The fog battle takes place near Lake Mangamahoe, a public park known for hiking trails and fishing holes and the final battle, which took two months to complete, was filmed on a farm, with vast grassy fields and flanks of forest that provided the perfect location for various aspects of the action. The production carved out dirt roads to transport personnel and equipment along special, color-coded routes designated prior to filming. One area became base camp, another was a place for the horses and another was where the Samurai and Imperial Army players dressed and received their weapons. As in actual warfare, maps were drawn and positions assigned – Samurai here, Imperial Army below.
Surveying his battlefield for the first time, Zwick was momentarily awed. "It’s one thing to plan and imagine what you want on a film, but when you actually arrive and survey the scene there’s a moment of ‘Oh my God, what was I thinking?!,’" the director admits with good humor. "In truth, if we had not done as much preparation in the earlier stages we would never have been able to make this movie because there, in the thick of it, we had so little time to talk with 700 men storming over a hill and explosions going off."
Supplying the action was a monumental weapons inventory, comprised of both traditional Samurai blades and arrows and circa 1800s firearms, meticulously restored by the production. Prop master Dave Gulick relied upon Japanese sources to ensure the proper usage of various kinds of swords, which was quite specific down to the way in which scabbards were tied and how a certain blade would be worn differently in battle or on the street. Gulick’s team purchased several high quality swords from a swordsmith in Japan as samples for pieces made for the film, as well as faux blades from the renowned Kozu prop house in Kyoto and from Shogiko Studios, the movie company famous for its Samurai films.
Meanwhile, weapons coordinator Robert "Rock" Galotti and his team tracked down vintage rifles and pistols from private collectors and sources around the world, then refurbished them – a process which includes stripping the antiques’ finish and "re-blueing" to its original shade as well as carving new wooden stocks, each a slightly different fit since the guns were made before the time of machine standards. One of the weapons Cruise carries onscreen in his shoulder holster is an authentic 1851 Navy revolver, a so-called cap-and-ball gun, that would have been used in the civil war.
To capture all the elements, Zwick and Oscar-winning cinematographer John Toll typically made use of multiple cameras. Perhaps their favorite rig was the crane-held camera, and Toll utilized all kinds – a libra crane, the Chapman and Giraffe and an impossibly oversized rig called the UFO. The graceful swivel and reach of these various cranes and cameras added elegant, classical movement to the shots while revealing the scope of the landscape and the emotion of the drama. In the final battle, Toll also used a longer lens and different camera speeds to capture the grit and emotion of the individuals fighting for the "new" Japan and those defending the old.
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