Behind the Effects: Lord of the Rings Forced Perspective

Welcome to Behind the Effects everyone!  Today we’ll be looking at hobbits, wizards and kings that may or may not be returning.  That’s right! We’re heading to Middle Earth and Peter Jackson’s almost legendary Lord of the Rings films.

More specifically we’ll be looking at some of the effects used to make sure that the hobbit characters remained hobbit sized in comparison to their surroundings, which was no easy task.  Actually there were a lot of seemingly innocuous sequences in the films, especially the first of the trilogy that, in reality, required complex rigs to get right.

Take the scene represented in the above picture for instance.  In that scene the actor on the left appears tiny in comparison to the bulking wizard by his side, when the two are actually average humans who are around the same height.  How is this possible?  Did Rick Moranis actually build a shrink ray?  It will all be revealed as we look further behind the effects.  Watch the full clip below and we’ll get started. 

That cart might be a little mind bending when you think about it, but that’s because the special effect behind it is a little mind bending in and of it self.  The technique used is called forced perspective, and it creates the illusion of one person or object being smaller than the other in a camera’s eye through distance.  Here’s a few cool examples I found on Brainjet.com. 

But it was no easy task to pull this off in the wizards wagon in Lord of the Rings.  They had to construct two wagons, a normal wagon for the normal shots and a special wagon for the forced perspective shots.  The special wagon was setup with Frodo the hobbit’s seat being further back then Gandalf the wizard's, but when it was shot at from a certain angle they would appear to be just like the normal wagon.  It was important for Frodo to appear to be the same distance away from the camera as Gandalf but in reality be much further away. It might be a little difficult to tell from these set photos, but pay attention and you’ll definitely notice the difference between the actors positions as they film. 

They had to constantly account for the varying heights of the characters throughout the films.  Often they had two make multiples upon multiples of set items and even whole sets so that they could appear to be bigger than or smaller than whoever was in any one shot.  It was a great strain on the team to try and keep up with it all, especially considering the moving camera scenes.

Yup. . . they moved their cameras when doing forced perspective shots.  Why is that such a big deal you ask?  Well try it yourself at home and you’ll realize that the second you move your camera more than just the tiniest bit that it immediately becomes apparent that the characters are not actually smaller than one another.   That’s why most forced perspective is done in still photography and not film;  it’s a pain in the buttocks not be able to move your camera when shooting a motion picture. 

So how was it done?  The answer is pretty complicated, but here’s the Sparknotes version:  The camera was moved on a dolly, and that dolly was synced to a second camera-less dolly that held one of the two characters.  In the below picture you can see a set prepared for forced perspective, but what’s hard to make out is that Gandalf’s half of the table is actually on wheels.

Basically what happened was that they ran where everything would have to be in order to keep the illusion in order while the camera on a computer.  Then it was programmed into a little dolly car or series of dolly cars which moved sets and characters accordingly.  So when Gandalf is being served tea in the below picture he’s actually on the move;  and having to pretend that he’s sitting normally and not on some kind of hellish precision earthquake machine.  It's a lot of work to seal up every last crack in the illusion.

This next picture shows the whole Gandalf-tea rig while it was testing.  Notice the tracks that Gandalf's part of the table is on?

Pretty crazy huh?  I’d definitely recommend going back and watching these movies again with this new special effects knowledge in mind.  It’ll probably give you a whole new appreciation for the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the special effects implemented. 

Thanks for Reading!  Hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving vacation, and i also hope you check back here later for more awesome movie stuff here on Atchley-O-Saurus Movies!