300 VFX

Visually magnificent, high levels of complexity achieved through beautifully designed techniques. Technically, seeing 300 is like seeing reality through Photoshop filters. The movie is not concerned with story or discourse but only STYLE and ACTION. We could raise all the questions we want about testosterone, violence, discrimination, feminism but this is not the point. In the same vein as The Cell (2000) by Tarsem Singh, this is an authentic poem to draw, colour and motion. Illustration and design has been elevated to matter of honour, creating an ode to comics and videogames as a complete convergence artefact made of these three media. From the comics, the most interesting effects we can see are the framings made literally as comic squares and even more amazing than that is blood effect very comic like, but with a fantastic motion and depth effect in the movie. From videogames, apart the violence, we have strange bosses to defeat, an unique and linear goal to achieve, no caring for any character, the continuous tension through the entire movie…

Ron Gilbert said "I am happy to report that the convergence has happened. Just not in the direction we had predicted. 300 is a vacuous film filled with bad dialog, stiff acting, a pointless one-dimensional plot and interchangeable characters that hardly deserve to be named in the script. The film barely has a first act and does nothing but drive to a preposterous conclusion led along by a sequence of ridiculous events. The Visuals are nothing more than technical masturbation. Simply put, 300 is the best damn film I've seen all year". I agree it is a damn good film, not the best, but really something astonishing visually.

the style guide by CG Society

"Ten studios in four countries created the backgrounds, skies, blood and other effects for the film: Animal Logic, Hybride, Hydraulx, Pixel Magic, Amalgamated Pixels, Technicolor Digital Services, Buzz, Scanline, Lola, and Meteor."

There was a need to create style guides to distribute among all the partners, and this should be done daily.

"So, in the sky style guide, for example, he explained what to do: Start with a photographic plate. Kick two-thirds of the photographic detail. Look at the splat of coffee on the paper – the “inkblot” – and the cumulus clouds to see where they have the same patterns. Then blend the inkblots into the photos of the clouds and see what happens."

"In addition to guiding vendors creating landscapes, skies and blood, Freckelton created keyframes to help all the studios see what Snyder wanted in the final look. “As the film was being shot, rather than doing film dailies, they did HD Quicktimes,” he says. “I’d take screen captures of key shots from each sequence, and cut and paste and paint them in Photoshop.” In that way, he delivered the color decisions to the effects studios. “They could look at those keyframes, the greens, blues, sepia tones, to match their grade,”