Recently, the first two parts of the 4K restored version of "The Lord of the Rings" were re-screened in the mainland, and their picture effects were extremely excellent! I highly recommend that you experience this shocking effect that belongs to the big screen.
Why is the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, put to this day, still able to beat the vast majority of movies on the market?
Because this trilogy has epoch-making significance, it is basically equivalent to the "Godfather" trilogy and the "Star Wars" trilogy of that year.
In other words, The Lord of the Rings is the "Godfather" in the fantasy movie, and it is likely to be once in ten or even twenty years!
The Lord of the Rings is a fantasy trilogy that strikes a near-perfect balance between business and art.
Not only did it gross nearly $3 billion worldwide, it also won more than 300 awards at major film festivals around the world, and the finale "The Lord of the Rings 3" created a proud result of 11 mentions and 11 at the Oscars.
Today, I will talk to you about how such a trilogy masterpiece was made, and its behind-the-scenes story is equally amazing.
There is no shortage of money and no shortage of technology, why is it difficult to make such a "Lord of the Rings" now?
Peter Jackson was born for this
Peter Jackson is arguably the best person to shoot The Lord of the Rings, not one of them!
It can almost be said that his early film career was all in preparation for The Lord of the Rings, and he was born for it.
Tolkien's series of works has a great influence in the West, and many people have likened it to China's "Journey to the West".
This scene in "Friends" shows that "The Lord of the Rings" is a household name in the United States, so Rose thinks it is incredible that Joey doesn't know who Gandalf is!
The Lord of the Rings was even thought by fans that it was impossible to make a movie.
Before the Lord of the Rings trilogy, only one "Lord of the Rings" cartoon had been made in 1978, which can only be said to be decent.
The 1978 cartoon The Lord of the Rings goes like this
However, Peter Jackson originally became acquainted with The Lord of the Rings because he watched this cartoon.
At the age of 17, he spent 12 hours on the train from Wellington to Oakland after reading the original Lord of the Rings— which he bought with something bundled with something else— and he became a Lord of the Rings fan ever since.
In 1993, Finland produced a 270-minute, nine-episode mini-series called The Lord of the Rings, but The Hobbit.
However, only one episode of the 9 episodes is actually adapted from Tolkien's "The Hobbit", and the other 8 episodes are adapted from "The Lord of the Rings".
Paste a few pictures for everyone to feel for themselves.
Gollum How can you be so fat...
Are these four tramps?
Frodo and Gandalf, feel that the 86th edition of "Journey to the West" is instantly tall!
In 1995, Peter Jackson, who had just finished filming "Ghosts of Horror", was already famous.
He watched Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" in 1993 and thought that with this CG technology, he could fully present the effect of "Lord of the Rings" Middle-earth!
So the director encouraged the owner, Miramax, to buy the film adaptation rights of "The Lord of the Rings" from Saul Zaenz.
He himself did a lot of work in the early stages, including concept design, special effects display, and so on.
Initially, the director approached Disney, but disney's CEO at the time heard that the two Lords of the Rings had budgets of $120 million and backed down.
Peter Jackson
The Weinstein brothers, who had invested $10 million in Peter Jackson up front, were in a hurry and asked the director to find a buyer within three weeks.
Just when he was desperate, he found Bob Saye, the owner of the new line company, and Shaye saw the director's preliminary work and said a famous golden sentence: "The original Lord of the Rings is a trilogy, why doesn't the film make a trilogy?" ”
In this way, Peter Jackson won a series of big-budget films that are rare in the history of cinema.
Prior to that, he had made N films with a total box office of less than $30 million, and he could only be regarded as a B-movie director.
However, he was not a fluke, and the director's previous "Angel of Sin" had already won the Silver Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival.
His use of special effects in films such as "Corpses PlayIng Across the Line" and "Sin Angels" has become extremely skilled and original.
Angel of Sin
The passage in Angels of Sin where the protagonist Kate Winslet dances with the Clay Man is fantastic and has the prototype of some of the scenes in The Lord of the Rings.
For the Lord of the Rings series, the director spent 3 years writing the script alone!
In this, he thought about every detail and matured, and had drawn a sub-shot script of the entire film before the film began.
The director used clay or carving to create monster models, and three dimensions to create future camera movements—in other words, the entire film was already in front of the production staff before filming began.
