When Zack Snyder presented his plans for adapting Frank Miller’s popular 300 comic book series to studio heads at Warner Bros., they expected another Gladiator. The plot suggested as much: An expressionistic retelling of the bloody Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC—which led to the decimation of the belligerent Spartan army at the hands of Persia’s enormous forces—Miller’s 300 plays out almost exclusively on the battlefield. Snyder, however, wasn’t interested in replacing Miller’s epic vision of chaos with expensive locations and stunts. Instead, the director envisioned a movie shot entirely in front of green and blue screens, adding the surrounding environment during postproduction. The final result brings to life the high contrast, densely colored landscapes of Miller’s book, engulfing viewers in a completely fabricated universe. The radical approach befuddled tradition-minded members of the Hollywood system, who viewed the pitch with typical concerns for budget and physical constraints.
“They were like, ‘Are you going to go to Morocco to shoot?’” recalls Snyder. “It’s sort of standard for them.” Snyder just went to Canada, used three small sets, and shot the whole thing on a relatively mild budget of $60 million. “We used a pretty basic technology,” he says. “Putting an actor in front of a screen is not a revolution. The weather man has the same basic technology.”
While computers have been inextricably bound to the blockbuster formula since Jurassic Park, Snyder’s project is the latest in a recent trend that introduces a new implementation of technology into the filmmaking process: While the simulated world plays a key role in the quality of the action sequences, the technique also finds quieter, dialogue-driven scenes placed within computerized environments. Given that anyone with access to basic editing programs can achieve greenscreen and bluescreen effects, Snyder’s chosen method has more in common with stage design than pricey special effects work.
“When the studio saw the film, they felt they had been given a gift,” says Snyder. “Normally, when they want to do a blockbuster-style film, it costs a lot of money. The idea that they could get a movie of that scale ... it was almost like they weren’t expecting that until they saw the movie.”
Regardless of its reasonably light production requirements, 300 feels more like a throwback to the histrionic period dramas popularized by Cecil B. DeMille during the first half of the 20th century. The performances, especially Gerard Butler as Spartan King Leonidas, are surprisingly stagy, riddled with exuberant battle cries and heavily dramatized exchanges: “Our arrows will blot out the sun,” threatens a dying Persian. “Then we will fight in the shade,” retorts his Spartan counterpart.
As a silly throwaway, the scene feels like a contrivance, but the prediction becomes unsettlingly realized when piercing death from above pelts the Spartans. In that sense, the 1,306 digital effects shots in 300 (mostly bluescreen) form a direct relationship with the performances, and vice versa. It’s no longer a major leap to imagine the same method applied to subtler stories—so that the drama of the movie, rather than its visceral impact, benefits from the versatility of computer effects. (Imagine Shakespeare’s witches in Macbeth getting the greenscreen treatment.)
Historically speaking, 300 marks the third time a movie has combined virtual environments with live action performances for the entirety of its running time. Director Kerry Conran’s 2004 futuristic adventure Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow used the same device to recreate Saturday matinee escapism. The next year, Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City (another Miller adaptation) channeled the noir genre through digital wizardry. With 300, the inexpensive practice engages a recognizable sword-and-sandals story. It’s not a coincidence that the projects revisited familiar settings. “In my mind, it was about reinventing the genre, not redoing it or rehashing it,” says Snyder.
As a filmmaker, Snyder identifies with genre movies to a large degree. His first full-length feature (following years of work on television commercials), a remake of Dawn of the Dead, received critical and commercial approval. At turns smart and terrifying, the success of Dawn resulted from Snyder’s assured direction, rather than technological feats. “I like make-up, when you can do it,” Snyder admits, explaining his fundamentally different approaches to his two completed movies. “I wanted to make a cult movie with Dawn of the Dead. It happened to be made at a studio,” he says. “With 300, I made a very specific movie from [Miller’s] book.”
