Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

It's taken me a long time to sit down and watch Lord of the Rings and i've finally managed to do it. It was appropriate that after the first movie ended it would be of great interest to see how it was made. I was fully blown back by the visual effects and animation used in the film, for example Gollum. It didn't concern to me the different techniques that were used to exaggerate how small the hobbits were aswel. I took down notes of interesting techniques and quotes that part of the senior crew spoke about in interviews.


Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

From Book to Script

Peter Jackson – Director/co-writer/producer

Fran Walsh – Co-writer

Philippa Boyens – Co-writer

Andrew Lesnie – DOP

Alex Funke – Miniatures DOP

Had to take 3 books of the rings and break it down to 90-page treatment

First pass at ‘cracking the code’, Peter felt it was almost unfilmable

Lots of adaptations, Lines that Elron said in the book was given to Aragon to say in the movie, but they were still talking his language and saying his words

Miramax wanted to do one movie, Peter needed to convince someone to do it in two. He and Fran presented to Bob Shayne, founder of New Line Cinema. Bob then turned around to say it needed to be 3 movies. The original scripts for two movies then had to be adapted from page one, to make It into three movies.

Collaboration between Philippa, Fran and Peter

Fran and Philippa work close together, writing the scripts, Fran taking it to Peter to reshape. Philippa on the laptop, Fran write by hand, surrounded by notes and paper, and Peter would shoot.

Script would be re-written every day, constantly updating them.

Everyone involved in scenes would sit together and go through them. So everyone would get to know his or her characters on a personal level.

Actors who would own their characters, would all share their ideas

Scenes that were hardest to translate from the book to the film were the exposition scenes, scenes that would have to explain a lot of detail about the plot.

Lots of things in the film that were not in the book. Some scenes that were not in the book added a lot to the movie.

The movie in it’s most simplest form was Frodo carrying the ring, eventually has to go to Mordor to destroy the ring. So characters in the book that didn’t advance the story weren’t added in the movie. Something’s were left untold.

Talking of ideas to bring Mary and Pippin to life more was to steal a firework and light it. It wasn’t in the book but it had energy, it was a party, you want to see some lightness and fun at the front of this movie because it gets very dark. You’re looking for something very unexpected and introducing two characters and saying something about them. Whilst also referencing an event that takes place in the book with Gandolf making a firework into a dragon. So you want everything that you do to hopefully do three or four things in terms of turning that piece of pros into a film. One primary thing you want to do is reveal character.

Lots of time wasting by trying to bring so much of the world to life and explaining some of the cultures to life.

Ring was the source of evil, it had to be animated, to almost become a character in the movie itself. It ends up having personal relationships with Frodo, an intense relationship with Gollum, a powerful relationship with Gandalf and Galadriel. It has a presence right through the fellowship.

Relationship between Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson. Fran was good at putting words on paper and Peter was good at putting words into vision.

Fans will be looking for things that happen in the book. For example, Sam holding Frodo’s hand when he wakes up after being injured.

Whilst doing all the normal stuff when adapting a book to a film, they always wanted to be as accurate as possible and put Tolkein’s thematic into the film.

Storyboards and Pre-vis: Making Words Into Images

Had to plan movies as detailed as possible, little room for error

Pre visualized every shot before filming. Sometimes high level of detail or a sketch. To give everyone a feel for the film and evaluate which scenes are too long.

Storyboarding every frame, so able to work from visual reference. Most basic form pre-viz the film, 2d pencil drawing, nothings moving, no real evidence of camera work. Christian storyboarded most the films Peter has made.

They sit down, Peter describes the shot. Usually one or two drawings is needed. Started storyboarding when writing the script. Peters way of checking that the ideas he has for telling the story are going to work. Storyboards are a cheap part of the movie, and has essentially done the process of making the film, as a director Peters done version number 1. Some directors who see their storyboards on screen, Peter uses his storyboards for inspiration for communication with departments but you knew they were going to change. Storyboards was a starting point not an end point.

Photographing the storyboards as an animatic, video taping each frame of the storyboards, and edited together. Got some local actors in the studio, who read through the script in a recording studio and then edited with the storyboard, Like a comic book with words and music. So you get a feeling for the progression of story and pacing of storytelling

Script was powerful enough that it came across and it designated in that rough form.

Peter wanted to go one further with the storyboards and make it more accurate. By using a lipstick camera, get little toys, and used as a reference point or a set. So storyboards that were done previously were extended on. It was hooked up to a video monitor which had a freeze frame function on, to work out which camera shots he’d want to use. Christian would then sketch out the storyboard that was reflected on the monitor to scale, and would make sense.

Publishing accurate storyboards, when they would walk onto the set, they would be able to find the same angle on the set with the miniature.

Scene of Baggins house. Peter wanted to get a few of the people in the film with a video camera and played characters to figure out scale and space and movement in that scene. Beyond storyboarding they used pre-vis to help tell the story. He wanted to turn his 2d storyboard into 3d moving cameras.

Peter was presence on a lot of the pre-vis, it was a tool that became apparent. Scenes that were born in pre vis are often the more imaginative scenes because you feel brave and your devising the crazy shots with computer, but ultimately the crazy shots play an important part in defining the style of the film.

Peter does a lot of things that shouldn’t work, but do. Hearing something that sounds impossible, Peter manages to puzzle it out.

Director’s commentary

Environment scenes

Combinations of minitures and mat paintings and various waterfalls photographed from different places in New Zealand. Computer genered ruin’s. Peter flew round in a helicopter without ariel crew shooting scenes. Had doubles that he took down to the South Island. ‘Hero fellowship shot’ was done against blue screens, with a scene plate of the South Island of New Zealand.

The big ring close up, a large ring was used, about 6” in diameter.  So they could get the ring closer to the lens.

Shooting of the troll referes to harry howsend

Scale

Approach was take whatever it takes to get the shot.

Big Rigs – put people into big rigs, and over sized costumes

Scale doubles – face replacements, small and big sets

Forced perspective – if you have two people of the same height, and you want to make one of them look smaller you take that person further away from the camera. Based up on a camera being static restricted to movements of pan and tilt only. Two identical sets for Bilbo Baggin’s house was created, one large one for Bilbo and a small one for Gandalf. Every prop had to be built for two different scales

Scale compositing – where we shoot each actor seeperately and later put the two pieces of film back together and composite them into one.

Forced perspective with a moving camera – once you start to move the camera it gives away the illusion of one person being further away when you want them to look like their side by side. A technique was used to keep the illusion with the camera moving at the same time. You have the camera on a motion control dolly making it move in and out or side to side, but you have another smaller dolly that’s electronically hooked to it and does the exact same motion but sort of in a counter movement, everytime you move one way on one dolly, the other one immediately responds.

Miniatures

The bigger the miniature the more realistic it would look

Rule of shooting miniatures is to shoot short so the audience just assumes it’s real.