Note: This article includes details about the legendary tale told by Frank Miller in his graphic novel and in the film “300.” These events are central to the film’s plot and its ending.
In 480 B.C. , a small army of 300 Spartan warriors led by King Leonidas hold off 100,000 Persian invaders under the control of King Xerxes at a minute canyon called Thermopylae . Twenty - four centuries later , the narration writer and illustrator Frank Miller captured so vividly in his 1999 graphical novel has been realize on covert as " 300 " by director Zack Snyder — a Herculean undertaking that would have been unimaginable without a modern - 24-hour interval USA of artists , technician , stunt people and trainers .
In this clause , we ’ll look at how the movie come from a graphic novel to the expectant screen , the casting of the major characters , the logistics of filming , split the myth from history and bulking up for the dynamic fight scene .
“ When I was a little kid I take care a picture show adaptation of the story , a much meek one . The story has haunted me ever since , ” recalls Frank Miller . “ It specify everything a paladin was . I severalize myself , ‘ When I ’m good enough I ’m going to do this story . ’ I never intended it for a motion-picture show . But I was impressed by Zack ’s enthusiasm for it . ”
Snyder , a commercials director about to protrude shooting his debut feature film " Dawn of the Dead , " set out over his devotee - boy nerves about meeting Miller and clicked with the author when they met . “ We had a lot of the same esthetic and ideas and next affair we know we were adjoin with Warner Bros. ” One problem : the studio had already produced two sword - and - sandal epos , " Troy " and " Alexander . " “ But to their credit , ” adds Snyder , “ they suppose Frank ’s view liken to the Hollywood form of epic might be worth doing , and [ supported ] my passion for it . ”
Using Miller ’s graphic novel as his Christian Bible , Snyder shot some test footage that wreak the visual stylus in focal point for the studio apartment . As for the book , adapting Miller ’s work proved “ incredibly intimidating ” for big fan Kurt Johnstad , the screenplay ’s atomic number 27 - author ( with Snyder ) . “ He ’s the Holy Grail of that world and we were very aware of that , ” read Johnstad , who sustain his hint until Miller throw the playscript his thumbs up .
In interpret " 300 " to the screen , Snyder ’s mandate from the studio , fit in to producer Bernie Goldmann , was “ to create a world that you had n’t seen before , to reinvent the larger-than-life movie and do it much less expensively , ” about a third of the cost of " Troy " and " Alexander , " and that meant no big , marquee names . In the next section , we ’ll look at the cast of Leonidas , the drawing card of the Spartans , and Xerxes , the Iranian king who claims to be a Supreme Being .
Casting Leonidas and Xerxes
Gerard Butler makes a commanding leader as Leonidas , and in fact once played another ancient - world warrior , Attila the Hun , in a 2001 television set motion picture . But nothing in his divers resume , include " Dracula , " " The Phantom of the Opera " and " Timeline , " sell Snyder on the 37 - twelvemonth - old Glasgow native except an in - person meeting .
However , producer Goldmann was mesmerized by Butler ’s on - silver screen presence in 2004 ’s Dear Frankie . “ He ’s somebody that you just want to watch , and that ’s what makes someone a king — that front , that ability to hold a room . I think people will look back at 300 and say , ‘ That ’s the movie that made Gerry Butler a adept . ’ ”
Butler , who in actual life sentence says he ’d “ probably be more compare to a puppy dog than any kind of rule , ” jump off at the chance to play Leonidas after reading the script and start a peek at Snyder ’s examination clip . “ It blow me away . And this was such a cool and kick - ass part to play . The film work on so many levels , ” he read . “ It ’s a great narration and on the one hand it ’s illuminating , but on the other hand it is so cool and visually beautiful while being emotionally herculean and inspirational . "
In hindsight , however , “ If I think about what I was about to put myself through , I ’d have said , ‘ Tell them I ’m not interested ! ’ ” Butler gag . He and the otherwise mostly English cast underwent strict education to educate for the movie , but more on that later .
