A romantic comedy whose two leads share almost no screen time should not work at all. Nora Ephron's 1993 film does, and this video covers thirty production details that explain how it was assembled.

The script began with a Virginia schoolteacher who wrote it after watching a late-night television advertisement, sold it through a small agent, then watched it pass through five writers and several directors before Ephron took the chair. Along the way the story changed hands in ways most viewers never notice. The phone call that starts everything originally belonged to Sam rather than Jonah. Annie's fiance replaced a much unhappier backstory. The ending was rebuilt around a forgotten backpack because the earlier version never got all three characters into the same shot.

Production coverage includes the decision to shoot in Seattle instead of a cheaper Canadian stand-in, weeks of night filming that disturbed the neighbourhoods around Lake Union, water trucks manufacturing rain during an unusually dry stretch, and the observation deck replica built inside a hangar at a former naval air station. Smaller finds include a candy box carrying silhouettes of the two stars, a single door transported across the country for one matched cut, a colour scheme that withholds red until the final act, and a voice cameo hidden in the radio montage.

Also covered: Tom Hanks arguing his character into shape during rehearsals, the improvised dinner-table exchange about war films, Rita Wilson reading for a different part, the six-hour window granted at the Empire State Building, Sven Nykvist's cinematography, and the disagreement over which song would close the film.