The Lord of the Rings: The Making of The Motion Picture Trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's Book | Retro Junk

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timbox129 6 years 1 month ago Posts: 404	Moving on to the special effects of Lord of the Rings! Yeah, we all know that Lord of the Rings films 1, 2, and 3 used many groundbreaking practical and digital visual effects. The Fellowship of the Ring in terms of effects shots have 540. The Two Towers has 799. And the Return of the King may have 1488 (totalling 2,730 for the theatrical cuts). With the extended cuts, the total may move to about 3,420. You know, 260 visual effects artists worked on all 3 movies and that number doubled thanks to the Two Towers. This crew, which is led by Jim Rygiel and Randy Cook (a former stop motion animator) would work long and hard hours overnight to produce special effects within a short space of time, especially with Jackson's overactive imagination. For example, they produced several major shots of Helm's Deep within the last six weeks of post-production of Two Towers and the same amount of shots for TTT within the last six weeks on Return of the King. Despite WETA being the major stylistic force behind Lord of the Rings, a scene where Arwen confronts the Black Riders in The Fellowship of the Ring was done by Digital Domain (founded by James Cameron and Stan Winston 15 years ago).

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timbox129 6 years 1 month ago Posts: 404	First, you have Scale. Production may be complicated by the use of scale doubles and forced perspective on a level never seen before in the film industry, aka Hollywood. Elijah Wood is 5ft 6in (1.68 m) tall in real life, but the character of Frodo Baggins is 3ft 6in (1.06 m) in height. Large and small scale doubles were used in certain scenes, while entire duplicates of certain sets (including Bag End in Hobbiton) were built at two different scales, so that the characters would appear to be the appropriate size. At one point in the film, Frodo runs along a corridor in Bag End, followed by Gandalf. Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen were filmed in separate versions of the same corridor, built at two different scales, and a fast camera pan conceals the edit between the two. Forced perspective was also employed, so that it would look as though the short hobbits were interacting with taller Men and Elves. Surprising the makers of the film, the simple ruse of kneeling down was used to great effect. As well as this, some actors wore over-sized costumes to make average sized actors look small, and there were numerous scale doubles, who are disguised with costumes, and an avoidance of close-ups and numerous backshots, and even latex faces for the Hobbit doubles.

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timbox129 6 years 1 month ago Posts: 404	In the storyverse of Middle Earth, Hobbits are 3ft 6in tall, Dwarves are taller at about 4ft 6in, and Men and Elves are normal human height (~5ft-6ft). However, the films only use two scale sets instead of three: this is achieved by simply casting taller than average actors to play Dwarves, then combining Dwarves and Hobbits into one size scale. For example, John Rhys-Davies, who played Gimli, is taller than Elijah Wood, who played Frodo. Thus in the ending shot of the Council of Elrond scene when all nine members of the Fellowship of the Ring are standing together, Rhys-Davies and the four hobbit actors were filmed all at once, then the human-sized characters (Gandalf, Aragorn, Boromir, Legolas) were filmed in a second take, then the two shots were composited at different scale to make one image, with the initial dwarf/hobbit character shot made smaller. A practical upshot of not creating a third scale for Dwarves is that in a scene in which only Dwarves and Hobbits interact, no scale doubles are needed. For example, when they are entering Lothlórien for the first time and Gimli claps Frodo on the shoulder and says "stay close, young hobbits", the entire scene employs no size doubles, because Rhys-Davies is naturally the proportionately taller height needed between Dwarves and Hobbits. (Man! I got all that info from Wikipedia!)

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Mezase Master 6 years 1 month ago Posts: 7419	timbox129 wrote: (Man! I got all that info from Wikipedia!) No surprises here.
	TMNT wrote: Movin` on up!! To the East side Blah blah Blah Movin on up Gaints lol.
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timbox129 6 years 1 month ago Posts: 404	Oh! Wait a minute! You know that some miniatures made for Lord of the Rings are as big as your houses! I talk to you about the miniatures made for Lord of the Rings. WETA coined the term bigature for the 72 large miniatures produced for the film, in reference to their extreme size. Such miniatures include the 1:4 scale for Helm's Deep, which alongside Khazad-dûm and Osgiliath, was one of the first built. Most sets were constructed to allow compositing with the models and matte paintings. Notable examples include the Argonath, Minas Tirith, the tower and caverns of Isengard, Barad-dûr, the trees of Lothlórien and Fangorn Forest and the Black Gate. Alex Funke led the motion control camera rigs, and John Baster and Mary Maclahlan led the building of the miniatures. The miniatures unit worked more than any other special effects crew, working over a 1000 days. Often they held parties to celebrate each landmark, such as day 666. Their final shot was one of the Black Gate for the third film in November 2003. I'm telling you. Those 72 miniatures built for LOTR are totally enormous and gigantic!

