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/