The most expensive scene in The Office: not the one you'd expect

If you consider Michael Scott as the quintessential boss, Jim and Pam as the relationship you aspire to, and Dwight Schrute as the best character in the history of television, there is no doubt: you are a fan of 'The Office.' The US version, that is.

Well, if you're such a fan, you surely know which scene in 'The Office' was the most expensive one to record, right? And no, it was not this one!

Photo: The Office - NBC

The scene in which Jim proposes to Pam was the most expensive to shoot in the nine seasons that the series lasted. It cost a whopping $250,000 to film this scene.

Photo: The Office - NBC

The scene is part of the double episode 'Weight Loss' in season 5. The world stopped when it was broadcast because, after five seasons of buildup, people really wanted this couple to live happily ever after.

No more and no less than $250,000 cost the scene that lasted 52 seconds. That's just a little more than $4,807 per second for a scene that has become television history.

Photo: The Office - NBC

Greg Daniels, the creator of the series, wanted the setting for the proposal to be a gas station in Connecticut. In fact, he had a particular place in mind, but there was a problem: the gas station denied his requests to shoot on its premises.

After looking for similar gas stations on the West Coast of the United States, they opted for the simplest but not the cheapest solution: building their own gas station.

Photo: The Office - NBC

The chosen place was the rear parking lot of a large area in the Los Feliz neighborhood in Los Angeles. The asphalt was like a blank canvas for the production team, led by Michael Gallenberg.

Photo: Google Maps

The crew had only nine days to build the set and shoot the sequence. They succeeded with simple but effective tricks, such as depicting the interior of the place with high-resolution photos.

Photo: The Office - NBC

Now, if you remember the scene, the viewer sees the proposal from the other side of the highway and, sure enough, there were cars speeding by the whole time

Photo: The Office - NBC

So how did they make the cars? Simple: they built a circuit with four lanes on which cars circulated at 56 m/h to give a sensation of speed.

They had to hire 35 stuntmen to drive the vehicles past Jim as he proposed to Pam.

Complex, right? The crew made the intense rain of the scene with a huge crane that held several showers, and it was wonderful.

Photo: The Office - NBC

With everything shot, one last detail was missing. In case you forgot, Scranton, where the series takes place, is in Pennsylvania, in the east of the United States, while Los Angeles is on the West Coast.

It was time to invest money in VFX so that the team could change the background of the gas station into an East Coast landscape. And so, they added native trees to the background.

And that's how one of the most important scenes of 'The Office' became the most expensive of a series of nine seasons. And all of this while it could have been shot simply at a gas station...

Still, we can say it was worth it. And the story about this wonderful scene we could not have told you without the information of the amazing @nachocavada thread on Twitter.

Photo: The Office - NBC