The distinction suggests that a project like 300 materialized from the particular formal demands of the subject matter. Following that logic, the extent to which movies can benefit from an aesthetic makeover depends on the overall creative inspiration behind the projects associated with the technology. For Chris Watts, Snyder’s visual effects supervisor on 300, the evolving technology requires committed leadership. “One of the blessings of the current state of the digital effects industry—and also one of the curses—is that pretty much any problem can be solved by money,” explains Watts, whose other credits include Looney Tunes: Back in Action and Corpse Bride. “The preferred effect is that directors can create entire films in worlds that don’t exist and can’t be photographed—with a lot more stability than before, and for a lot less money.”
Since the technology is still associated with mainstream entertainment, more ambitious experiments haven’t been realized. David Cronenberg dispelled the belief that William S. Burrough’s extensive drug diary Naked Lunch was unfilmable by using outlandish make-up and models in his 1991 adaptation. Julie Taymore’s 2002 biopic Frida blended animation with live-action to bring Frida Kahlo’s surreal paintings to life. When these types of projects get fully computerized, the artistic potential of digital effects will gain greater recognition. For now, however, they remain stuck within a market-driven mindset.
“The day after 300 comes out, there are going to be a lot of people wanting to make movies in the style of 300,” says Watts. “I think the success of 300 will be solely based on the skill of the director and the performance of the actors.” Despite the fairly small nature of the project, 300 is being marketed as an event film, the equivalent of an Off-Broadway play taking over Times Square. Screenings of the movie will occur nationwide in IMAX format, providing an opportunity for the visuals to take centerstage. Such royal treatment has less to do with the quality of 300 itself, than it does with the arrival of an art form that has finally made the transition from concept to execution: the virtual movie.
In spite of its close relationship to computer animated narratives, the virtual movie essentially reverses the typical route of implementing special effects into a live action production. “One of the movies I’m working on in the future is completely different from 300,” says Watts, who remains mum on the details. “It’s something that, until now, nobody ever thought to make.”
Until that supposedly unexpected project appears, Snyder’s movie offers a powerful glimpse at the potential that certain inspired creations might eventually fulfill. As an early entry in the canon of virtual movies, 300 hints at the way that elements of theater can encroach on the virtual realm. The next major advancement in combining computer effects with live action, James Cameron’s sci-fi epic Avatar, doesn’t quite follow in the footsteps of 300: Budgeted at $200 million, the essence of Avatar bears a closer relationship to the preexisting blockbuster paradigm. It’s the smaller projects that will demonstrate the viability of virtual movies.
But don’t expect Snyder to pigeonhole himself as the spearhead of the revolution. His next movie, an adaptation of Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel (and literary masterpiece) Watchmen, doesn’t fit the requirements of the virtual movie. The fascinating drama, set for a March 2009 release, is envisioned by Snyder as an R-rated, character-driven story and focuses on numerous unlikely superheroes intent on saving the planet. “People ask me if Watchmen is going to be like 300,” says Snyder. “No, it’s not. It’s a completely different thing. Watchmen is more like Taxi Driver or Dr.
Strangelove than X-Men. When you go to Mars or Antartica [in the story], yeah, there are greenscreen opportunities. That’s just because you can’t [really] go to Mars or Antartica.” (While he hasn’t yet presented his filming strategies to Moore, Snyder says that Watchmen producer Lloyd Levin has a game plan for contacting the famously reclusive comic book writer.)
Snyder’s decision to avoid repeatedly using the same technique in his filmmaking illustrates how the forces behind the emergence of virtual movies are intrinsically linked to projects that suit the process itself. “You can’t make a [three-dimensional] model of Bugs Bunny and have it actually look like Bugs Bunny,” says Watts. “It doesn’t translate to three-dimensional entertainment.”
For his part, Snyder anticipates a slew of projects after the release of 300 that take cues from its computer-based ambition. “I think you will get more graphic novel adaptations that are intensely true to the source material,” he says. “Overall, it could get crazy.”
