Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1531774
done the first time. At the same time, we opened similar facilities in familiar territory; Ouarzazate in Morocco and on the island of Malta. Fortunately, I was able to get some of the original Gladiator "band" back together. Both of the set decorators, Jille Aziz and Elli Griff, had been on the first film, as was DP John Mathieson, HOD SFX director Neil Corbould and a handful of construction men as well, including Kevin Turner, our HOD plasterer. There were also many new faces in the Art Department. In Morocco, the Supervising Art Director was David Ingram, originally Australian but now based in the UK, who brought his crew from other diverse corners of "The Empire"—Germany, Croatia, Spain, the UK and local Moroccans. They all added their own individual takes on the set details which contributed greatly to the exotic flavor of this distant provincial world. The first of the production's many mad ideas was to film the opening sequence, a gigantic sea attack on the coastal fortress of a North African city, in the Moroccan desert. The thinking was that it was B C E D