I have said before that the "Lord of the Rings" series was kicked by major Hollywood films before filming, and today I want to talk about interesting anecdotes in the middle of shooting.
As we all know, behind a good movie, it must be a lot of hard work put into the director, actors and even all the staff up and down the crew, and "The Lord of the Rings" is no exception.
After New Line took over the project, although Chairman Robert Shaye agreed with Peter's idea to make three films, new line itself was only a small film industry, and could not come up with so much money.
It was originally intended to invest $130 million to shoot three films, with an average budget of only $40 million.
Because of this, the filming of "The Lord of the Rings" is actually mainly around a core: how to save money?
Of course, Peter Jackson did not simply save for the sake of provinces, his "provinces" were based on the premise of not affecting the quality of his works.
In layman's terms, how can we make a "good and cheap" shooting?
In the end, the production team decided to travel to New Zealand and take a live-action shoot.
Live-action shooting has several advantages over the well-known green screen shooting.
First, some scenes can be used repeatedly, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy happens to be shot back-to-back, so this can be said to be a perfect fit.
Second, the two ways of shooting real scene and green screen, not that the latter is necessarily more expensive than the former, for example, if you simply cut a picture or something, it must be cheaper for green screen.
But for The Lord of the Rings, if it was a lot of green screen shooting, and the grand landscape of Middle-earth was all post-production, the cost was unimaginable.
As for live-action shooting, because Peter chose a place in New Zealand, the price of manpower and material resources there is much cheaper than Hollywood, and as a local, Peter also knows what government subsidies are, so it is much more cost-effective than green screen shooting.
Most importantly, Peter himself believes that an epic work should not rely entirely on post-production.
Of course, that's the way it is, but the biggest difficulty in live-action shooting compared to green-screen shooting is that the staff needs to spend more energy.
For example, if you want to photograph the bottom of the pocket where the hobbits live, then you need to find a pastoral place; to shoot the link between the two armies, you need to find a vast and "imposing" flat land.
Don't think that these are easy to do, because it also needs to take into account the impact of the light of the venue on the shooting, as well as whether the near and far shots are in line with the composition of the picture, plus the cost of building a real scene here.
The more complicated part is that some places in New Zealand are national protected areas, or belong to the jurisdiction of some villages, you want to shoot in them, you need to apply for a license, but people may not agree, after all, they will also worry about your filming here will damage the environment. Therefore, the coordination effort and procedures spent are very cumbersome.
In the more than 9 months of filming of "The Lord of the Rings", Peter's team built more than 150 real-life locations, of which the painstaking efforts spent can be imagined.
Of course, although live-action shooting accounts for the majority, there are still many shots that need to be post-production.
Due to insufficient budget, Peter did not look for hollywood's famous Industrial Light and Magic, but instead found a special effects company called Weta Digital.
Weta Digital, based in New Zealand, is a special effects studio that Peter has worked with before, and is relatively familiar with the roots.
Although it is said that in the field of special effects production, such as the digital field and other top companies in the industry, the success is in the cost performance, and the level is not bad, and the most important thing is that the studio does not treat peter's tasks perfunctory, but works hard to complete them without trouble.
Like what:
For the character of Gollum, more than 100 sculptural avatars with different expressions were designed.
48,000 pieces of steel plate mold armor (which contain plastic components) were made.
10,000 solid arrows.
500 strong bows.
More than 10,000 plastic masks.
Because it is impossible to really build a city for live-action shooting, but post-production is too expensive, so Weta Digital has produced a lot of miniature models for shooting.
The rest of the props are even more numerous.
In addition, the performances of the actors can also be remarkable.
Peter, the director, likes to change his lines suddenly in the middle of the shooting, according to his saying, he will do this when he feels that the line needs to be added or subtracted according to the actual shooting situation.
This is a bitter experience for the actors, because the actors have often written down a large line completely, but when shooting, they suddenly ask for changes, which is equivalent to cutting a few paragraphs in the middle of a complete paragraph, and then putting another paragraph down, but also connecting it all.
Ian McLean, who plays Gandalf, although he is a dedicated old drama bone, but after all, he is older and his memory is not so good, Peter sees that Ian has been struggling to memorize lines, and he has also thought about engraving some of his lines on the helmets of soldiers.
Ilya Wood, who plays Frodo, was caught memorizing lines and felt embarrassed that he didn't remember well.
Vigo Mortesen, who plays the king of Aragon, is dizzy by the lines, and as soon as he has free time, he rushes to fish to empty his mind, but after fishing for a while, I still go back to memorizing the lines.....
Well, the whole cast is agonizing over the "lines".
In addition, because many scenes are located on the mountain, the actors often put on makeup and then take a helicopter to the venue, the boat and car are inevitable, and just got off the helicopter to memorize new lines, and there are various action scenes on the way to filming.
Fortunately, the cast never complained, and they gave the director and the audience the best performance they could contribute.
In fact, as mentioned above, all the links of the scene, props, actors, etc., are indispensable.
Why? Because Peter needs to have some early finished products for New Line Pictures to see.
An epic movie like The Lord of the Rings, even if it saves money, can't make three for just $120 million, and Peter has always wanted to pursue a budget.
But the question is, how are you going to convince the new line? There has to be some finished product for them to see that this is indeed a promising project, right?
The right way to shoot, the unforgettable shooting location, the well-made models and props, and the hard work of the actors are all chips that Peter can negotiate with the new line.
As a result, New Line saw that everyone had such motivation and looked like a potential stock, so it smashed the pot and sold iron, and eventually pulled the budget of the trilogy to $281 million, which more than doubled.
The final result is, of course, also gratifying, as the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy grossed nearly $3 billion worldwide and won numerous awards.
Excellent directors, dedicated actors, not sloppy special effects companies, new line pictures that fully supported the shooting, as well as other artists, directors, etc. All the staff members did their best for this work.
It can be said that because of this, epic will become epic, and without any link, the classic will not be a classic.