From 1995 to the release of the first Lord of the Rings in 2001, Peter Jackson prepared for a full six years!
How could such an epic fantasy trilogy be made without such a director who was familiar with the original work and painstakingly prepared it?
Costs are well calculated
Many people think that the Lord of the Rings trilogy is a huge commercial blockbuster with huge investment.
In fact, the total cost of the trilogy is $280 million, an average of around $93 million per installment.
What is the concept of this number? We can look at the scale of investment in several commercial blockbusters released in the same year as 2001's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings.
Pearl Harbor is $140 million; Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is $125 million; Tomb Raider is $115 million; Planet of the Apes is $100 million; Artificial Intelligence is $100 million.
See? One "Lord of the Rings" couldn't even rank among the top five most expensive in that year. The director of photography laughs at himself for being "the world's largest produced low-budget film." ”
Judging by the scale of "The Lord of the Rings", the number of participants in the trilogy exceeded 26,000 people, which was extremely cost-effective!
In order to save costs, Peter Jackson creatively proposed that the trilogy should be shot back-to-back, that is, many scenes were shot together, rather than shooting one and preparing another.
He also took advantage of New Zealand's cheap manpower, government support, tax rebate policies and other advantages, not only to shoot the film at low cost, but also to provide a large number of employment opportunities for his hometown.
Farther down, he even promoted the development of the tourism industry, setting the myth of Weta's world's top special effects company...
Relative to the cost savings, the director strives for excellence in the scenes, costumes, special effects, and even lighting, soundtrack, and photography.
Let's use some examples to see how rigorous and sophisticated the production of this series is.
In order to ensure the authenticity of the scene, the Stunt team of The Lord of the Rings will only use the computer to generate the scenery and buildings in the film if it is "forced to do so".
The scenes required for the film are mostly filmed on a live-up set.
The most important sets, such as the "hobbit's huts", were made to their original size, while others were made into miniature models.
Weta Studios produced 68 miniature models, mostly 1/35, but also 1/14, 1/4 or even 1/2.
Some of the models are quite large, such as a huge 1/14 model for the filming of the "Battle of the Underground Cave Bridge", which is 6.4 meters high, 20 meters long and 13.3 meters wide.
The models are very detailed and can stand the test of close-up and surround shots.
In order to reflect the characteristics of the "Middle Ages", Jackson asked real blacksmiths to build weapons for them.
The weapons of the 100 main characters are made of steel and used to shoot close-up scenes; more are made of light metal aluminum, which is used to shoot mid-shot fighting scenes; as for those rubber and plastic weapons used to shoot long-range scenes, it is even more difficult to count.
In total, they made 48,000 props, including 1,000 hand-made armor, 200 hand-sewn leather garments, and more than 2,000 weapons.
Similarly, Weta Studios is also very good at the makeup of the actors, and they have made more than 10,000 plastic masks for the actors in the film.
Craftsmanship excellence
Through a set of data, we can fully understand the production process behind the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.
7:7, peter jackson and others worked on The Lord of the Rings.
28: The number of major characters in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
68: Number of miniature models made by Weta Studios for three Lords of the Rings.
100: In the early days of the film, the art department showed Jackson more than 100 "storyboard" sketches a day.
100: Vita Studios staff made more than 100 sculptural heads of "Gollum" with different expressions based on peter Jackson's photographs.
274: 274 days, the time when "The Lord of the Rings" was actually filmed.
300: The Lord of the Rings' most complex specifics refer to the number of layers required for the scene. A layer is an element that needs to be composited, and the more layers there are, the more complex the composition becomes.
350: Number of people who have worked for The Lord of the Rings at Weta Studios.
1500: Number of stunt shots from the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
9000: To accurately represent the expression of "Gollum", Weta Studios designed more than 9,000 different shapes of head muscles for it.
10,000: The number of people who appear in the Battle scene at the beginning of The Messenger of the Ring.
10,000: The total number of plastic masks made by Weta Studios for The Lord of the Rings.
48,000: Total number of props made by Weta Studios.
250000000000000000: 25 megabytes, the number of bytes processed by the Stunt Production of The Twin Towers.
In particular, peter Jackson paid great attention to environmental protection and respect for local cultural practices when he made The Lord of the Rings.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy lasted 274 days, using a total of 350 purpose-built filming locations, with more than 150 locations (including 30 Eco-Ministry sites) throughout New Zealand.
