The film was filmed in the village of Potigrafu outside Bucharest, Romania, on July 15, 2002, where it became a battlefield in Petersburg, Virginia. The crew reproduced the Battle of Crete that took place on July 30, 1864. A total of 6,300 people on both sides of the war were killed in the war, among which the Northern Army was injured.
The death was particularly disastrous. The scene of this battle took 3 weeks to complete, and is one of the most spectacular scenes ever shot by Minghella. In order to reproduce the battlefield realistically, production designer Ferretti went to Petersburg to find inspiration.
In Potigrafu, Ferretti led his men to dig trenches, lay railroad tracks, build fortresses, repair fortifications, and even set up a temporary battlefield hospital. The most eye-catching feature was a giant bomb crater in the battle. In order to break through the encirclement, the Northern Army dug a tunnel into the enemy's hinterland and used explosives to blow up the entire fortress underground, forming a huge crater 170 feet long and 60 to 80 feet wide. The crater created by Ferretti is smaller because the camera can be close to shoot.
When shooting the scene of the explosion that killed 350 people in an instant, the special effects technicians used 4000 liters of gasoline and 100 kilograms of high explosives, and Minghella activated 4 cameras at the same time. In order to further enhance the realism of the battlefield, the crew did not hire extras, but with the assistance of the Romanian military, with more than 1,000 Romanian soldiers acting as soldiers on both sides of the war. The Civil War historians and scene reproduction experts invited by the producers paid full attention to every detail on the battlefield to ensure that the combat style was faithful to historical facts.
