an ancient city. It was expensive to build large sets, and Milius did not want to rely on optical effects and matte paintings (painted landscapes). The crew instead adopted miniature effect techniques (playing on perspective) to achieve the illusion of size and grandeur for several scenes. Scale models of structures were constructed by Emilio Ruiz and positioned in front of the cameras so that they appeared as full-sized structures on film; using this technique, the Shadizar set was extended to appear more than double its size. Ruiz built eight major miniature models, including a palace and a representation of the entire city of Shadizar that spanned . Cobb's direction for the sets was to "undo history", "to invent [their] own fantasy history", and yet maintain a "realistic, historical look". Eschewing the Greco-Roman imagery used heavily in the sword-and-sandal films of the 1960s, he realized a world that was an amalgamation of Dark Age cultures, such as the Mongols and the Vikings. Several scenarios paid homage to Frazetta's paintings of Conan, such as the "half-naked slave girl chained to a pillar, with a snarling leopard at her feet", at the snake cult's orgy. David Huckvale, a lecturer at the Open University and broadcaster for BBC Radio, said the designs of the Tree of Woe and the costumes appeared very similar to those used in Richard Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung operas at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1876. Principal photography was completed in the middle of May 1981. The film crews burned down the Cimmerian village and the Temple of Set after completing filming on each set. Stunts and swords Several action scenes in Conan were filmed with a "minijib" (a remote-controlled electronic camera mounted on a motorized lightweight crane) that Nick Allder, the special effects supervisor, had devised when he worked on Dragonslayer (1981). The stunts were co-ordinated by Terry Leonard, who had worked on many films, including Milius's previous projects and Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Leonard said that Schwarzenegger, Bergman, and Lopez performed most of their own stunts, including the fights. The three actors were given martial arts training ahead of filming. From August 1980, they were tutored by Kiyoshi Yamazaki, a karate black belt and master swordsman, who drilled them in sword-fighting styles that were meant to make them look proficient in using their weapons. They practiced each move in a fight at least 15