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| The Last Samurai: Navigable Panoramas |
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| Production Design for The Last Samurai |
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| The 360° Image |
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| About Digital Navigable Panoramas |
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Introduction
The American Museum of the Moving Image presents navigable movie set panoramas from The Last Samurai. The film, directed by Edward Zwick and starring Tom Cruise, opens December 5, 2003.
The film's remarkable recreation of environments from Meiji-period Japan, in the late 1870s, can be explored through these panoramas. Also known online as ‘panos,’ they allow users to navigate a 360-degree photographic image using Apple Computer’s Quicktime VR technology.
We present five panoramas from the film, which can be launched from the menu on the right. Each panorama is accompanied by audio commentary recorded especially for this presentation by Lilly Kilvert, production designer of The Last Samurai. Film clips, scene stills, and production design sketches related to each film environment are also available.
Using the menu on the left you may access additional information about the craft of production design for the film and about the technology and other uses of navigable panorama formats such as Quicktime VR.
Click on the menu at right to experience:
- Taka's Tour - Three connected locations: the home, porch, and village of Taka, a samurai widow who nurses captured Captain Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise). Hint: To reveal links between the locations, select "Show Hotspots" on the left side of the panorama window.
- Hotel - Set for modern-style Tokyo hotel room, incorporating traditional Japanese elements including dark wood paneling.
- Lecture Room - A converted building in New Plymouth, New Zealand that had been filled with motorcycle parts.
- Omura's Office - The heavily gilded Victorian-style office of the scheming Japanese businessman Omura.
- Taka's Garden, - Built in a New Zealand valley, with hand-done fencing, terracing, and planting.
- Center Village, - This New Zealand location was chosen for its "Japanese hills." The roads and buildings were created for the film, and the vegetable gardens and trees were planted.
- Dock, - This "half-dock" set was built in New Zealand, and was not near the waterfront. The water imagery in this panorama suggests how visual effects were used in the finished film to create the ocean background.
- Ship's Cabin, - This small set was carefully built to allow cameras and lights in a tightly enclosed space, and to rock gently to create the illusion of being on a boat.
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