10. Lord Of The Rings Trilogy
Wielding state of the art special effects as well as benefiting from New Zealand's natural scenery, Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy is one of the most spectacular movies ever made. Few films have ever matched the sense of size and scale evoked by the Lord of the Rings and to be honest, not that many are even close. Peter Jackson brilliantly used three different visual tools to his advantage: the first being Bigatures, the second being groundbreaking special effects, and the third the natural landscape of New Zealand. Bigatures, basically gigantic models, were seamlessly inserted into natural scenery with special effects, enabling locations such as Minas Tirith, Orthanc, and Helm's Deep to look completely natural. In order to show some of the largest onscreen battle in movie history, the filmmakers turned to a computer system named MASSIVE, which enabled each individual CGI character to act independently. Finally, the breathtaking natural landscape of New Zealand was used magnificently as the setting for middle-earth as each location feels both otherworldly and yet familiar at the same time. In addition to the other tools, The Lord of the Rings offers probably the most famous example of forced perspective, letting actors of similar heights portray character of different sizes onscreen at the same time.