Says actor Russell Crowe about Robin Hood. Crowe, who plays the titular character, and director Ridley Scott, share some of what goes into the making of an epic saga and their opinions on test screenings

We were talking to some of the other actors and they were telling us about the way you shot the movie with a bunch of cameras. Would you still be allowed to do that in 3D?
Ridley Scott: Not with that absolute freedom, but I was told that you can't do what we did with 2D cameras either. Russell is just an expert in what every f***ing camera does. He knows exactly where the ninth camera is...

Russell Crowe: I spend all the time that I need to during a rehearsal and have a look at where they are. I ask what lens they have on and I will do that between each take. I also have that thing where, you know, this comes from growing up out of smaller films, you don't want to waste an inch of footage. You don't want to be the guy whose back is to the camera in the emotional part of the movie, thank you very much. So you have to be aware of the camera movement and what the camera is doing. So, it's just in a much more fluid sense when you are on a set with Ridley.
RS: There is nothing worse than saying to actors, "We will be ready in forty-five minutes," which is going to be an hour, and he goes back to the trailer going, 'F***!'u00a0 When you just got going, you don't want to stop. Right?
RC: Right.
RS: It's death, death, death.

Many of us have heard the early stories about Nottingham...
RS: It happens on almost every project.
RC: If you look at the two and a half years between when we were first given the idea and the last day of shooting... I don't know, people have tried to pump it up like it was falling apart and this was going wrong and that was going wrong. The reality is we took a normal responsible period of time to develop a story into a feature film that was shootable within a confined period of time. And then also there was a real thing that happened when a certain series of dates was put forward. It was like, you know, this is going to be a very bleak landscape if we are going to shoot in England, starting in January. We had shot a part of Gladiator in England in January ufffd you can't do your first shot until 9.30 in the morning and you are done by 2.30 in the afternoon. I mean, on Gladiator at least we had a balance where we had some day and some night in the same sequence.

RS: We packed the tents on top of one another and so we would, say, rap at two, have a quick lunch and be in the tent at 3 o'clock. We would have sets on the hill, which was incredibly practical...
RC: That worked in our favour. Also trying to get that amount of artillery and horses and stuff in place, when you are dealing with a foot and half of mud. You know, we knew that January is not a great time to be shooting, like, epic battles in England. So, we had to wait a little bit. Obviously, once you have had a film like Gladiator that's in your background, everyone is going to hold everything else you do after that. I don't think at all that we ever tried to functionally live up to that. But we do apply the same methodology no matter what is going on. We are going to get up every day, and our aim is that before this day is done, we are going to have done something special.