Birth of the movie

Clever hands make light work

In addition to production design and cinematography, another major element of the film was the preparation of costumes. Costume designer Kate Harrington and her co-designers, Sandi Blackie and Nancy Duggan, had the enormous task of researching, designing and creating hundreds of costumes for the various cultures depicted in the story.

"Every costume in this film was handmade," Harrington says. "Every single piece was started with cloth that would have been available in that time period, and then sewn together by our team. Nothing was purchased from a costume house. All the fabrics were dyed and hand sewn. We even had people making our own chain-mail armor, the flexible armor made of joined metal rings. It took three days just to make the front panel of Antonio’s armor, and it was done with the same technique used a thousand years ago. The shoes the warriors wore were also made by a cobbler in the authentic style of the times."

Co-designer Sandi Blackie notes, "At one time we had over 200 people working in three different shifts going 24 hours a day to prepare, sew, and age the materials and costumes for the hundreds of extras and cast members that we had. Multiple copies of the costumes had to be made for stunt doubles and for principals as well. When we finally got into shooting, we were dressing 160 people on a daily basis. The most that we dressed in one day was 525 people ... we did it in four hours and fifteen minutes and we were laughing all the way.

"Even the wools that we got were treated with acids to make the colors correct for the time period," continues Blackie. "We created turbans and flowing dresses, leather skirts and used gold embroidery, canvases, silks, brocades and every imaginable resource we could find and invent. It was an extraordinary creative process to go through ... a challenge and a lot of fun to utilize all of your talents, and to learn some new ones along the way."

Propmaster Grant Swain was also in charge of an enormous department of craftsman. "We had close to sixty people working to create the props for this production," says Swain. "There wasn’t a day when we had under a hundred people to deal with on set, and not a single piece on the show came straight from a store into production without modification.

"The shovels and weapons and hammers and maces were forged by blacksmiths," continues Swain. "We created individual saddles and swords and shields for each of the warriors, to make them distinctive and fitting with their characters. The bridles and the tack for their horses also had to be custom made, and there were ten of us on the set at all times to distribute and maintain all of the tack and the props."

"We needed to find close to two hundred head of fjord horses," notes head animal wrangler and trainer John Scott. "They are native to Norway and pretty tough horses, but also good to work with. Working with over thirty wranglers, we had to train the horses not only to work with the riders, but also to be accustomed to seeing fire and torches so they wouldn’t become spooked in the midst of filming. To protect their hooves on rougher terrain we also fitted them with special horseshoes that had a kind of hockey puck base on them."

"We also used English Shire horses for the Norse warriors," explains John McTiernan. "They look like Clydesdales, but they are actually Shire horses. They were bred to carry men in armor, which means these are big horses and they can handle a lot of weight. Nobody rides these horses anymore, and, aside from the three I own personally, there was no one around to train them. So we had to find the horses and then break them to ride as well. As it turns out, they’re wonderfully great riding horses."

"Antonio Banderas was a natural and a real gentleman around the horses," praises wrangler John Scott of the star. "He was always great, and took to riding his comparatively little white horse very quickly."