The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy: Extended Cut



Minas Tirith

Lord of the Rings is my all-time favourite trilogy of films with its stunning visual effects and amazing storyline it lives up to the books. After purchasing the extended edition DVDs I can say it was worth the money, a lot of the scenes that were cut out add a lot of depth to the story and additional small details that make the films more impacting and meaningful due to the fact that a lot of the scenes involve individual character details. Also there is a great deal more behind the scenes features which I found fascinating and I watch them over and over again as I find the amount of detail and time that went into these movies is not fully shown or appreciated on screen.  

Andy Serkis fully suited up in motion capture gear

I particularly found that the motion capture process was fascinating as they did a lot of green screen work for the films due to the large cgi demanding environments, characters and creatures.





Gollum



Gollum is perhaps one of the biggest digital achievements from Wetadigital and it is still on all their show reels which show how proud they must be of creating such a challenging and amazing character. Andy Serkis was originally not cast until it was realised they needed to use motion capture to produce a convincing character for the other actors to interact with.

Mumakil and riders of Rohan

Mumakil are the giant elephant looking creatures that the Haradrim ride into battle. The Mumakil are just one of the examples of extensive creature design that Wetadigital had to create based on the designs produced by Alan Lee and John Howe (the two lead conceptual artists).





By watching all the additional content on the extended cut I know a lot more about the techniques and tools used to create such a massive film, I think in total the digital department in Weta did over 1000 shots throughout the three films which is huge compared to any normal blockbuster action film. It was a constant design and writing process for the whole team who worked together for 6 years on the films, the sheer amount of detail cannot be fully realised until you watch all the behind the scenes content. Every single prop and set was designed and produced twice for scale (hobbit and human), all the hobbits and Gimli had scale doubles which were cleverly woven into the films, you hardly notice that it isn't the original actors. I also loved the detail that went into all the costumes, the fabric, embroidery and all the colour choices were perhaps unnecessary because on screen you cannot see all the details but it was said to help the actors get into character which in turn enhanced their performance.

                                                   http://www.lordoftherings.net/
                                                      http://www.wetafx.co.nz/

Tim Burton's Corpse Bride

Above is the official trailer for Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, a traditional stop motion animation film. This is one of my favourite films done this way as I love the characters and how unusual the storyline is. This film like many others incorporates music into the film in a way that makes the story flow well and adds humour to the plot (see video below).                              

 

Corpse Bride has the classic Tim Burton feel to it but it also has alot of dark humour added to it to make it more appealing to children. I love the character designs as they are unique to Tim Burton's style, long and thin with large eyes and enhanced features to accentuate the characters personality. Althought the characters are unproportional and unrealistic they work very well in the film environment.

Two of the original puppets used for Victor & Emily

Short storyboard for one of my favourite scenes

Victor concept art

Coraline

 
    I watched Coraline a few months ago and I was blown away with the story and the animation. Eventhough this is a kids film I still found it very creepy, similar to much of Tim Burton's work which I love. I especailly was blown away by the intense design process and shooting process that is needed to create a film of this type. I love this type of animation due to the realism created through the use of puppets rather than heavy CGI, I fell in love with the puppets as they were all so unique and wonderfully creepy.
    It reminds me alot of films like Tim Burton's Corpse Bride and The Nightmare Before Christmas, both these films use similar techniques to aid the animation by digitally enhancing the puppets and enviroments they all also have very unique character designs with kooky features which are played with and pin pointed in the designs. An example of this would be fig1 this character has two or three features that are enhanced to create an interesting and unusual design, she is designed as a plump character which you can see especially in her facial designs, she also wears very heavy makeup and unusual headpieces. All the characters in Coraline are designed in this way and overall create a very diverse and creative film.


fig1
 



Coraline Facial Expressions

Concept Art Poster

Puppet of the "Other Mother" In her final form you see
towards the end of the movie.

Close up view of the "Other Mother" in her final form.

http://coraline.com/

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The first factor refers to whether the use of the material is intended to enrich the general public or whether it is for personal profit (in which case the policy is enforced).  For example "When Tom Forsythe appropriated Barbie dolls for his photography project "Food Chain Barbie", Mattel lost its claims of copyright and trademark infringement against him because his work effectively parodies Barbie and the values she represents."

The second factor is concerend with who the copyright should be owned by, in this case it protects companies from claiming private rights to material that should belong to the general public. "The Zapruder film of the assassination of President Kennedy, for example, was purchased and copyrighted by Time magazine. Yet their copyright was not upheld, in the name of the public interest, when they tried to enjoin the reproduction of stills from the film in a history book on the subject in Time Inc v Bernard Geis Associates"

The third factor assesses the quantity/percentage of the original copyrighted work that has been placed into the new work. "Likewise, see Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corporation, where the Ninth Circuit held that copying an entire photo to use as a thumbnail in online search results did not weigh against fair use, "if the secondary user only copies as much as is necessary for his or her intended use"."

The fourth factor measures the effect that the infringing use has had on the copyright owner's ability to exploit their original work. "See Sony Corp v Universal City Studios,where the copyright owner, Universal, failed to provide any empirical evidence that the use of Betamax had either reduced their viewership or negatively impacted their business."

 

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