10 Clever Tricks You Didn’t Realise Movies Played On You

Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings pictures were genuinely revolutionary in numerous ways, with each of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King all winning countless awards - including a bunch of Oscars.

Of course, key to these movies are the diminutive hobbits seen across the trilogy, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that the size difference between these characters and the more 'regular' sized figures of LOTR was achieved through some swanky CG-assisted green screen shenanigans.

In reality, these visuals were done practically and through some super-smart camera techniques from Jackson and his crew.

Placing actors further apart than they usually would be for a certain scene, Jackson utilised a forced perspective to have, say, Elijah Wood and Sir Ian McKellen appear next to each other and appear to be the relevant, respective heights for Frodo and Gandalf. By utilising such a technique, the filmmaker literally forced his audience to view the action from a perspective that made them see what he wanted them to see.

To make this feat even more impressive, the New Zealander managed to magically orchestrate such shots with moving cameras operated by motion control rigs. Basically, that means that the cameras would swirl and sway the actors and props around in a way that synched up the shots to deliver a size-appropriate final product.