Ran film: Encyclopedia II - Ran film - Production

Ran film - Production

The epic directorial style involved the use of lush and expansive locations, the mountains and plains of Hidetora's kingdom were shot at Mount Aso, Japan's largest active volcano in Kyushu. Kurosawa, was granted permission to shoot at two of the country's most famous landmarks, the ancient castles at Kumamoto and Himeji (the third castle being a filmset built on the slopes of Mount Fuji, which was razed in the film).

Kurosawa would often shoot a scene with three cameras simultaneously, each using different lenses and angles. Many long-shots were employed throughout the film and very few close-ups. On several occasions he used static cameras and suddenly brought the action into frame, rather than using the camera to track the action. He also used jump cuts to progress certain scenes, changing the pace of the action for filmic effect. ^[5]

• The castle destroyed in the middle of the movie was specially constructed on the slopes of Mount Fuji for the film and then burned down. No miniatures were used for that segment, although an optical of another castle being burned at the end was used.

• The film used approximately 1,400 extras, which required 1,400 uniforms and suits of armor to be fabricated. These were designed by Costume designer, Emi Wada, and Kurosawa, and were hand-made by master tailors, taking over 2 years to make.

• 200 horses were used in the film, a number of which had to be imported from the United States. Kurosawa used his extras and horses so efficiently, that when the film was ready for premiere, newspapers in Japan were reporting that thousands of extras and horses were used to stage the battles.

• Akira Kurosawa's wife of 39 years, Yôko Yaguchi, died during the production of this film. Kurosawa halted filming for just one day to mourn before resuming work on the picture.

• A scene which required an entire field to be sprayed gold was filmed but left out of the final film during editing.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Production", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki