Speical Effects in Movies

300 came out in 2007 and quickly started breaking box office records. It ended its box office run ranked 3^rd on the all time largest grossing R rated movies, behind the Matrix Reloaded and the Passion of Christ. The movie was based off of a graphic novel written by Frank Miller and shot mostly behind a blue screen. This enabled the director to give the whole movie a stylize look. Although this part of the movie is what caused some controversy. Many people thought the director was taking the easy way out when making this movie. Instead of building huge sets and setting up large scale scenes like in the Lord of the Rings they shot in front of a blue screen and just added these things later.

To get more specific, 300 was shot in a Montreal studio over the course of 60 days. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was shot over 274 days in over 150 different locations around New Zealand. 300 only had one director for the film compared to 6 directors for the Lord of the Rings. These are the things that hardcore film lovers bring up when questioning the credibility of films. Among other things are the costumes the actors have to wear, many films work hard on making real life costumes to make the film characters look real to their surroundings. The Lord of the Rings art department created over 19,000 costumes for characters. In 300’s defense it also took about a year to edit the film, the same amount of time each Lord of the Rings movie took. So we know each film did their share of filming which has to count for something.

real ogre not blue screen effect

I say “to each his own” on this topic. So what if Zach Snyder, the director of 300, decided to film the movie in front of a blue screen instead of on location in New Zealand . I do not see every movie turning to this alternative; therefore we know 300 did not ruin the movie business as many critics might believe.