Review of Sin City: The Making of the Movie

Sin City; The making of the movie is a troublemaker publishing book documenting the making of the Sin City movie and how it was adapted from the graphic novels. 

 The book opens with a very effective piece of writing by Miller, taking the reader through the streets of Sin City, which I have already posted up as research. This is a clever way to open as it instantly gives the audience a very good understanding of the Sin City world very quickly. It goes on to have Miller explain the origins of Sin City, what cities inspired it (New York and Los Angeles) and what films and stories helped build it. 

There is also an interesting interview about Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller about how to approach these graphic novels as a film, and how a very respectful Rodriguez spent a long time tracking Miller down personally to show him that Sin City wasn’t going to be “Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City, it was going to be Frank Millers Sin City, a faithful adaption of his work, and how their would be no development because Miller had already been doing it for 10 years. Rodriguez even paid for the test shoot in Texas with a cast and crew including actor Josh Hartnett, to persuade Miller that this could look just like his comics and be good, a test that actually became the opening to the movie it turned out so well. He explains “I could rewrite it and change it completely and turn it into something else, but why? You’re not making it better, you’re just making it different, and it was so goo just the way it was.” – Robert Rodriguez.  

Part of the book has the entire original unedited script, which is word for word what can be read in the comics. This is displayed along with photos from the shooting (which apart from one set, was entirely green screen) to give readers a taste of how the movie was shot and lit. It also contains art from the comics and short interviews with the actors, crew and directors talking about what it was like working with one another and about some of the characters they portrayed/ created. It also describes some interesting editing techniques such as how two characters who have dialogue and appear together in the film, are two actors who’ve never met. This is by having one actor have their dialogue with a stand in, and vise versa, allowing the director to assemble him dream cast with times that all the actors could make.

It also contains chapters on props, and how they have been designed to look exactly what Miller has drawn, even to the point they researched the type of sword Miller drew, without Miller even knowing he drew a type of sword that existed “I didn’t even know it, but the swords that Miho uses are the same ones that Uma used n Kill Bill.” – Frank Miller. The make up and prosthetics section KNB is also a treat, which shows how much the actors wore to look as close as possible to the drawings of the characters they were portraying. Mickey Rourke had to wear a fake chin and jaw, along with fake eyebrows and nose to look more like his character Marv. Benicio Del Toro even asked to have prosthetics on so he could look more like his character from the comics, while Nick Stahl wore and entire mask of prosthetics and a fake torso to look more like the Yellow Bastard (which was made in blue and faked to look yellow in post, as on the green screen the yellow would have been difficult to differentiate from green.)  

There is section on some storyboards, which Frank Miller would draw on set to help with the position of the camera and framing of the actors. This shows the similarities that comics and films share, only with the exception of sound. Sin City is an extremely faithful adaption that is essentially a moving comic.

The section on costume is particularly interesting, where Nina Proctor (Costume Supervisor) goes into detail about how to take a costume from the comic and make it for film, that is comfortable for the actors and actresses to wear while still looking as outlandish as the comic displays. She also describes how Miller draws lighting unrealistically, and she had to find materials to create the costumes with that would reflect light and give the actors the edge lighting the comic book pages have. She also takes about the value of colour, and how the costume had to not just be made in black and white, but so they would show the right tone when placed in black and white. “I look at everything through a black and white viewfinder for one thing because its all about the value of colour, and not colour itself.” – Nina Proctor. 

There is even a chapter on the cars of Sin City, and how the crew had to track down and find some cars that were drawn by Miller, for what all they knew he could’ve made up. “I thought the only place The Yellow bastards car existed was in Millers mind, because it did not resemble anything I was familiar with.” He later found out it was a Bugatti, an Atlantic 57 C that hade been made in 1936, 1937 and one in 1938. This shows further the amount of dedication that went to replicating Millers drawings, even that one car even had to have the same number plate that Miller had drawn.

The book is definitely a worthwhile read for any fan of Sin City or graphic Novels, film production of any kind and visual effects. It shows in great detail how faithful the movie is to Miller’s comic series and by using green screen how sort filming actually took, (Mickey Rourke, one of the leading parts, only had to do fifteen days of shooting.) It also shows an appreciation for all crew involved, where many films only really give credit to the actors, who actually don’t have nearly as hard of stressful job as many of the crew. They interview them more and go into detail exactly what their job was and the lengths they went to do it, which makes it a great read for anyone wanting to excel in a certain area of film production. The documentation is superb, with many set photos and production stills of make up, prosthetics and costumes. The only thing the book doesn’t go into enough detail on in post, mentioned a few times, there is no real indulgent into how the environments where made for such a heavily computer generated film, including buildings, trees, grass, smoke, snow, and rain, only that it wasn’t too complicated process, which is in a way insulting for students who study computer generated imagery and know that making photo realistic environments for film or video game, is no easy task.