Before filming in protected areas and national parks, directors must first obtain permission to shoot films in protected areas through professional lawyers.
Lawyers are required to submit reports to local and environmental authorities to ensure that the environment is not damaged.
In addition, people on the set of the film must also ensure that the local cultural symbols are not destroyed.
Mount Ruapehu is sacrosanct to the local Maori. Traditionally, Māori are unable to look directly at the peaks of this mountain, and painting or photographing the mountain range is considered rude.
So Peter Jackson agreed with the tribal elders that The Lord of the Rings could photograph the mountain range, but use digital effects (such as adding lava) to make it unrecognizable.
Aesthetic styles are varied
Minimizing the use of CG special effects is one thing that sets The Lord of the Rings apart from most of the big-budget films of recent years.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy uses a lot of live-action shooting, physical effects, and CG effects only when necessary.
Peter Jackson wanted to pursue authentic textures, making the film as a historical/epic blockbuster rather than a pure fantasy film.
He wanted to present the feeling that "there really could be such a Middle-earth world, with some unique races and unique characters."
In fact, Weta was not the highest-caliber company in CG special effects at the time, and they were also best at physical effects, makeup, miniature setting, and so on.
Although Weta used the more advanced Massive software of the time to generate a large number of troops, its CG production level was still inferior to that of established special effects companies such as Industrial Light and Magic ILM and Digital Domain DD.
But Weta has an incomparable advantage, which is that they are cheap!
It can be said that peter Jackson's presentation in The Lord of the Rings is not necessarily the best CG special effects of the time, but it is certainly the most cost-effective.
In the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Peter Jackson's personal directing style is so prominent in the film that it can even be regarded as an "author's film."
The director exhibits a variety of aesthetic styles that many Hollywood commercial film directors cannot present.
For example, the Char of the Hobbit is a peaceful, beautiful and even somewhat lazy idyllic landscape.
Some scenes, such as the appearance of the ring spirit, are eerie and terrifying, dark and evil, and have the cult temperament of the director's early films.
Some of the great visions are full of grand and magnificent sublime feelings, reflecting the insignificant strength of the Guard Expedition and the great determination and courage to surpass the small body.
Scenes from the Kingdom of Rohan are imbued with a tragic beauty of the past.
In particular, the flag was blown off by the wind and the king mourned the death of his son to see the two sections of Yongzhihua.
In addition, the soundtrack of "The Lord of the Rings" is also very impressive.
Canadian musician Howard Shaw, when composing the music, seems to be a volcano of inspiration, and the score of the trilogy is taken to an extreme.
He creatively blended classical symphony, sacred music, world music, electronic music, and new century music, adding musical elements such as Celtic, African, and Indian to compose a magical epic.
The Lord of the Rings is racially diverse and the scenes are complex, but under the control of Howard Shaw, the music of the elves is ethereal and mournful and poetic, while the crazy rhythm of percussion portrays Sauron's evil horror, beautiful, terrifying, spectacular, tense, and various emotional elements are perfectly displayed.
Howard Shaw also recruited a group of world-class musicians for the trilogy.
The first Rienya's theme song highlighted elements of world music, while the second became the Icelandic alternative female voice Emiliana Torrini.
The third part featured the film's soundtrack to the film's soundtrack, featuring the film's famous American soprano Renee Fleming, legendary singer Anne Lenox, and Irish flute maestro James Galway.
Even in isolation, the soundtrack of The Lord of the Rings can be called an excellent fever dish.
Today, Hollywood composers rarely conduct orchestras themselves, and Howard Shaw conducts all the music of The Lord of the Rings, which is evident in his dedication to the work.
Regarding the casting of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, in fact, you can expand a separate article and talk about it for three days and three nights.
Unlike most commercial blockbusters today, directors did not choose A-list stars with huge box office appeal but at the same time may be expensive to participate in.
The director's vision uniquely adopts the combination of old, middle and young, gathering a group of old drama bones, middle-aged personality actors and young actors with great potential, while british actors, Australian and New Zealand actors are the mainstays.
This is in line with Tolkien's status as a British writer, and it has a strong guarantee of acting skills - and it is not expensive!
Finally, end with a quote from a classic line from the film!
I give you the light of Elandir,
Our beloved stars.
May it extinguish all light,
Illuminate you in the dark!