filming.
Since a blue camera filter was put over the whole movie to make it appear darker, the fake blood used on set was actually a bright orange color so that it would appear red on film.
Although Ichabod exuberantly condemns the medieval torture devices used in the film, Johnny Depp thought the props were pretty cool and kept the cage pictured above.
In addition to building the village from scratch, the crew also built the Western Wood. It was constructed on one of the biggest soundstages in the world so they would have complete control of everything, from the lighting to the weather.
What they didn't expect, however, was that the fake woods would welcome some very real tenants. According to the DVD's director commentary, the woods became "real forests... infested with bugs and birds" by the end of filming. Some of the bird sounds caught in the film are those of real creatures that made their home on the set.
