How that insane chariot race in the new 'Ben-Hur' was shot with almost no CGI
Paramount Pictures
Like the Heston movie, the latest adaptation of the Lew Wallace novel, out August 19, hinges on a thrilling chariot race in which Ben-Hur (played in the latest film by Jack Huston) battles the person who betrayed him.
Based on what you see in the trailer, you'd probably assume the race was shot in a Los Angeles soundstage with full green screen.
But the film's director Timur Bekmambetov ("Wanted," "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter") revealed to Business Insider that much of the sequence was done without computer graphics.
"Those are real horses, real actors driving real chariots on the track," Bekmambetov told Business Insider. "That's 42 horses driving neck-and-neck."
Paramount Pictures
According to Bekmambetov, the sequence, which lasts 10 minutes in the movie, took 45 days to shoot on location in Italy.
"It was a very intense experience," said Bekmambetov, who noted that the actors spent over three months training for the chariot race, which includes 90 horses on a 1,000-foot-long set.
That's not to say CGI is entirely absent from the sequence.
Many of the wide shots of the crowd were enhanced with computer graphics, and there's a shot in the trailer of a horse that gallops into the crowd - done with, yes, CGI magic.
But Bekmambetov said the "goal was to do as much in-camera as possible."
Paramount Pictures
The unique action movie, currently in theaters, feels like a video game, with a point of view that comes entirely from a man who's trying to save his wife from a warlord.
STX Entertainment
"You really feel you're in that chariot driving it," Bekmambetov said of the "Ben-Hur" scene.
Paramount Pictures
Watch the "Ben-Hur" trailer below:
- US buys 81 Soviet-era combat aircraft from Russia's ally costing on average less than $20,000 each, report says
- 2 states where home prices are falling because there are too many houses and not enough buyers
- A couple accidentally shipped their cat in an Amazon return package. It arrived safely 6 days later, hundreds of miles away.
- Foreign tourist arrivals in India will cross pre-pandemic level in 2024
- Upcoming smartphones launching in India in May 2024
- Markets rebound in early trade amid global rally, buying in ICICI Bank and Reliance
- Women in Leadership
- Rupee declines 5 paise to 83.43 against US dollar in early trade
- JNK India IPO allotment date
- JioCinema New Plans
- Realme Narzo 70 Launched
- Apple Let Loose event
- Elon Musk Apology
- RIL cash flows
- Charlie Munger
- Feedbank IPO allotment
- Tata IPO allotment
- Most generous retirement plans
- Broadcom lays off
- Cibil Score vs Cibil Report
- Birla and Bajaj in top Richest
- Nestle Sept 2023 report
- India Equity Market