Watch Ridley Scott talk about his work in Napoleon in the “Real Filmmaking” vignette:
YouTube: https://youtu.be/CoDJnucDmeU
To prepare to shoot the movie, Scott assembled his team in a war room – which in this case was as literal a war room as can be when the subject is making a movie. With large-scale models of the sets for battles at Waterloo, Austerlitz, and Toulan, art department drawings, models, Scott – who is an excellent artist and has always storyboarded his own films – brought the entire team together to share his vision and direct his crafts team in the images he is looking to achieve.