Rodrigo Santoro , a Brazilian actor , was take to play the imposing , Persian swayer Xerxes . diachronic portrayal of Xerxes with a wavy face fungus and grandiloquent chapeau went out the windowpane in party favor of the scary shaven , pierced and string - covered tool in Miller ’s graphic novel , with an otherworldly voice to mate .
“ Zack told me he wanted the moving-picture show theater shaking , so he asked me to speak in as grim a registry as possible , and he would enhance my vocalism in the computer to make it echo , ” says Santoro . “ I seek to portray him as not human . He ’s a creature . He ’s an entity . So that voice fits , filling the way , together with 7 feet tall and all that . ” ( He ’s in reality 6’3 ” . )
Invited to audition for " 300 " by Gianni Nunnari , who was familiar with his Brazilian films , Santoro sent in a tapeline because he was play Don Quixote in a cinema at the prison term , and had lost nearly 40 pounds to do so . “ I had to be very slight and very , very skinny , ” he explains , so he had to win over Snyder that he could bulge up to do judge to Xerxes , and did so with workouts and a mellow protein diet . “ I did n’t want to be muscled up , but I had to be this giant figure . Also I had to work with my body to find the veracious language for this god - Rex . ”
Santoro researched Heroditas ’ diachronic accounts to get hold that Xerxes was a vain , unstable megalomaniac , but also insecure , weak and frightened . “ I do n’t think he ’s malevolent , ” pronounce the 31 - yr - old Rio de Janeiro native , best known in America for films like " enjoy really " and " Charlie ’s Angels : Full Throttle , " a Chanel commercial message with Nicole Kidman and , most of late , represent Paulo on " Lost . "
While he agreed to full and shave off his consistence hair , a outgrowth that give him unexampled respect for women , he draw the tune at shave his brow , which were instead covered by latex , as were other function of his face to accommodate several piercings . “ I shaved my own foreland , ” adds Santoro , calling it a “ freeing experience . I felt like this amphibious creature . It help me with the character . ”
So did getting into make-up and costume , a five - hour unconscious process . The range - laden outfit was “ laborious enough to palpate the weight of it but I think also it was part of that graphic symbol — a self - proclaimed god who believed that he really was above everything and everyone on planet earth . ”
We ’ll depend at the film ’s location and its extra upshot in the next plane section .
The Blue Screen and Visual Effects
Heading north of the border to save money on production toll and take reward of good crews and law of proximity to the visual burden house Hybrid , the movie was “ shoot it in Montreal , which I live instantaneously brings to listen ancient Greece for a lot of people , with the harsh winters and French and all that , ” quips Snyder , take note that his 61 - daylight shoot finish on agenda in January 2006 .
With a mates of pocket-size elision , the total cinema was shoot indoors , against ablue blind . Cinematographer Larry Fong devised an efficient method combine command processing overhead and key firing that made for faster , more efficient shot — it set aside the perspective to interchange by turning the just reversing the lighting : all light were pre - mounted , so it was a matter of turn over a switch and then some tweaks . Because all the backgrounds were total afterward , neither the television camera nor the actor had to move . This disorient actors , “ because they did n’t know where they were half the sentence , but because it was so forcible , they eventually forgot about the downcast screen , ” notes Snyder .
Chris Watts , the Visual Effect Supervisor over a section of 17 , and another 500 artists work in graphics facilities around the world , faced the challenge of creating a three - dimensional version of Miller ’s humans and adding elements that were n’t in his novel that would stay straight to it . “ They say that art is never finished , it ’s expanded , and there ’s definitely a vast element of that in this movie . I ’ve done a lot of movies with a circumstances of snap and a lot of movie with difficult shots but had never done a picture with double as many shots that were difficult , ” submit Watts , whose credits include Gattaca , Waterworld , The Day After Tomorrow , Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , Corpse Bride , The Fog and Pleasantville .
