10 Movies That Pushed The Boundaries Of Visual Effects
2. The Lord Of The Rings (2001-2003)
Bringing Tolkien's Middle Earth to life had been attempted previously in animated form, but Peter Jackson created an immersive world that was partly real, and partly computer-generated. Jackson's own Weta Digital provided the digital visual effects, which also incorporated miniatures created by sister company Weta Workshop. The sheer range of effects used to create The Lord of the Rings was mind-blowing, with a number of effects required simultaneously. The most groundbreaking effects were found in The Two Towers, and the creation of Gollum. For the first time in history, a character had been created with a combination of both real, physical acting and CGI. Andy Serkis provided full motion capture including facial expressions and body movements but CGI was then used to create the Gollum we saw on screen. This process would be repeated when Jackson remade King Kong. Another new technology implemented in The Lord of the Rings was MASSIVE (Multiple Agent Simulation System in Virtual Environment) software, created specifically to solve the problem earlier movies had of how to control huge numbers of individuals in a realistic, independent manner. The battle scenes at Helm's Deep and Pelennor Fields are examples of this system in action. Another challenge for Weta Digital was the scaling of characters: Elves, Wizards, Dwarves and Men were each of differing heights. To address this, forced perspective and scaled actors were used heavily. Actors playing dwarves (such as Jonathan Rhys-Davies) were all taller than those playing Hobbits. These two character types were always filmed together, so no scaling was needed. When the Fellowship appeared together, two shots were used - one with Hobbits and Dwarves, one with Men, Elves and Wizards - then composited at two different sizes to achieve the correct scaling. Some of the most stunning effects were created by Weta Workshop: 72 large miniatures (called bigatures by the crew due to their size) were created, including Minas Tirith, Rivendell, Orthanc and Barad-dûr. Motion capture photography was used in similar ways to film Star Wars) and these miniatures were combined with CGI and matte paintings seamlessly to create Middle Earth.
