The influences of The Last Samurai movie run deep for director Edwark Zwick. Zwick credits his fascination with the movie The Seven Samurai, which he first saw as a teenager, as being one of the leading forces directing him into a career of filmmaking.

“I first saw Akira Karosawa’s The Seven Samurai when I was 17 and since then I’ve seen it more times than I can remember,” says Zwick. “In that single film there is everything a director needs to learn about storytelling, about the development of character, about shooting action, about dramatizing a theme. After seeing it, I set out to study every one of his films.”

Now, several decades later, Zwick found himself directing his own Samurai movie, one that would require over a year and half of full-time dedication.

Choosing Locations: The Monastery, Tokyo, Katsumoto Residence, and Samurai Village
Scouting the right locations for a movie is essential to the cinematography and visuals presented to an audience. Therefore it was vital that the locations chosen for The Last Samurai could transform the audience back to an earlier time in Japanese history.

One of the first places decided upon for The Last Samurai was the Monastery, which is the centerpiece of The Last Samurai’s home. For this, scouts discovered the small Japanese town of Himeji where no film production had ever taken place. The great thing about Himeji was the Engyoji Temple and Monastery. In the movie, this is where Katsumoto and his loyal followers stay. And the location and look was perfect for the movie.

“The Engyoji Monastery was built around the year 900,” says Zwick. “It’s a sacred place, first built to train monks and now a shrine where the Japanese make pilgrimages. The monks were enormously kind and gracious in allowing us to photograph it and them. Since the film tries to address the more spiritual aspects of the Samurai, it was a special place to begin production and really clarified the heart of the film for everyone. There is no way we could ever replicate something like this. You feel the past in every piece of wood, in the scent, the way the light hits, the way the stones have been polished from thousands of years of people walking on them and praying here. I think it was important to have endowed the film with the spirit of this extraordinary place.”

The crew were extremely careful in their shooting of the scenes at the Engyoji Monastery so that they wouldn’t damage it (or the surrounding ancient structures) in any way. Getting to the Monastery for filming was another interesting challenge. High atop Mount Shasho, cast and crew had to travel via suspended gondola. The only alternative was to walk up the worn footpath leading up the mountain to the Monastery.

New Zealand and Warner Bros. Studio backlot served as the other key locations for The Last Samurai.

To create Katsumoto’s Tokyo residence (where Algren goes to rescue Katsumoto), production designer Lilly Kilvert adapted a popular existing set – the one used for Gilligan’s Island and also for The Walton’s pond. According to the Warner Bros. production notes for The Last Samurai, “The ready-made lagoon was transformed into a reflection pond alongside Katsumoto’s house. But the house itself had to be built in its entirety as well as a bridge spanning the pond and serving as a planked path to the front entrance. While not a replica of a specific building, the architecture and materials were based on traditional design and standard dimensions for a proper Samurai or upper-class residence.”

Built into the set, but unseen by audiences, were mobile camera platforms to give a wide variety of unrestricted camera movements.

Also constructed on Warner Bros. backlot was an area reflective of 19th century Tokyo. Warner Bros. backlot New York Street was completely transformed for the Tokyo shooting scenes. Constructing such sets isn’t as simple as redoing the exterior of buildings. Thought had to be given to every detail of a 19th century Tokyo thoroughfare, including the use of lanterns and the placement of telegraph wires and prayer flags.

“This are that became known as the Ginza district had to encompass about a year’s worth of change, from 1876 to 1877,” says Kilvert. “Japan was going through a major transformation at this time, as all the European nations moved in to establish a foothold in what they assumed would be a lucrative market. Everybody was there – the English, French, Spanish, Germans – you heard many languages and we reflected that in the signs on the buildings.”

The final key location chosen for filming of The Last Samurai was a 40-acre cattle and sheep farm located in New Plymouth, New Zealand. This secluded area was used to build the 19th century Samurai village set. Amongst a lot of rain, a crew of 200 built 25 structures from scratch in addition to fences, gates, animal pens, and landscaping. The landscaping was one of the biggest challenges. As Warner Bros. states in their production notes, “To facilitate revealing shots, the crew cut horizontally into bordering hillsides and built on multiple levels, moving upward more than outward and providing depth. Lumber was brought in by helicopter; thatch from a nearby valley was cut and hand-tied.”