Watts , one of the first engage on the film and the last to leave when post - output was completed in January 2007 , dealt with the logistics of 1300 event shots and the restriction of shooting an epic on a soundstage . “ In the conflict scenes , if you require to have someone walking from far away right up to the camera , you could n’t actually put them far enough away — there was n’t enough stage space for the amount of sentence they ’d be walking to plow the necessary distance , ” Watts explains . “ So we ’d shoot elements and detain them in clock time and filled up the back infinite with CG people . We had hundreds of shots of digital people and even more with real the great unwashed composited in , because we could n’t afford digital people in every stroke . You stress to do things as efficiently as potential because there ’s always something that come up that you ’re not have a bun in the oven and you do n’t desire to have to say no to a music director . ”
“ On " Pleasantville , " we had one terabyte of disc space for the whole affair . Now I have 16 terabyte on my desktop . We ’re an all - Mac department and I have 15 G5s . Most of the compositing is done on Shake or Inferno , ” read Watts , who needed that electrical capacity to care elements like fake piddle . “ I shot a niggling mo of ocean off the Santa Monica Pier and we used that for two shots but most of it was digital water . ” A German companionship , Scanline , digitally create all the elements of a view showing Persian boat crash against rocks . For another conniption , depict a burning village , “ We shoot one burn construction from a luck of Angle and smoke and put that together in an amazing episode . ”
scene involving knight were in particular complicated . “ In the first fight scene , ” Watts have-to doe with , “ we had the riders ride the horse up to the edge of the blue screen and skid to a diaphragm . That was a challenge we amaze around through clever editing and a convincing backcloth . ” But the Persian messenger‘s ride over the mound toSpartaactually had to be dash outdoors . “ We could n’t get the sawhorse bunk fast enough [ otherwise ] , ” order Snyder . He was intent on having a real feel to " 300 " despite the artificial setting . “ I did n’t desire the movie to look like it was made in a computer , like ' Polar Express . ' The moving-picture show was shot on film . We sum up grain and lens flares because I wanted it to experience rough . It ’s very organic - feeling . ”
With spout cascade ofbloodand no less than three decapitations , 300 earn an roentgen rating for its stylized violence , described by producer Deborah Snyder , the director ’s wife , as a “ ballet of destruction . ”
But according to Watts , “ We photograph with very little actual blood because we had a limited product schedule and shooting with rip can really reproduce your shot time by a spate , and we did n’t require to have a lot of photorealistic blood in the pic — it would have grow us an NC-17 . So [ Grant Freckleton , the VFX art music director ] designed what we call 2 - D pedigree : we splattered coffee tree onto napkin , shoot it and did some digital processes on it . We shoot a mass of blood as elements against blue screenland to comp in but we used very little of it because at the remnant of the twenty-four hour period the 2 - vitamin D blood looked a mess more like the comic book and we could use a bunch more of it without turn on the ratings add-in . The makeup citizenry kept asking me when we were croak to use blood . They had gallon of simulated blood but we never used it . ”
On set , Watts coordinate with the set design and costume departments to preclude problems . Costume interior decorator Michael Wilkinson “ demonstrate me one particular fabric that was beautiful but when you bent it , it develop this bluish sheen on the edges so we got free of it . It would n’t have work against the blue screen . ”
Blue screen , rather than green , was chosen for several reasons . “ We have a luck of red in the motion-picture show , and sometimes when you have saturated red on agreen screenyou often have edge problems , where you get a yellow border . It has to do with the way light move through pic and interact with the photographic emulsion layers , ” explain Watts . “ Also , the amount of brightness that bounce back off a blue concealment vs. a green screen is different . The green bounces back a piddling more light , and we would have ended up with screens that were a little vivid than I like to shoot them . Some say that the coloration of the spills that number off a patrician screen are less exceptionable than those that issue forth off a green screen . ”
Whatever the background color , it took some getting used to for the actors . “ You need every bit of your brain that you may apply to envisage because there ’s nothing around , just blue wall . You have to imagine with full concentration , ” offer Santoro .
We ’ll look at the task of dress up the Cuban sandwich as well as the original myth of the Spartans in the next section .
The Myth and the Legend
“ I did n’t think having three hundred slow go guys in skirts would be as nerveless as naked guys running with red capes , ” Miller explains his choice of Spartan array . But full - frontal nudity was not an option for the film .
Warner Bros. “ barely let me put them in the outfits they ’re in . They wanted them way more clothed , ” pronounce Snyder , revealing that he received more notes about that , and details like the length of Leonidas ’ whiskers , than about the motion-picture show ’s fierceness .
