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Can you talk about the costume design?
Frank Miller: “Well, what I wanted out of Xerxes when I was drawing the comic book was to have one figure that would show the sheer size and exotic qualities of a very rich, very pleasure oriented culture. As I worked on it, he just got taller and taller and more little ringlets and stuff all over him to the point where I was driving my painter out of her mind. The idea was just to get across the opulence of the Persian Empire in contrast to the very stark, severe Spartans.”
Zack Snyder: “I know when we went to actually make the outfit, Rodrigo [Santoro] who plays Xerxes – we’d cast him already and then I think he got a copy of the graphic novel. He called me and he was like, ‘I’m not going to be dressed like this am I, in the movie?’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about? That’s awesome.’ It took him a little while to really… He wouldn’t shave off his eyebrows. That’s one thing he wouldn’t do. But everything else is that’s him. He did it. And Michael Wilkinson who did the costumes in the movie, who’s amazing, who I love, he just would have Frank’s drawing and he just said, ‘Okay. That’s it. How do you make it? Let’s see what we’ve got.’ I think he did a great job. If you’ve seen the book, it’s the same.”
How did you set up the shots and the lighting?
Zack Snyder: “The cinematographer is a guy named Larry Fong. He and I went to [Art Center] together. He and I were classmates. We had done a lot of commercials together because in the commercial world, I'm a director/cameraman, but it gets lonely in that business so you like to call your friends and Larry's talented so it was nice to go to BBF or someplace like that with your buddy. So we had done a lot of jobs together and when I approached him about 300, I think he thought I was joking. I said, 'I want to make it look just like this book, this awesome graphic novel.' And he just was flipping through it, 'Okay, all right. I guess.' I don't think he realized how much I intended until we started to shoot some tests and talked about how to make it look and crush it and do all the things we ended up doing.
We shot the movie in 60 days and I don't know if you're familiar with film production schedules, but that's not a lot of time. It's pretty involved in its action, and it was ambitious. We finished on schedule. What we basically did is we had a huge, soft top, because the whole movie takes place outside. I mean 90% of it. Then Larry had devised this method of rigging in the perms back lighting, because everyone's kind of brimmed or edged with an edge light. And what we did was if we were doing a close-up like this way, and the backlight was over there, then when we go to do the reverse, instead of physically putting the camera over there, we would just switch the edge to that side and keep facing the same way. It’s blue screen so nobody cares.
We were able to motor, but it was kind of hard for the actors. They didn't know where they were half the time. I'd have to really go like, 'Okay, Thermopylae is over there. Xerxes is over there.’ But because it was so physical, they were able to stay in it. When a guy's running at you trying to kill you, you kind of forget you're on blue screen, I think. That's my feeling anyway. The more violence or the more confronted they were, the more into it they seemed to get. They were able to stay in it.”
Frank, what did you see in the movie that you wish you could have done in the graphic novel?
Frank Miller: “It's really apples and oranges. All I can say is I was a little kid when I saw a much earlier filmed version of the story, much tamer one. But I was just six or seven years old and I sat there next to my brother who is only two years older than me. Right before the climax, I said, 'Steve, are the good guys losing?' He said, 'I don't know, ask dad.' At the age, we're way too cool to sit with our parents so I had to go back a couple rows and said, 'Dad, are the good guys going to, like, die?' 'I'm afraid so, son.' I went back down and sat down and the story haunted me ever since. It redefined everything a hero was.
Years went by and I told myself, 'When I'm good enough, I'm going to do this story.' More years went by and I found myself talking about it too much. I was afraid I’d become one of those boring people who sat around and talked about the story he never did. So to make up for lost time, I went to Greece, I read up everything there was and turned it into my book. I never intended for it to be a movie. As a matter of fact, I was shying away from any of my material being movies. But first I was attacked by the enthusiasm of [Gianni Nunnari] and then by Mark Canton's obsession with the story. Finally by Zack who has a passion but also has become maybe one of the half dozen people on the planet who can completely obsessed and utterly knowledgeable about the [whole thing]. The whole thing felt right so I backed off.
As far as things I would have taken from the film, I guess I would have made it a film. Before I got to the set, as they were slamming along through all these battle scenes, I maybe jokingly thought about killing Zack. At the time, I'd become a director so I thought, 'Maybe I'll just show up, be nice to everybody, take Zack out back, pop him, leave him in the snow.' But when I saw the battle scene with the immortals and saw what Zack was orchestrating, I'm like, 'Uh, Frank, you're a puppy. Wait for a couple more pictures before you try this.' Anyway, my main reaction is no, there's nothing I'd rob back at this point. I'm very happy with the book. But I think what this team has put together through sheer dedication and with a verve and even with humor is going to create a bunch more little bright-eyed kids who have a story they can't get out of their head.”
Page 3: Difficult Scenes, Marketing 300, and Historical Accuracy
