# Were the Muscles in 300 Digitally Enhanced? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 15, 2013, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439 "2013-02-15T21:50:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/1 "2013-02-15T21:50:28Z")
Unfortunately the board would not let me search for “300” to see if this has come up before. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/2 "2013-02-15T21:51:21Z")
They were air-brushed enhanced on the actors bodies. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/3 "2013-02-15T21:59:39Z")
Thank you . . . do you have a cite for that? Or can you explain how you came to that conclusion? TIA. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/4 "2013-02-15T22:14:45Z")
Lot’s of publicity about it at the time. It’s standard makeup stuff, they darken the valleys between muscles to make the parts bulging out look bigger. It’s done to enhance women’s cleavage also. I heard the actors were doing a big workout program during the filming, so it wasn’t all makeup. As for digital enhancement, I don’t know if they did, but they may have. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/5 "2013-02-15T22:19:00Z")
No specific cite, but it’s a common technique to use makeup to enhance musculature and body curves. Almost any time a woman on screen has exceptional cleavage, especially in an evening gown, it’s likely deepened and shaped with makeup. Sometimes you can see the makeup when the lighting changes the wrong way. I’d be very unsurprised to find that 300 used a similar technique, either in makeup or post-CGI, to enhance muscle definition. It was SO extreme in many shots. Ninja’d on cleavage. Good one to be ninja’ed on. ---
**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/6 "2013-02-15T22:24:09Z")
> [@NitroPress](#): > > Ninja’d on cleavage. That’s going to be my rock band’s name. I called it first. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/7 "2013-02-15T22:40:01Z")
I remember reading an interview with Gerard Butler where he stated that the hardest part about prepping for that movie wasn’t the workouts to build muscle, but the the starvation diet necessary to cut his body fat enough to give definition. I couldn’t find that one, but [this article](http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2009/05/28/how-to-look-like-gerard-butler-in-the-movie-300/) says he trained for six hours a day for four months. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/8 "2013-02-15T23:58:25Z")
Thank your the responses so far. I have no doubt that the actors who played Spartan warriors in 300 had to get buff for the part, or that makeup was used. I am curious though whether there was also enhancement after the filing. Is there any way to tell by looking at the images? ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/9 "2013-02-16T00:39:28Z")
That type of film editing would be incredibly expensive. I’ve only heard of post production film changes being done for a few seconds of footage. One famous example was a Star Trek film where Shatner thought his butt looked big in a scene. They altered the footage post production. But that was like a 10 second scene. It would be a huge job to add muscle definition post production for a long piece of film. I’ve used a Adobe product called After Effects to alter video. It’s very, very, very tedious and time consuming. In my project I was adding a graphic that I created in photoshop. The graphic was added to some video scenes that I shot. I got good results but it took a lot of time. The learning curve on After Effects is pretty steep. I just barely scratched the surface on the learning curve. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/10 "2013-02-16T00:46:35Z")
300 was a phenomenally expensive movie, and I’d bet a very large amount of the cost was in post. Some films \*are \*“finished” one frame at a time in tools like AE. ETA: Wait, it was only $65M in 2006. I can’t believe that. But still - given how simple the sets and settings were, that money had to go somewhere, and I’d bet a very large percentage went into post-processing. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/11 "2013-02-16T00:53:25Z")
It was all shot on blue screens and put together in post-production, so that effort was huge. Would they enhance muscles by hand editing of the shape? Maybe for a short shot. They’d more likely use post-production coloring techniques to do it without changing the shape. ---
**Author:** ![gaffa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e68b1a/32.png) [@gaffa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gaffa)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/12 "2013-02-16T03:01:48Z")
There is a technology called “Lola” that is used to digitally alter actor’s faces. It was [first used publicly for _X-Men: The Last Stand_](http://www.fxguide.com/featured/x-men_extreme_makeover/) to take decades off the faces of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Previously, the technology had been used for “Music Video Divas” (aka Madonna). In theory, this could be used to change Butler’s skin to more buff skin. But seriously, the man worked out four fricken months, SIX HOURS A DAY! Give him his well-deserved props. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/13 "2013-02-16T04:26:56Z")