In addition, five months before location shooting began, the rough terrain was replaced with rice paddies, trees, and crops.

The detail put into the design of the village was key to its authenticity.

“We had a potter’s building complete with baking kiln, a weaver’s house, a basket maker, and – this being a Samurai village – a sword smith and shrine where, among other things, the blades would be blessed,” says Kilvert. “We also had a water wheel and cistern system, since the Japanese had advanced methods of water delivery and irrigation at the time. Essentially, we designed the village based on the type of people and occupations that would have existed then.”

New Zealand also served as the location for the final battle scene. But to make the battle area consist of the proper proportions for filming, crews had to reduce 50 feet of height and 400 feet of width from a hill to create one perfect for the key battle.

It was a lot of work for one person and her crew, but a challenge that Kilvert and her team lived up to, exceeding expectations.

“What Lilly has done on three continents is phenomenal,” says Marshal Herskovitz, one of the movie’s producers. “Recreating period Japan on the backlot, building an entire village on the top of a mountain – it’s like going to war. We were moving armies and material on a colossal scale for a company making a movie.”

In the end, most important to Kilvert was the authenticity.

“The most difficult thing we had to do in designing this film was to find a way to honor the rules of Japanese architecture while finding ways to make them photographable,” says Kilvert. “ Much of it is very precisely designed. The length of a tatami mat and the height of a shoji screen are specific measurements. In the end, we had to break some of their specifications. In general, I tried to assemble the essential elements and create an authentic feeling of a particular time.”

Costuming the Characters
Another key element to pulling off the authenticity of the Japanese time period was the costuming of the characters. For this, costume designer Ngila Dickson was brought on. Dickson’s most recent achievement had been the costumes for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in which her work earned her several key award nominations (including an Oscar nominations) and several actual awards (including a Golden Saturn and BAFTA award).

Dickson’s original plan was to gather photographic references from the time period and use that as the basis for starting her designs. But she ran into one slight problem…

“The first thing we did was find every possible photographic reference for the period and amassed an enormous volume of images,” says Dickson. “As we went further into it, we realized that many of those images were staged and that the photographers had taken quite a bit of license. We discovered that in some cases they were using the local prostitutes and dressing them up. So, from what we initially thought was a huge historical reference, we had to go through and re-evaluate. Ultimately, we interviewed expert historians both in America and Japan and then cross-referenced their material. Finally we looked again at the photographs and began to unravel the truth.”

One of Dickson’s strengths in costuming is her use of tones and colors.

“I’m a demon when it comes to proper color,” she says. “Most people thing of Japanese dress as quite colorful whereas I’ve used rich, dark, subdued colors, which are correct to the Meiji period. I use brights very sporadically, for specific elements, such as Geisha. As with every movie, we try to distinguish one character from another with wardrobe selections. Ken Watanabe’s character, the Samurai leader Katsumoto, is about purity and strength, and embodies a Zen-like quality, so he appears mostly in deep blues and earth tones.”

Dickson used tone to also convey character growth, motivation, and changes.

“Likewise, Taka is initially associated with very dark tones,” she says. “Taka is a subtle complex character, a woman whose husband has been killed in battle by the man she is currently nursing back to health. We began with a very rich, dark palette for her, in costumes as plain as possible. As the story progresses, Taka’s colors lighten as she begins to blossom and change with Captain Algren’s influence. Of course, the clothes of that time were very restrictive so her wardrobe can never be very vivid: the progression is subtle.”

In Dickson’s trips to Japan, she came across two people who became an essential part of her costuming team. They provided guidance in keeping the costumes realistic to the time period and customs. The two were Akira Fukuda, a well-known Japanese costumer, and Akira Kurosawa. In addition Munehisa Sengoku, “the master of courts costume and custom to the Imperial family in Japan,” was brought on as a consultant.

“The Emperor himself was subject to specific guidelines regarding his wardrobe, whether formal or casual, and so the manner of his dress could indicate at a glance the nature or tone of a particular meeting,” says Dickson. “In this scene, he receives Katsumoto in a white silk kimono and red hakama, a casual garment which suggest the level of intimacy that exists between these two men regardless of their current differences.”

Dickson was also given the responsibility of creating the costumes of the foreigner visitors to Japan, including Captain Algren, played by Tom Cruise.

