If you were to poll miniature gamers about their favorite battle movie of the year, "Braveheart" would be the overwhelming answer. Why? The plot was throwaway, historical accuracy went right out the window, and while costumes were "interesting," they were far from being correct. Yet as this goes to press. "Braveheart" is up for seven awards, which I predict will win three, Sound Editing, Director, and Picture. Answer, Mel Gibson and the battle scene of Stirling Bridge. Mel Gibson will be the Academy's favorite, they like his self effacing style, and he is perfect as this year's poster boy for the Academy events of 1996.
There is also his battle scene at Stirling Bridge. That has a major impact on anyone who sees it, perhaps the best depiction of the brutality and evisceration of a medieval battle on the silver screen. It looks violently real. (It is said a famous movie critic fainted when he first saw it.)
How did Mel Gibson pull it off? The shooting time for the sequence was 6 weeks which translated to 24 minutes of screen time. While that is not overly long for that kind of sequence, how director Mel Gibson approached it should be of interest to historical miniaturists. Like us, he did research. He spent weeks studying paintings depicting battles of the XIII-XIV centuries, reviewed a BBC documentary on medieval warfare, and used miniature toy soldiers to block his battle scenes.
He recalls about the planning of the battle strategy for the shoot: "What happens in a battle? How does it happen? Why does it happen? Is there a reason for it?" We just cooked it up with a table and some plastic soldiers and what seemed logical strategy for the time. It wasn't totally logical. but it's the movies. It was believable."
With the scenes blocked, camera positions determined, and combat sequences rehearsed in miniature. the next step was to bring the battle to gruesome life. As the charging knights' horses crashed into the Scottish pike blocks they would have to impale themselves. SPCA and its European equivalent would never stand for this (studios have come a long way in defending the rights of animal performers since the 3,000 horses destroyed for the movie "Charge of Light Brigade." 1936).
Mechanical beasts had to be made. They were specialeffects supervisor's Nick Allder's design, a 200 pound steel skeleton, covered by foam and hair, that moved along 20 foot track at 30 MPH, powered by compressed nitrogen. At the end of the track a piston would shoot. causing the "horse" to rear up or somersault forward. This would be intercut with footage of real horses so viewers couldn't tell which was fake or real.
Allder also came up with an arrow launcher. This was a five compressed air tanks system with multiple barrels able to send 360 arrows each, per shot in rapid time, yielding the rain of 10,000 longbow arrows seen in the early battle scene.
Now to the battle site. Some 2,000 Irish Army reserves, 30 highly trained British stuntmen for the hand to hand close ups, the usual supporting cast of film crew plus Mr. Gibson, prepared to brawl not far from Dublin, Ireland at the Curragh and Ballymore Eustace, a piece of privately owned land, but, without a bridge. Tracks for the mechanical horses were laid, hand to hand fight scenes choreographed, incendiaries set, and the troops assembled, Cinematographer John Toll used eight cameras. This use of multiple scene recording allowed Gibson to cut away from one camera in the middle of fight sequences and pick them up at a different angle, shot size and movement, while keeping continuity, something that adds a lot to the scenes' correct battle "look."
With the approach, the battle and ensuing rout in the film can after 6 weeks shooting, Gibson began post production. This is where he made the scenes compelling. In conjunction with editor Steven Rosenblum, Gibson began playing with the speed and tempo of the lighting footage.
Motivated by director Orson Welle's innovative undercranking and slash cutting of the action sequences in "Chimes at Midnight," Gibson would under and overcrank sequences, then add chop, smash and jump cuts for impact. There are nearly 100 jumps (ump cuts) in the battle sequence. That is why it's so jarring,
By undercranking the camera, speed is increased so things happen faster on the screen, by overcranking, speed slows down. Slower motion results, Ed)
Then came the additional touches, making 2,000 Irish reservists appear like 9.000 battle mad Scots, which was done by use of computer- generated imaging to quadruple the players. Next, sound is added to the close hand to hand fighting scenes shot by cameras with short focal points for little depth perception, by using Foley artists, the ring of swords singing off mail and scale. thunder of galloping horse hooves, and the mealy thuds of blades slicing though flesh and into bone, all make the scene come to life, Finally the music score is added to increase tension, and call the audiences attention to dramatic high points in the battle.
As Gibson points out in closing: "In period paintings they (schiltrons?) were jammed like sardines. There was no form. It was chaos. It was everybody jammed together trying to stick one another. Alot of their weapons came from farm tools because a lot of Scots had nothing but. They had corn flails -- in one scene I whacked one guy with a corn flail -- rakes and hoes and forks. I wanted that feel where it was really crowded, so that it didn't look safe. You were just as capable of being hit by mistake as taking a blow purposely. And a battlefield is terrible. Horses are rearing, spears halfway through their necks, falling on people. There are nasty leg breaks, chance decapitations, people being stabbed in the eye and the throat, all kinds of horrors. I wanted that kind of hell."
Mel Gibson was able to catch a glimpse of that hell, but I still have one complaint, I ask, where is the bridge that caused the English to lose the battle.
"Oh that, well it's the movies, it's just believable." But just not factual.
Thanks to FILMFAX Canada for allowing me the use of part of this article.
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