Familiar with the graphic novel , Gerard Butler was prepared for the semi - nudity , but that flowing cape have some acquiring used to . He trip up more than once . “ We all did . Someone would be stand on your cape and you do n’t know it and then you go to take the air and you get pull back by the neck , ” he relates .
As for the Persian army ’s elite Immortals , “ They [ look ] like ninjas because Frank loves Nipponese art , ” Snyder add together up . For him and for Miller , coolheaded visuals and the sprightliness of the legend were more important than historical accuracy .
“ take liberties and making the story more abstract hang into historical tradition . Read Heroditas and you ’ll see some exaggeration , ” says Miller . Along those lines , the prose in his novel becomes the film ’s narration by Dilios ( David Wenham , The Lord of the Rings ’ Faramir ) , who lives to separate the story because Leonidas commit him home . “ He was n’t at the struggle . But he describes this final confrontation between Xerxes and Leonidas in vivid item , ” Snyder level out . He also make up Leonidas ’ wife Queen Gorgo ( Lena Headey ) , as a way of “ cue the interview of what was befall back in Sparta . ”
While the modern location of Thermopylae is a main road intersection , the movie ’s mental representation guess its ancient incarnation , with “ an ocean on one side and a very narrow mountain pass on the other . The reason why the Spartans work there was at some period the Iranian army was going to have to turn inward and this was the traditional place where they did it , ” Snyder signal out .
“ We did reckon at a lot of art body of work and pictural representation of what mass wear and what weapons they used and how they fought , but nobody really knows if that ’s unfeigned or not . There ’s no pictorial record of what happened , ” reminds Chris Watts . “ But we were much more concerned in it being a movie version of the risible book than we were in a motion picture version of history . This is about make Frank ’s and Zack ’s vision . ”
Next , we ’ll look at how the actors catch into shape .
Getting Into Shape
Zack Snyder ’s vision involve turning indolent , doughy actors into fierce - looking fighters with six - packs for armour , a transformation that took months of grueling forcible conditioning – not computer magic . “ There is a little bit of physical composition , ” profess Snyder , “ but 99 percent of it was sweat . The bodies are all theirs . ”
Embarking on " 300 " in “ really bad shape , ” Gerard Butler began do work with a personal trainer three months before the prescribed pre - production training Roger Huntington Sessions begin , working two hours a day , six mean solar day a week with weight , cardio , running and circuit training .
“ I wanted to be that bozo where my humankind would look at me and go , ‘ Yeah , I would play along that . ' And the hearing would look at Leonidas and go , ‘ I can see why they would follow that . ' And I would be palpate like , ' Of naturally they ’re going to follow me . ' I wanted to see that in their middle when I was speaking to them . ”
“ I had the guy rope train really hard , ” admit Snyder , who hired batch social climber and flight simulator Mark Twight to condition the actors and stuntmen as he does the military operatives , pro martial creative person and survival athletes at his secret gym in Utah . “ Zack wanted me to turn them into a crew that had been fighting together since they were kid and have that come across on camera , ” notice Twight .
“ They needed to interact and apportion some suffering to understand what being a Spartan was all about . Obviously they had to attend good because their main costume was leather underpants and a red cape . Whatever we made them look like was going to be their costume . But the look was a by - product . We trained for actual physical and psychological capacity . ”
Twight work with Butler and the stunt team in Los Angeles , “ and then we had seven weeks of fight education and forcible conditioning before they rolled moving-picture show . ” Using row machines and introductory equipment like barbell , dumbbells , practice of medicine balls and kettle bells , Twight would put the man through circumference and ticket team workouts .
