The Office's Most Expensive Scene Cost $250,000

Jim proposes to Pam in the rain at a gas station rest stop in the Season 5 premiere, a deliberately ordinary setting chosen to make the moment feel unexpected. Jenna Fischer has said showrunner Greg Daniels wanted the proposal to open the season and to seem unplanned rather than grand.

The scene was originally written to be filmed on the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, but the $100,000 cost and the inability to create fake rain led the production to stay in Los Angeles. The crew built a rest stop set in a Best Buy parking lot, surrounded it with a four-lane circular racetrack, and used 35 vehicles driven by professionals to simulate highway traffic; digital artists later swapped the L.A.

mountains for Connecticut trees in post. Daniels aimed for an Edward Hopper–like feel, contrasting a dark, stormy exterior with brightly lit interior details such as Snapple bottles. All the planning and visual effects pushed the sequence’s price tag to roughly $250,000, making it the most expensive and elaborate scene in the series.

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