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timbox129 6 years 1 month ago Posts: 404	Ohhhh Yesss. My favorite part of Special Effects: animation. Creatures such as Trolls, the Balrog, the Ents, the fell beasts, the Wargs, the mumakil (read: MUMAK! MUMAK! MUMAK!) and Shelob were created entirely within a computer like or unlike ours. Creatures would spend months of creation and variation as sketches before approved designs were sculpted into five-foot maquettes and scanned into a computer. Animators would then rig skeletons and muscles before animation and final detailed colouring scanned from painted maquettes. Treebeard the shepherd of the forests had a digital face composited upon the original animatronic, which was scanned for the digital model of his longshots. As well as creatures, WETA also created highly realistic digital doubles for many miniature longshots, as well as numerous stunts, most notably Legolas the Elf. These doubles were scanned from having actors perform movements in a motion-capture (mocap) suit, and with additional details created using ZBrush. There are even morphs between the doubles and actors at times. Horses also performed with mo-cap points on them, although deaths are animation.

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timbox129 6 years 1 month ago Posts: 404	Weta began animating Gollum in late 1998 (that's 10 years ago), using a generic human muscle system, to convince New Line they could achieve it. Andy Serkis (later known as King Kong in the 2005 remake) "played" Gollum by providing his voice and movements on set, as well as performing within the motion capture suit. His scenes were filmed twice, with and without him. Originally Gollum was set to solely be a CG character, but Jackson was so impressed by Andy Serkis' audition tape that they used him on set as well. A team lead by Randy Cook performed the animation using both motion capture data and manual recreation of Serkis' facial reference. Gollum's CG model was also redesigned during 2001, now using a subdivision surface model instead of the NURBS model for Fellowship (a similar rebuild was also done for the digital doubles of the lead actors), when Serkis was cast as Sméagol, Gollum's form before he is cursed by the One Ring, so as to give the impression Andy Serkis as Sméagol transforms into the CG Gollum in Return of the King's beginning. The original model can still be glimpsed briefly in the first film. Over Christmas 2001 the crew proceeded to reanimate all the previous shots accordingly within two months. Another problem was that the crew realized that the cast performed better in the versions of the film with Serkis. In the end, the CG Gollum was often animated on top of these scenes and Serkis would be painted out. Due to Gollum not being human shots such as him crawling down a sheer cliff, were shot with no live reference. Serkis also did motion-capture for the character which would drive the body of the model, whilst animators did all fingers and facial animation. Gino Acevedo supervised realistic skin tones, which for the first time uses subsurface scattering shader and took four hours per frame to render. Render time refers to the amount of time it took the computer to process the image into a usable format, it does not refer to the amount of time it took the texture artists to "draw" the frame. The hair dynamics of CG Gollum in The Two Towers is generated using Maya Cloth. Because of its technical limitations, Weta subsequently moved to the Syflex system for The Return of the King. Anyone like Gollum, don't you?

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timbox129 6 years 1 month ago Posts: 404	Christoper Hery (of ILM), Ken McGaugh and Joe Letteri (both Weta and previously Industrial Light and Magic) received a 2003 Academy Award, Scientific or Technical for implementing the BSSRDF technique used for Gollum's skin in a production environment. Henrik Wann Jensen (Stanford University), Stephen Robert Marschner (Cornell University and previously Stanford University), and Pat Hanrahan (Stanford University) (but not the forth coauthor Marc Levoy), who developed BSSRDF, won another the same year.

