There were few groundbreaking vfx in 300, but the enormous success of its stylized approach should have an impact on films to come. All images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.  

Few films have caused as much furor as 300, director Zack Snyder's adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel telling of the Battle of Thermopylae. Critics blasted the film's story as simplistic and compared its heavy use of stylized CG environments and effects as akin to a videogame.

So, of course, 300 was a massive success, grossing $208 million at home on its way to a worldwide total of nearly $440 million. All this from a film that had highly stylized visual effects in virtually every one of its more than 1,300 shots and was made for a bargain price.

"We didn't do a whole lot of super groundbreaking visual effects," admits Chris Watts, the visual effects supervisor on 300. "There was a lot of it, and it was done in a style that maybe no one's ever done before. The big achievement in this movie from a visual effects point of view was creative."

Boyd Shermis says the filmmakers in 300 threw caution to the wind in re-creating the stylized look of the graphic novel.

And its that creativity, as much as the prospect of being able to make effects-heavy films for less, that has most impressed others in the industry.

"More often than not, when people go to shoot a movie in this fashion, they are unsure of what their environments and compositions will be and become very cautious and conservative with the camera," says Oscar-nominated visual effects supervisor Boyd Shermis (Poseidon). "The filmmakers in 300 threw out that convention and used every camera move they could think of to re-create a graphic novel in a faithful way, knowing that they could and would compose their shots later."

Enabling Personal Visions
Scott E. Anderson, who worked the virtual-set adventure film, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, agrees that 300 proves that visual effects can be done more creatively and more cheaply. "I love that films like 300 and Sky Captain before them all brought personal creative visions to the screen that weren't going to get made otherwise," he says.