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I've always been fascinated with special effects in film.
It to me, more than any other department involved in the movie-making process, captures the
essence of movie magic.Special effects can make us believe that Neo can dodge bullets,
or that Yoda can lift an X-Wing with his mind, or that Hobbits are real and in fact much
shorter in stature than humans.
But all it takes is watching some behind the scenes footage to discover that this effect
is a clever use of green screen and still image cameras, set to fire in rapid, perfectly
timed succession, then stitched together seamlessly with a CG composite of the rooftop to complete
the effect.
This is just a large scale prop being lifted by a crane, later composited with blue screen
footage of a miniature, and some excellent puppeteering from Frank Oz to sell the scene.
But how did the special effects team behind The Lord of the Rings create the size difference
of the Hobbits?
How did they bring these fantastic locations and creatures to life?
The challenge for the Hobbits, and for Gimli, was that they have to appear smaller in every
shot, and if even just one frame stood out of place, the effect would fall to pieces,
and the films right along with it.
So to combat this problem, the team employed many different techniques.
Like forced perspective, whereby placing one actor closer to the camera, and one further
away tricks our eye into thinking one is larger than the other.
Specially designed props like Gandalf's cart allowed Elijah Wood to sit further back in
the frame, but by keeping the camera locked in place, and giving the actors the right
eyeline, you'd never be able to tell.
This same technique was even used with a moving camera, by having motion controlled rigs moving
the actor and props at the same speed as the camera in the opposite direction.
Many scenes were accomplished through the use of different scaled props and sets, Hobbit
sized for Ian Holm, and human sized for Ian MacKellan.
And if the characters were to occupy the frame at the same time, blue screen compositing
could be utilized by filming one actor on set, one on a blue screen, with someone to
later be digitally removed, handling the props so the characters can interact even with each
other.
Another technique used were Big-Rigs, stilt-like suits that were given over-sized costumes
and big rubber animatronic hands that could move throughout a scene when the camera was
focused on the Hobbits, and with only fleeting shots of the big-rigs, you'd never know it
wasn't a real person.
And when all else failed, there were always scale doubles.
Actors cast for being either very small, or very large, who had their own respective props,
costumes and wigs made to act as scale stand-ins for the other actors.
Even using blue screen compositing to swap faces of the actors for some scenes.
With all of these different techniques working harmoniously the effect stands up even fifteen
years later, one might even say that they "haven't aged a day".
So that solves the problem of scale for the characters, but what about the locations?
Many larger than life fantastical locations are present throughout the trilogy with no
appropriate real world architecture to stand in for filming.
So in some instances, like the Shire, or Edoras, large scale sets were built on location in
New Zealand.
But whenever the size was just too daunting to recreate at proper scale, miniature sets
were built with incredible attention to detail so they would look as realistic as possible
when on the big screen.
Many other smaller sections of sets were built at their proper scale, which acted as the
foreground plate for some more complex shots with minature footage and matte paintings
in the background.
These "big-atures", as the team dubbed them, were so large and so detailed that you could
basically have free roam of camera movement or framing, and then with blue screen compositing
or use of digital doubles, you could place characters anywhere in the scene to create
the illusion of a living, breathing world.
Of course places like Rivendell, or Lothlorien, had to be accomplished this way, but you may
be surprised to learn that even places like the Dead Marshes, or Fangorn Forest, were
brought to life almost entirely with special effects.
I think by and large, if it can be done through practical effects, it should be done with
practical effects.
Effects like forced perspective or minituares are more optical illusion than anything else,
you're still using real people or real objects under real lights photographed with real cameras,
and that will almost always look better than anything even the most talented digital artist
can create artificially, but sometimes there just isn't a feasible way of pulling something
off without the use of CGI.
Take the major battle sequences for instance.
The amount of money it would take to hire tens of thousands of people, train them in
stunt-combat, choreograph their fight sequences, and get them all costumes and props and squeeze
them onto one location, it just wouldn't be possible.
So for sequences like the Battle of Helm's Deep, or the Battle of Pellenor Fields, the
only way for these scenes to be done any justice was through the implementation of CGI.
Practical effects were used whenever they could be used effectively, like a lot of the
close up shots of the troops in combat, or shots of miniatures for Helm's Deep and Minas
Tirith.
Outside of what was accomplished with minatures and location shoots, the large battlefield
of Pellenor Fields was entirely constructed through CGI, with a technique similar to a
panoramic effect used in photography.