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timbox129 6 years 1 month ago Posts: 404	Here's programs used for Lord of the Rings. You know like, MASSIVE. As you know, MASSIVE is the name of a computer program developed by WETA to create automatic battle sequences rather than individually animate every soldier. Stephen Regelous developed the system in 1996, originally to create crowd scenes in King Kong (which was finally realized in 2005) The system creates a large number of choices for each software agent to pick when inside a digital arena. Catherine Thiel provided the movements of each type of soldier, like the unique fighting styles (designed by Tony Wolf) or fleeing. To add to this, digital environments would also be created for the simulations. Massive also features Grunt, a memory-conservative special purpose renderer, which was used for scenes containing as much as 200,000 agents and several million polygons. The Pelennor Fields scene also contains "multi-body agents" in the form of a 5 × 5 grid of Orcs. Whilst Jackson insisted on generally using miniatures, sometimes shots would get too difficult for that, primarily with the digital characters. Gray Horsfield led the creation of digital versions of Dwarrowdelf, the Chamber of Mazarbul, ruins in Eregion, Helm's Deep, the Barad-dûr and Black Gate for complicated sequences, such as destruction or having an arena for a digital camera to move around. He himself spent his entire Christmas 2002 break creating the Barad-dûr for The Return of the King's climax. Sometimes natural elements like cloud, dust, fire (which was used as the electronic data for the Wraithworld scenes and the Balrog) would be composited, and natural environments were composited to create the Pelennor Fields. To give a "painterly" look to the films, cinematographer Andrew Lesnie worked on every scene within the computer to strengthen colours and add extra mood and tone to the proceedings. Gold was tinted to Hobbiton, whilst cooler colours were strengthened into Lothlórien, Moria and Helm's Deep. Such a technique took 2–3 weeks to do, and allowed some freedom with the digital source for some extra editing. In the film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, it was also necessary the help of the company Next Limit Technologies and their software RealFlow to simulate a real lava in the Mount Doom. An technical overview of the special effect is given by Matt Aitken et al. (2004). For more info about MASSIVE go to its website at: http://www.massivesoftware.com/ Go to it!

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timbox129 6 years 1 month ago Posts: 404	Moving on to Post-Production, Each film had the benefit of a full year of post-production time before its respective December release, often finishing in October–November, with the crew immediately going to work on the next film. In the later part of this period, Jackson would move to London to supervise the scoring and continue editing, whilst having a computer feed for discussions to The Dorchester Hotel, and a "fat pipe" of Internet connections from Pinewood Studios to look at the special effects. He had a Polycom video link and 5.1 surround sound to organise meetings, and listen to new music and sound effects generally wherever he was. The extended editions also had a tight schedule at the start of each year to complete special effects and music. As for editing, To avoid pressure, Pete hired a different editor for each film. John Gilbert worked on the first film, Mike Horton and Jabez Olssen on the second and longtime Jackson collaborator Jamie Selkirk and Annie Collins on the third. Daily rushes would often last up to four hours, with scenes being done throughout 1999–2002 for the rough (4 1/2 hours) assemblies of the films. In total, six million feet of film (over 1,100 miles) was edited down to the 11 hours and 23 minutes (683 minutes) of Extended DVD running time. This was the final area of shaping of the films, when Jackson realised that sometimes the best scripting could be redundant on screen, as he picked apart scenes every day from multiple takes. Editing on the first film was relatively easygoing, with Jackson coming up with the concept of an Extended Edition later on, although after a screening to New Line they had to re-edit the beginning for a prologue. The Two Towers was always acknowledged by the crew as the most difficult film to make, as "it had no beginning or end", and had the additional problem of inter-cutting storylines appropriately. Jackson even continued editing the film when that part of the schedule officially ended, resulting in some scenes, including the reforging of Andúril, Gollum's back-story, and Saruman's demise, being moved to The Return of the King. Later, Saruman's demise was controversially cut from the cinema edition (but included in the extended edition) when Jackson felt it was not starting the third film effectively enough. As with all parts of the third film's post-production, editing was very chaotic. Oh no. The first time Jackson actually saw the completed film was at the Wellington premiere.

