The Art & Making of Hercules (Pictorial Moviebook)
Category: Books,Humor & Entertainment,Movies
The Art & Making of Hercules (Pictorial Moviebook) Details
From the Back Cover For fascinating insights into how a major Hollywood action film of gigantic scope and complexity is made—especially one shot entirely on location in Hungary with sets, kingdoms, costumes, weapons, horses, chariots, and warriors that transport us to a world never before seen on film—go to The Art & Making of Hercules, which celebrates the artists, actors, and filmmakers behind the Brett Ratner epic film, starring the incredible Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson and featuring distinguished British actors Ian McShane, Rufus Sewell, Joseph Fiennes, Peter Mullan, and John Hurt.Lavishly illustrated, the book features more than 300 production photos, sketches, storyboards, pre-visualization stills, computer graphics, costume drawings, 3-D renderings, set decorations, digital photo compositions, Weta Workshop concept paintings, and comic book panels and artwork. Laced throughout are cast and crew commentaries, script excerpts, and extracts from the Radical Studios graphic novel that became the inspiration for director Brett Ratner's new vision."Every aspect of our movie was meant to deemphasize the use of visual effects and focus instead on tangible in-camera execution….Visually, we wanted to demystify ancient Greece…. Our tale is different from any prior incarnation of Hercules," Ratner explains in his introduction. "No gods. No overt superhuman powers, a complete deconstruction of the myth…Our Hercules is mortal. He is not alone. He wanders about ancient Greece, a world-weary mercenary, haunted by his past, joined by five loyal companions with individuality, specific skill sets, and, most importantly, purpose."The making of Hercules was as unprecedented as the 3,000-year-old legend itself, and all that excitement is brilliantly captured here for fans and collectors alike. Read more About the Author Linda Sunshine is the author of more than sixty books, including novels, humor books, and other Newmarket Pictorial Moviebooks on the films How to Train Your Dragon 2, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, The Mummy: Tomb of the Emperor Soldier, Angels & Demons, and Saving Private Ryan. She lives in Los Angeles.Brett Ratner, director and producer, previously directed Red Dragon, The Family Man, After the Sunset, Money Talks, the three Rush Hour movies, X-Men: The Last Stand, and Tower Heist. He is the publisher of RatPac Press, a division of RatPac Entertainment, which he cofounded with James Packer. He lives in Beverly Hills with his grandparents. Read more
Reviews
The Art and Making of Hercules is a nice companion to the film and talks quite a bit on the film production with accompanying photos and concept art.The 176-page hardcover is filled with plenty of photos from behind the scenes and location sets. Pictures are printed hug. It's quite cool to check out the details such as the costumes, props, makeup and sets.The artworks are not as epic as I had expected. The concept art still look good but mostly for capturing the mood. You'll see character designs, weapons and environment art. The character art is so-so. I prefer fighting scenes of which there are not much. As for the environment, the story is based more on reality than myth so the designs of the buildings and architecture are more down to earth than of mythical proportions. The ones that I like more are from the Greek-inspired citadel and the dungeon, and that's about all which is not muchIn terms of mixture, I would say it's 60-40 for photos and artworks.I do enjoy reading about how they made the film, like building their sets, getting actors together, dealing with the weather, horses and other interesting stories. It provides fun insight as the director Brett Ratner emphasise shooting on location over using computer graphics. There are also profiles of the main characters, and writeup talking about the origins and different variations of Hercules from history. The story is actually included in the book so if you haven't watched the movie, you'll want to skip over those two pages.Overall, I'll recommend this book to those who like the film or enjoy reading about film production.(See more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)
