Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera

WE TRIED TO MAKE IT ALL A BIT THEATRICAL,'' says production designer Anthony Pratt of the screen version of Phantom. ''Nothing is meant to be terribly real.'' Real? No. Over-the-top lavish? Absolutely. Set in a haunted Paris opera house, the movie is a vision of romantic splendor. To create this scene, where songbird Christine (Emmy Rossum) visits the grave of her father, Pratt drew from two of the world's most ornate cemeteries: Paris' Père Lachaise and Montparnasse. He filled a London soundstage with nearly 30 fiberglass statues, some towering as high as 16 feet. ''The proportions were so that Christine would be a tiny, innocent figure [among] these cold stones,'' says director Joel Schumacher. ''It's so elegant—like out of a Sargent painting.'' The solemn scene is one of the few to take place outside the theater walls, and, Schumacher adds, ''the only time Christine wears black.'' Costume designer Alexandra Byrne chose the heroine's silk-velvet dress and taffeta cape because she ''wanted something soft and fluid that worked with the snow.'' The clean silhouette sure made her blood-red bouquet pop. ''It's all shameless,'' laughs Schumacher. ''The whole thing.'' —Missy Schwartz

''I wanted to showcase the prosperity of the Tang dynasty,'' says

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''I wanted to showcase the prosperity of the Tang dynasty,'' says production designer Huo Tingxiao, who purposely infused his elaborately conceived set with rich and vivid colors. (Here, Lau, as Inspector Leo, sits in front of a wall of nameplates advertising the Peony Pavilion's available ''dancers.'') And the peony itself was a theme: The crew hand-carved likenesses of the lush flower into the wooden window frames and poles. They also painted 18 intricate butterflies onto the set's floor. The entire pavilion took two months to design and another two to three months for the crew to build.

Even though the classically trained actress has studied dance since the age of 11 (she's a graduate of the Beijing Dance Academy), she still had to prepare for two months before filming the echo-game sequence. The most challenging part of the scene, which took 20 days to film, ''was the extending of the sleeves and then retracting them,'' says Yimou. (Ziyi's elaborate costume, done by Academy Award-winning designer Emi Wada, came complete with custom-created sleeves.) ''That took a lot of practice.''