Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000) was set in ancient Rome during the end of Marcus Aurelius’ reign and Commodus’ fascination with the arena games. The film’s production team relied heavily on props to help create/recreate historical and fictitious events. Since filming had to be done in locations with ancient Roman relics, crew members had to improvise. They often manufactured props and costumes to reduce production costs.
Although the studio and Scott were open to using CGI, Scott chose to use CGI only where necessary. With over 90 visual effects shots, Gladiator had only about 9 minutes of CGI in its 155 minutes running time. Scott chose to use real sets and props to get natural reactions and performances from actors. To achieve this, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator caused huge damage to film one of the movie’s scenes.
The Gladiator Scene That Caused Damage
Gladiator‘s opening scene is set in the forests of Germany during Marcus Aurelius’ campaign against the Northern Barbarians. Interestingly, the scene informs audiences of Maximus’ intention to return home to his wife, son, and farm. One of Maximus’ strategies to win the battle in the forest was to ambush the Barbarians and have them surrounded by Roman soldiers.
To achieve this, flaming arrows and catapult-propelled balls were shot into the forest to prevent the Barbarians from fleeing. Maximus and his small battalion approached from the other side of the forest. With the confusion and deaths from the burning forests, the Romans defeated the Barbarians in Gladiator.
How Ridley Scott’s Gladiator Helped Burn Down Bourne Woods
Scott needed a location to shoot the opening battle scenes of Gladiator. Luckily, production scouts informed him of The Royal Forestry Commission’s scheduled plan to remove a forest for deforestation in Surrey, England. When the production crew arrived at Bourne Woods, near Farnham, in Surrey, England, it was the perfect location for the Germania battle.
Scott proposed an offer to the Commission to allow him to film at the location and avail his facilities to help remove the forest. The Commission was happy to save resources and agreed to the offer. Gladiator‘s battle scene took about 3 weeks to film. As part of the efforts to deforest the area, the fires seen in Gladiator‘s opening scenes were real, eventually helping to burn down that part of Bourne Woods.
However, one noticeable thing about the battle scene is its lighting. In the middle of the fight, viewers could notice a blur effect as the lighting conditions worsened. This wasn’t intended in the script but resulted from a miscalculation. With the forests being burned for real, filming had to continue as is. However, wrong time management pushed filming far into the evening. To help salvage the scenes, low-light frames were included during Gladiator‘s post-production.
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