“ One hombre has to drag a tyre 50 meters ; another guy does rive ups on the rings until the drag is finished . One one shot imply every guy wire has rotated through every station one time and the estimation is to do five rounds . ” They were clock , and “ sometimes there were penalty — holding a underslung position up to full reference with weights , or maybe a 50 - meter lunge . Something sore . ”
summate to the straining , Twight put his charges on a kilogram calorie - restricted dieting , “ which is why they await all sinewy and ropy — it ’s all muscleman and there ’s no adipose tissue there . ” The diet “ was 30 percent protein , 40 percent coordination compound saccharide , 30 percent fatty ; some multitude father more or less nutrient , depending on what needed to pass off . ”
Vincent Regan , who plays Captain , “ require to mislay 40 pounds , ” Twight relates . “ He come to us weighing 210 . Eight workweek after he was 170 and could dead - lift 355 pounds . He was dead dedicated to the broadcast , and did extra on his own clock time . After being in Montreal for a month he go to pick his wife up at the airport and she did n’t recognize him . ”
Butler was into it too , work out constantly on the stage set between return . “ I was probably pump between ten and fifteen clip a day , sometimes before every stroke . The more you trained the more that you want to take aim because the more you revalue it . Every session that I did , every scrap of pain sensation that I went through , the more I felt like a Spartan and the more that I would push myself . "
He has the cicatrice to show for it . “ I had tendonitis in almost every part of my body . I had a defective combat injury in my forearm , which still number up if I go back into the gym . I had a rotator cuff injury . I pull my hip flexor , ” Butler itemise . But no one was seriously offend on the shoot — rather miraculous conceive the hazard of hand - to - hand combat . competitiveness choreographer and stunt coordinators Damon Caro and Chad Stahelski train the squad for battle . We ’ll see how next .
Stunts and Fight Choreography
“ You have to get 50 guys who do n’t know each other to work together including hombre who never refer a blade in their lives , ” Stahelski begins . “ To get them all to the quality grade that the managing director is looking for and make it all work — it all goes back to prep and preparation . ” He , Caro , and 10 stuntmen they brought from Los Angeles , supplemented by 35 to 40 from Montreal , formed the battle corporation .
“ These are supposed to be the elite 300 Spartans , ” Caro remind . “ What are you gon na do , get six corking Spartans and a bunch of extras that ca n’t pick up a sword ? We made it look like there are 300 literal Spartans there . ”
Gerard Butler and David Wenham came into " 300 " with a bit of brand - handling experience , “ but we changed everything so they had to start out from scratch , ” notice Caro , who ’d previously worked with Snyder on Dawn of the Dead . He and Stahelski found their choreography on inquiry and experience with fighting styles and weaponry .
“ It ’s well known that they fought as a unit , and we implemented the tactics that they used . There are no diachronic phonograph record , but we read what they might have done in scrap , ” Caro explain . “ We did n’t just switch a bunch of moves together . There is a method acting to the madness , ” adds Stahelski . “ We took a little shore leave to make it cinematically attractive . But there ’s military strategic contingent build up into it . ”
admirer for nearly 20 years who met at a martial arts gymnasium in Los Angeles , the brace — with third pardner Dave Leitch , a frequent stunt double for Matt Damon and Brad Pitt — now run 87eleven , a stunts / fight / activeness training facility where they train actors and stuntmen on athletic , acrobatic and cross - training setup of all kind . Butler worked out there prior to filming , as did the stunt crew , and continued for five weeks prior to the shoot in Montreal .
“ At 9 a.m. we ’d do two solid hours of warriorlike arts and sword work with the stunt people and the actor would come in for another two to four hours , and after lunch the actors would act upon with Mark Twight , ” outlines Stahelski . “ It was a full eight - time of day day . ”
The resultant are apparent on screen , which Stahelski ascribe to the performer ’ commitment at the gymnasium and study at the board . “ They make in great physical body . They ’d have a cheat repast maybe once a calendar month , but they were so respectable , ” he says . “ No one really jockey until the wrap company . ”
With the buzz on " 300 " ringing loud in Hollywood before its release , producer Mark Canton expects others to leap on the bandwagon , “ asking how they can make motion-picture show like " 300 " practical and audacious at the same fourth dimension . ” Chris Watts has already fielded birdcall along those line , a proffer that scare away him . “ People will want to make motion picture in the style of ' 300 ' but for less money and in half the prison term . I do n’t think I ’d stand out on it just because it was going to be made like this , ” he say , although he ’d gladly work with Snyder again .
For lots more information on " 300 " and other related to issue , arrest out the liaison on the next varlet .
