The idea of film adaptation of the cycle of graphic novels Frank Miller “The City of Sins”, which was published in the 90s, Robert Rodriguez was sick for several years. Miller’s imperfection and intransigence of Miller, who had not at one time had not the most successful experience as a scriptwriter on the second and third “Robokop” interfered with realizing the idea. To convince the incredulous illustrator to transfer the rights to the works, Rodriguez lifted (in just one day!) the three -minute novel “Client is always right”, which later became the prologue of the “City of Sins”. She gave a sufficient idea of what the movie would be, and the impressed Miller immediately agreed to adapt. It is curious that Rodriguez was not enough for Rodriguez – he wanted to make not a traditional film adaptation that captures the general atmosphere of the original source, but literally transfer graphic novels to the screen. In order to more accurately fulfill this task, Rodriguez granted Miller the powers of the project. Also, a special guest was invited to set several episodes – a close friend of Rodriguez Quentin Tarantino. True, for a number of circumstances, he had to limit himself to the directing of only one scene – the surreal dialogue of Clive Owen and the dead hero Benisio del Toro in the car.
Filming took place in 2004 in the pavilions of their own film studio Rodriguez Trublemaker Studios in Austin. The functions on the site between Rodriguez and Miller were shared as follows: the first, like on any other project, was engaged in everyone (according to Miller, because of this he could not understand what the director’s responsibilities were concluded), while from time to time he worked with the actors, helping to clarify the motivation of the heroes, and followed the accuracy of reproducing the external appearance of the characters, the details of the details and fictional universe in general. It is interesting that the authors did not specifically make a script and tamping, and on the site they were guided directly by copies of Miller’s novels. At the same time, Rodriguez, by his own admission, sometimes did not even know what result he could count on. In parallel, the filming was carried out to create visual effects, without which not a single frame costs the film. Studios Hybride, Caféfx and The Orphanage made a short story.
The City of Sins has a kind of dramatic structure, the variety of which gained popularity in the 1990-2000s with a light hand of the same Tarantino. The film consists of four novels located not in chronological order. The story “Client is always right” is divided into two parts – the prologue and epilogue of the whole picture. Unlike the traditional cinema almanac, where several films are united by a through theme, the novels of the Cities of Sins form a single universe with intersecting plots, heroes and motives. Of the scattered details in front of the viewer, like a puzzle, a common panorama gathers. Another feature of the dramaturgy of the “City of Sins” lies in the seriousness of the stories and psychological deepening of the characters of the characters atypical for the film comic book. Before Rodriguez’s film, the genre was considered the target audience of the genre, first of all, teenagers. The City of Sins pulled up a more mature and sophisticated viewer.
The key component of https://kriptycasino.co.uk/login/ the “City of Sins”, which instantly gathered around him the army of fans and imitators-a unique visual style (the film was not in vain received at the Cannes Film Festival of 2005 a technical Grand Prix with the wording “For visual acuity”). It is hard to believe, but it was precisely because of her that the project was not easy to find distributors, because black and white cinema for the lion’s lion’s fraction of the 21st century-this is some kind of savagery. Although the picture, of course, is black and white in the usual sense cannot be called. Following the aesthetics of Miller’s graphic novels, Rodriguez sought to make the most contrasting, steel image that excludes the shades of transitional gray as much as possible. Such a radical approach is rare even in the inspiring authors of the American Naur of the 40s. In addition, the picture contains color elements – the eyes of some heroes, lips, hair, dresses, shoes, beds, cars, blood by coloring are highlighted with saturated flowers. By the way, we can find such a solution not only in Miller’s comics, but also in films such as “Schindler’s List” or “Plezantwil”.
Filming "Cities of sins" took place in color, and during processing the image was translated in Ch-b. The colorization of some elements required a special approach. For example, the skin of the yellow bastard performed by Nick was not yellow during the filming, but blue, performing, in fact, the chromakey function – blue is convenient for subsequent substitution, but it did not mix with the surrounding green background. To create the effect of white blood on the post-production, during the filming, not traditional fake blood was used, but a special illuminated fluorescent fluid. In the same way, plasters on the face of Mickey Rurk, Bruce Willis’s tie, Elijah Wood glasses were actually not white, but red fluorescent.
When building the frame, Rodriguez also followed Miller’s novels – mise -en -scenes, angles (many sharp corners from above and below), the size was literally copied. It is no accident that the movement of the camera is minimized as possible, and the necessary dynamics is created due to rapid installation. Black and white silhouette general plans present in the most intense moments of each of the short stories were created using animation.
Most of the actors were selected for the picture, taking into account their external similarity with the images created by Miller on paper. However, for some heroes, the performers needed to quite seriously change the appearance. Thanks to the master of the creation of the special makeup of Greg Nicotero, who is often working with Rodriguez, almost unrecognizable, but absolutely identical fictional heroes, Mickey Rourke became Benisio Del Toro. The application of makeup for each of them took several hours daily. In the case of the case, there was even a difficulty-due to the specifics of the makeup, the actor heard almost nothing, which, however, gave his game a special expressiveness.
The City of Sins, along with the new episodes of Star Wars and the Dieselpancom “Heavenly Captain and the World of the Future” became one of the first films completely shot using the chromakes. Actually, this technology, together with digital cameras, made the appearance of the picture. The chromakey strongly influenced the format of the work process: all the shootings took place in the pavilion, the room was covered with green fabric or painted with green paint, the scenery as such was not. At post-producing chromakey was replaced by a digital image. Only four scenery in the picture is natural: a bar, a kitchen in the novel “Big Real Masions”, a corridor of the hospital in the epilogue (due to the fact that there is a large number of characters in the frame at the same time, and this complicated the work of visual effects), as well as a prison chamber. It was a natural props, including weapons, furniture, cars. As the latter, by the way, the original models were mandatory-one and a half dozen rare cars of the 30-80s gathered for several months throughout Texas. When shooting dynamic scenes, for example, road chases, objects in the frame remained motionless-the effect of movement was created on post-production due to changes in the background. In the scenes where the heroes go or run, treadmills were used, that is, in reality the actors also remained in place.
According to Rodriguez, the use of chromakes allowed to accelerate the work repeatedly – it was not necessary to rebuild the scenery, move the equipment, rearrange the light, etc.D. As a result, for example, Brittani Murphy, although she appears in three short stories, was present on the site only one day. The scene of the yellow bastard chase for the heroes of Bruce Willis and Jessica Alba was also shot in a day, while without chromaken technology could have been required up to three weeks. Another big plus of the use of the green background is the lack of need in some cases to coordinate the schedules of filming actors. For example, in the picture there are scenes of the fights of the heroes of Mickey Rurk and Elijah Wood, but the actors themselves did not meet on the set. The scene of the dialogue of Mickey Rurk and Rutger Hauer began to shoot when Hauer had not even joined the project yet. Also, Bruce Willis and Brittani Murphy, Mickey Rourke and Jessica Alba did not meet on the site, although there are their dialogues in the picture. In such cases, the actor worked with an understudy, who put on a chromaken suit, so that during computer processing it could be replaced. The film was shot on the Sony Cinealta HDC-F950 digital camera, which, according to Rodriguez, was also fundamentally important-the film simply would not allow the necessary special effects.