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timbox129 6 years 1 month ago Posts: 404	Here are the deleted scenes. Many filmed scenes remain unused, even in the Extended Editions. Many of these scenes remain omitted largely because they do not significantly change or add to the plot of Tolkien's original storyline. Deletions include: Additional footage from the Battle of the Last Alliance in the Fellowship of the Ring prologue. An obscure shot from the trailers of two Elven girls playing about in Rivendell. Scene mentioned in Fellowship of the Ring commentary, about an animal disrupting Frodo and Sam while they sleep, after seeing the Wood Elves. Many animals were used, including rabbits and deer. Dialogue from the Council of Elrond, such as Gandalf explaining how Sauron forged the One Ring. An attack by Orcs from Moria on Lothlórien after the Fellowship leaves Moria. Jackson replaced this with a more suspenseful entrance for the Fellowship. Much of the lost footage can be seen as promotional material on the Fellowship of the Ring theatrical DVD and tie-in books, documentary footage on the Extended Editions, and Trading Cards. More Arwen footage, including a flashback scene of her first meeting with a beardless Aragorn (seen in the Two Towers teaser). Faramir having a vision of Frodo becoming like Gollum. Footage of Arwen at Helm's Deep, cut by Jackson during a revision to the film's plot. Foreshadowing this sequence were scenes where Arwen and Elrond visit Galadriel at Lothlórien (seen in The Two Towers teaser trailer). The scene was edited down to a telepathic communication between Elrond and Galadriel. Théoden speaking to the troops in the armoury, prior to the Battle of Helm's Deep. Éowyn defending the refugees in the Glittering Caves from Uruk-hai intruders. An unknown scene displayed in The Two Towers preview of Éomer lowering a spear while riding his horse in a forest. A line of dialogue during the death of Saruman, in which he reveals that Wormtongue poisoned Théodred, giving further context as to why Wormtongue kills Saruman and Legolas in turn kills Wormtongue. A conversation between Elrond and Arwen in a library in Rivendell, after Arwen decides to wait for Aragorn. Elrond leaves, saying, "You gave away your life's grace. I cannot protect you anymore." Sam using the Light of Earendil to pass the Watchers at Cirith Ungol. Aragorn having his armour fitted during the preparations for the Battle of the Black Gate. This was the final scene filmed during principal photography. Sauron fighting Aragorn at the Black Gate. A computer-generated Troll was placed over Sauron due to Jackson feeling the scene was inappropriate. Sauron is also seen in a beautiful form as Annatar, Giver of Gifts. Also at the Black Gate sequence, Pippin was seen in the trailer holding a wounded Merry, a scene which takes place after the Battle of the Pelennor Fields upon Pippin discovering Merry under the mûmak. Further epilogue footage, including that of Legolas and Gimli, as well as Éowyn and Faramir's wedding and Aragorn's death and funeral. Peter Jackson has stated that he would like to include some of these unused scenes in a future "Ultimate Edition" home video release (probably high-definition) of the film trilogy. They will not be re-inserted into the movies but available for viewing separately. This edition will also include outtakes. That's a lot of lost footage, isn't it.

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timbox129 6 years 1 month ago Posts: 404	As for the music, Howard Shore composed the trilogy's music. He was hired in August 2000 and visited the set, and watched the assembly cuts of films 1 and 3. In the music, Shore included many leitmotifs to represent various characters, cultures, and places. For example, there are leitmotifs for the hobbits as well as the Shire. Although the first film had some of its score recorded in Wellington, virtually all of the trilogy's score was recorded in Watford Town Hall and mixed at Abbey Road Studios. Jackson planned to advise the score for six weeks each year in London, though for The Two Towers he stayed for twelve. As a Beatles fan, Jackson had a photo tribute done there on the zebra crossing. The score is primarily played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and many artists such as Ben Del Maestro, Enya, Renee Fleming, Sir James Galway, Annie Lennox and Emiliana Torrini contributed. Even actors Billy Boyd, Viggo Mortensen, Liv Tyler, Miranda Otto (extended cuts only for the latter two), and Peter Jackson (for a single gong sound in the second film) contributed to the score. Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens also wrote the lyrics to various music and songs, which David Salo translated into Tolkien's languages. The third film's end song, Into the West, was a tribute to a young filmmaker Jackson and Walsh befriended named Cameron Duncan, who died of cancer in 2003. Shore composed a main theme for The Fellowship rather than many different character themes, and its strength and weaknesses in volume are depicted at different points in the trilogy. On top of that, individual themes were composed to represent different cultures. Infamously, the amount of music Shore had to write every day for the third film increased dramatically to around seven minutes. Better love the music of LOTR by Peter Jackson.