“Tom is a very physical actor and it was important for him to feel as comfortable as possible,” says Dickson. “The Civil War uniform posed no problem; it was already designed for fighting. As for the leather coat, we needed something that would allow him to travel from the Civil War through the Indian Campaign and then to Japan and that also suited his character and history. I specifically didn’t want one of those Custer-style jackets. What we ultimately ended up with was a deerskin, mahogany, very weathered and aged, as thought it had survived a lot. The instant Tom put it on, it was hard to imagine him without it. The bonus, which we discovered when rehearsals began, is that it had great flexibility.”

Dressing the hundreds of warriors was another challenge provided to Dickson. In it’s production notes, Warner Bros. explains the detail of this process:

“The process of producing 250 sets of armor began by first assembling the many individual pieces. Jewelers were employed to fashion prototype plates in copper, which were then reproduced in softer metal and laced together over a model to test for form and drape, and ultimately molded and sculpted in eurothane. Similarly, blacksmiths created models for the helmets. Jewelers also applied their talents to the myriad details characteristic of Samurai armor, such as decorative discs and symbols, filigree, grommets and rivets in the form of chrysanthemums and other flowers because Samurai craftsmanship was like jewelers’ craftsmanship – very fine quality, and rich in detail.”

The work of Dickson and her team of 80 people took 14 months in order to make sure each character was perfectly dressed for every second of film.

“Overall,” says Dickson, “there were more than 2,000 costumes made, to cover scenes as diverse as a San Francisco Convention, the Japanese Imperial Army and Samurai on the battlefield, village life, flashbacks to the American Indian wars and Japanese street scenes. We had costumes coming out of our ears.”

Power Without Words
One element that was important to the makers of The Last Samurai was that much of the story could be told through the power of the visuals. This was particularly essential in the scenes where Algren is being held by the Samurai in the Samurai village.

“The scenes in which Algren is getting to know Taka, this woman who looks after him every day and doesn’t say a word, are very powerful,” says Zwick. “Here are two people forced to be in each other’s lives and yet there are barriers between them – the circumstances, the natural restraint given the difference in cultures, and of course, the language. There are so many obstacles to their connection, yet they connect. It’s really a delight for me to see how much Koyuki is able to convey in her look, her gestures and her bearing, and how much Algren understands. It’s almost like a silent movie performance.”

Acting is key to helping the audience understand the inner drama of characters. And to help establish that silent powerful storytelling, the director would give concise direction for each seen. For example, he wanted Ken Watanabe to really get inside of his character’s mind, Katsumoto.

Says Watanabe; “Before shooting, Ed said to me, ‘You have to feel everything – the campfire, the sound of insects, wind, temperature. It’s a cold night. Hear the horses stirring. Tom breathing.’ And all of this for a scene in which I had no dialogue. In a way, it was more like direction for living than for acting, which is a good example of Bushido spirit. Bushido is like breathing, being aware of our connection to nature and to everything. The Samurai didn’t talk about it, they simply live it.”

Non-Existent Visual Effects
The Last Samurai doesn’t seem like a movie that would need any visual effects and by watching the movie, one could deduce that there are no visual effects present. Yet a visual effects crew did work on The Last Samurai, doing work that no one would ever suspect of being a visual effect. The visual effects supervisor for The Last Samurai was Jeffrey A. Okun. And he explains exactly how visual effects were incorporated into the movie:

“A lot of times the Samurai have to ride horses while shooting arrows into a crowd of hundreds of people, and using real arrows would be too much of a safety risk, so that’s where we’ll put in the CGI. Likewise, if you see an arrow hit a horse, that won’t be real.”

Another scene requiring some CGI work was one in which Samurai Ujio beheads a man. This is the scene that takes place right after the first battle in the movie. The careful camera movement, use of green screens, and visual effects blends flawlessly.

Sometimes the best visual effects are the one an audience doesn’t know is there.

Cut. That’s a Wrap
There are many key factors that go into the success of a movie in addition to the locations, direction, costumes, and visual effects. The cinematography, art direction, sound effects, original score, casting, and execution are all essential elements. The Last Samurai seems to blend excellence together into one package that is easily appreciated by those that seek to understand the concept of honor and the people who made honor the most important practice in their beliefs. And the cast and crew of The Last Samurai have done an honorable deed in the creation of a movie that can transcend time.