Not so much according to this, Just insane levels of working out. > **[Gerard Butler's First Rule: There Are No Rules](https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/g19547999/gerard-butler/)** > > A decade ago, Gerard Butler traded a law career for an acting class. The decision changed his life. More important, it changed the man > [@](#): > > Butler’s training for the movie simultaneously built muscle, increased muscular endurance, and stripped fat fast. To achieve movie muscles that pop, he and other cast members used this grueling, unorthodox 300-rep rite of passage. > > Ballantyne put together this workout video series for you to follow along with and–provided you’re fit like a king–try for yourself. > > “One actor from 300, Andrew Pleavin, completed the workout in 18 minutes,11 seconds,” says Ballantyne. “He didn’t practice this workout…and neither did I. My time? 19:07. My butt was kicked by a Hollywood actor!” > > “It’s a brutal workout, starting out strong and slowing down, finishing at a crawl,” explains Ballantyne. "I don’t plan on doing that any time soon or, really, ever again."For a Spartan-sized challenge to your daily routine, consider this your new fitness gauntlet: > > a) Pullups - 25 reps > b) Dumbbell Deadlift - 50 reps > c) Pushups - 50 reps > d) Body Weight Squat Jumps - 50 reps > e) V-Up - 50 reps > f) Dumbbell Push Press - 50 reps > g) Pullups - 25 reps > > All exercises are done without scheduled rest between moves. Obviously this is an advanced workout…you shouldn’t do it unless you are already in great shape. ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/14 "2013-02-16T05:05:36Z")
> [@astro](#): > > g) Pullups - 25 reps > > All exercises are done without scheduled rest between moves. Obviously this is an advanced workout…you shouldn’t do it unless you are already in great shape. You _ **can’t** _ do it unless you’re already in great shape. The number of heavily built men who can do 25 pullups at all, let alone at the conclusion of a tough workout that began with another 25 pullups, is very, very small. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 10:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/15 "2013-02-16T10:37:56Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Just insane levels of working out. I read those accounts too, but it occurred to me that of course the people involved with the movie would emphasize the physical training of the actors regardless of whether digital enhancement were added on top. The question is not whether they used digital enhancement to make a fat slob look like a buff warrior. The question is whether they used digital enhancement to make buff warriors look even more buff. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2013, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/16 "2013-02-16T11:12:03Z")
Here’s a snippet from the movie I found on Youtube: [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qdDdHMwhU2s/hqdefault.jpg "300 - We will Blot out the Sun.") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdDdHMwhU2s) If you skip to 1:09 and look at the shadows in the warrior’s as he breathes, it looks a bit fake to me. As he breathes in, prominent shadows appear in his abs and as he continues to breath in, the shadows mostly go away. I’m not an expert on lighting, anatomy, or any of this stuff but it just looks sketchy to me. A few seconds later, you see the warrior breathing again and the shadows look a bit more realistic but still kinda sketchy. Also, if you check out this snippet: [- YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdNn5TZu6R8) and freeze it at 0:00, the warrior’s torso seems a bit fake to me. Here’s what’s apparently a “making of” snippet: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/Hl1Nag0PITc/hqdefault.jpg "The Making of 300 - Lena Headey") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl1Nag0PITc) So for example at 0:10 you can see a big group of actors who play Spartan warriors charging forward. To be sure, they all look very buff. But they look a bit more buff in the actual movie. Here’s another “making of” snippet: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/BGwSPRkytR0/hqdefault.jpg "The Making of 300 - First Look") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGwSPRkytR0) Again, the men look very buff. So my tentative conclusion is that the muscles in the movie are pretty much real, but a little digital color was added to enhance them. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2013, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/17 "2013-02-17T18:52:26Z")
Just had to note, Sarah Silverman hosted the _MTV Movie Awards_ and said that the film’s title was the answer to the question, “How gay is this movie on a scale from one to ten?” ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2013, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/18 "2013-02-17T19:23:52Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > “How gay is this movie on a scale from one to ten?” I was going to throw this in earlier but thought it might be pointless hijackery. It’s not. It’s the funniest goddamned movie joke I’ve ever heard. ---
**Author:** ![Wolf333](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf333/32/3460_2.png) [@Wolf333](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolf333)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2013, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-muscles-in-300-digitally-enhanced/650439/19 "2013-02-17T19:53:45Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Not so much according to this, Just insane levels of working out. > [Gerard Butler's Tips for Success | Men's Health](http://www.menshealth.com/celebrity-fitness/gerard-butler-300-workout) That was not the actual workout routine. > [@](#): > > Rather, the 300 workout was the finale of months of training, a kind of graduation test, after actors had weight lifted and trained with tools such as medicine balls and Kettlebells (cast iron weights with handles). > **[Health & Fitness](https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/default.htm)** > > From weight training to healthy exercise programs, find health and fitness information for a healthy lifestyle.