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timbox129 6 years 1 month ago Posts: 404	Ahhh, There is one of these elements, added. Sound. Sound technicians spent the early part of the year trying to find the right sounds. Some, such as animal sounds like tigers' and walruses', were bought. Human voices were also used. Fran Walsh contributed to the Nazgûl scream and David Farmer the Warg howls. Other sounds were unexpected: The Fell Beast's screech is taken from that of a donkey, and the mûmakil's bellow comes from the beginning and end of a lion's roar. In addition, ADR was used for most of the dialogue. The technicians worked with New Zealand locals to get many of the sounds. They re-recorded sounds in abandoned tunnels for an echo-like effect in the Moria sequence. 10,000 New Zealand cricket fans provided the sound of the Uruk-hai army in The Two Towers, with Jackson acting as conductor during a single cricket break. They spent time recording sounds in a graveyard at night, and also had construction workers drop stone blocks for the sounds of boulders firing and landing in The Return of the King. Mixing took place between August and November at "The Film Mix", before Jackson commissioned the building of a new studio in 2003. The building, however, had not yet been fully completed when they started mixing for The Return of the King. That studio would become Park Road Post.

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timbox129 6 years 1 month ago Posts: 404	And now, moving on to the release. The online promotional trailer for the trilogy was first released on 27 April 2000, and shattered records for download hits, registering 1.7 million hits in the first 24 hours of its release. The trailer used a selection from the soundtrack for Braveheart, and The Shawshank Redemption among other cuts. In 2001, 24 minutes of footage from the trilogy, primarily the Moria sequence, was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, and was very well received. The showing also included an area designed to look like Middle-earth. A full description of the footage can be found here: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was released 19 December 2001. It grossed $47 million in its U.S. opening weekend and made around $871 million worldwide. A preview of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was attached at the end of the cinema release for the film. A promotional trailer was later released. The trailer contained some music re-scored from the film Requiem for a Dream. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was released 18 December 2002. It grossed $62 million in its first U.S. weekend and out-grossed its predecessor, grossing $926 million worldwide. The promotional trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was debuted exclusively before the New Line Cinema film Secondhand Lions on 23 September 2003.Released 17 December 2003, its first U.S. weekend gross was $72 million, and became the second film (after Titanic) to gross over $1 billion worldwide. Each film was released on standard two-disc edition DVDs containing previews of the next film. The success of the theatrical cuts brought about four-disc Extended Editions, with new editing, added special effects and music. These are not Director's Cuts, however, as Jackson has said he prefers the theatrical versions. With the extended cuts of the films and their respective special features spread over two discs apiece, the Special Extended Edition DVD sets were issued as follows: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 12 November 2002. Containing 30 minutes more footage, in a green sleeve. It contains an Alan Lee painting of the Fellowship entering Moria, and the Moria Gate on the back of the sleeve. An Argonath styled bookend was issued within a Collector's Edition. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 18 November 2003. It contains 44 minutes more footage. A Rohirrim sun symbol decorates the back of its red sleeve and a Lee painting of Gandalf the White's entrance. The Collector's Edition contained a Sméagol statue, with a crueler-looking statue of his Gollum persona available for order during a limited time. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 14 December 2004. It has 52 minutes more footage, and a blue sleeve with the White Tree of Gondor. The Lee painting is of the Grey Havens. The Collector's Edition included a model of Minas Tirith, with Minas Morgul available for order during a limited time. The Special Extended DVD Editions also had in-sleeve maps of the Fellowship's travels. They have also played at movie theaters, most notably for a 16 December 2003, marathon screening (dubbed "Trilogy Tuesday" culminating in a midnight screening of the third film. On 28 August 2006, both versions were put together in a Limited Edition "branching" version plus a new feature-length documentary by Costa Botes. The complete trilogy was released in a six Disc set on 14 November 2006. Does anyone have these DVD releases?

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