Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/298092
C G W M a r ch / A p r i l 2 014 ■ 17 C G W M a r ch / A p r i l 2 014 ■ 17 Snyder's 300 was the second film based on a Frank Miller graphic novel, and as did the first – Miller, Robert Rodri- guez, and Quentin Tarantino's Sin City – it painted the cinema screen in an illustrative style. 300: Rise of an Empire, the sequel to 300, continues that style. Filmed on greenscreen stages at New Boyana Film Studios in Sofia, Bulgaria, the action flick finds a Persian navy ruled by the demi-god Xerxes and commander Artemisia invading Greece. An army commanded by General Themistocles fights the invaders. "I call it an encapsule – not a prequel and not a sequel – because it encapsulates the entire time frame before, during, and after the Spartans' [battle in 300 ] ," says Richard Hollander, who was the on-set visual effects supervisor. Hollander, a Motion Picture Academy member, traces his award- winning career in visual effects back to The China Syndrome, Blade Runner, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and The Abyss. More recently, he was, until 2006, president of Rhythm & Hues, and from 2008 to 2010, at Pixar, where he produced the Academy Award-nominated short film "Presto." Much of the action in this "encapsule" takes place on the water, and Scanline, under the supervision of Bryan Hirota, managed that complex effects work involving digital ships battling on the digital seas. Hollander took the visual effects helm for the land-based work, following Visual Effects Advisor Boyd Shermis, who started with the project. "Scanline, which had done the water on the first film, had already begun on the beautiful, stylized water," Hollander says. "Boyd did the previs for a really nice sequence when the protagonist is on a horse and runs across several boats. Scanline took it filmgoers back a little further to the time between the two wars. Each film relied on visual effects artists to create and place the setting in its appropriate spot in history by extending full-size and miniature sets on greenscreen stages, by altering location shots, and by build- ing and painting digital environments. The challenges they faced ranged from matching the painterly style of a graphic novel, to re-creating the ravages of war, to making miniature sets believable in a live-action world. We begin with 300. Barbara Robertson is an award- winning writer and a contributing editor for CGW. She can be reached at BarbaraRR@comcast.net. zack