The crew gathered shots of mountains and rivers and fields and sky, and stitched it all together
into a 3D digital space where they could move the camera however and wherever they needed,
so that no matter where the placed the camera they would have a geographically accurate
background.
And as for the battles themselves, they employed the use of a software program called MASSIVE.
It's essentially an AI simulation, where you can randomize different variables of each
individual Agent to create a group that doesn't just feel like clones of the same model.
Each agent is textured with the appropriate armor and weaponry, taught how to move and
fight through motion capture data from the stunt team.
They react to sight and sound to know where to move, when to attack or to block, and then
the program just runs its course.
You can take more manual control if the shot demands something specific, but a lot of the
large skirmishes depicted in wide-shots are just the program working effectively.
Then with the AI software running, combined with these digital 3D spaces, elaborate miniatures
and on-set action with all of the actors and stunt people, you end up with some of the
most epic battle sequences ever filmed.
The battle sequences aren't the only thing that benefited from the use of CGI, it was
also heavily used in the creation of some of the various creatures seen in the films.
They all start with a 3D maquette, a scaled down sculpture that is built just as they
would build any of the miniatures, fully detailed and painted, to then be laser scanned so every
bit of that detail can be brought into a digital workstation.
They then begin the skeletal rigging, and layering in the muscles so that the creature
moves realistically, and finally add the scanned in texture on top, and through the help of
motion capture and keyframe animation, they're brought to life.
Without question, the most impressive of these creations has to be Gollum.
A landmark achievement in the visual effects world at that time.
Originally intended to be purely a voice-over performance, after seeing Andy Serkis's audition
tape and seeing how committed he was to the performance, they decided to use the actor
as much as possible to dictate the animation.
So for every scene featuring the character, they would film one scene on set or location
with the other actors, and then film another version of the scene on a motion capture stage
to give the animators something to work off of.
But they ran into a problem, the original design of Gollum had different enough facial
features that when trying to animate him to match Andy's performance, it just didn't look
right.
So even though most of the visual effects work involving Gollum in the Two Towers had
already been completed, they went back to re-design Gollum to look more like Andy.
This is why the brief glimpse of Gollum that we see in Fellowship looks different than
what we see in the other two films, because that was the original design intended for
use that was finished long before Andy was ever hired.
But eventually it all began to fall in place, using Andy's performance for reference whenever
possible, the animators transformed him into his digital counterpart, taking certain liberties
to make the character more agile or limber for certain scenes.
One of the notable touches that made Gollum such a believable character was his skin,
which was helped along by the film's lead make-up designer.
One of the VFX artists noticed his ability to paint veins or other subdermal details
on top of the skin, combining their areas of expertise, they managed to create a skin
texture that looked much closer to the real thing than had ever been achieved before.
And so through a brilliant performance from Andy Serkis, and a team of skilled animators,
they created what to this day may well be the most compelling CG character ever created
for a live-action film.
All of this barely scratches the surface of the tremendous work that went into creating
these films, but for such a massive fantasy story to be brought to the screen faithfully,
special effects were paramount to the trilogy's success.
And considering the incredible strides the team made in revolutionizing technology new
and old, to bring a story that was previously thought to be unfilmable to the big screen,
and more impressively to actually pull it off, puts it at or very near the top of special
effects achievements in film, it's no wonder then that all three took home the Oscar for
Best Achievement in Visual Effects, the only Oscar that all three films share.
But ultimately, special effects are just tools in service of something greater.
In the wise words of Luke Skywalker himself, well, Mark Hamill that is.
Special effects are the purest form of movie making.
With them, we can create visions that owe nothing to any other form of artistic expression,
and which no other art can possibly duplicate.
We now possess a technology that places anything that man can imagine within reach of the camera.
There's no place, past, present, or future that it cannot go.
But if we possess this new technology, we musn't allow it to possess us, as so many
of the century's great inventions have come to do.
For in the end, a special effect is just a special effect.
If it isn't surrounded by people we care about, if it doesn't serve a story that moves and
involves us, and if above all it doesn't help us to grasp some larger imaginiative vision,
then it's just a trick, a gimmick.
While special effects were crucial to the film's success, they're not the reason these
films stay with us.
If it weren't for the incredible story of courage and sacrifice, or the characters that
come to mean so much to us, these films would never be able to stand the test of time, no
matter how good the special effects are.
But instead, they're used to elevate everything else, to turn these films into something more
than just
a spectacle.