300 Revolutionary?

I wanted to share an interesting article on the movie 300. The article talks about how it's use of CGI will revolutionize how CGI is being used in film today. Essentially, in the past, CGI has been used to create effects or objects that could not be physically created otherwise, either because it would be too costly or because a physical model would not do the vision justice. Similar to the latest Star Wars movies, the actors did almost all of their acting against a blue screen and the backgrounds were filled in later.

What makes it different from Star Wars is the purpose of those backgrounds. In Star Wars, the backgrounds were created to be as realistic as possible as a replacement for building sets. You weren't supposed to notice that the background was not really there. In 300, the background and landscapre are almost an additional character in the movie. It's feel and tone changes with the scene. Not in a trippy, Waking Life sort of way, but in a realistic way.

Well, I don't want to recreate the entire article, go and read it for yourself. It's very interesting.