RETURN TO MIDDLE-EARTH: DESIGN, PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE PHYSICAL WORLD OF THE FILM
Stone Street Studios, Peter Jackson’s production facilities in Miramar, New Zealand, has nearly tripled in size and capabilities since the days when he and his team made “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy in the converted paint factory. Building the world of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” would take up the whole of the eight-acre site, encompassing six stages, including the two state-of-the-art stages built specifically for the new Trilogy.
Making three films back-to-back once again required the filmmakers to deploy a truly epic logistical operation that would leverage the talents of hundreds of people, involve the construction of nearly 100 sets, the fabrication of thousands of pieces of clothing, prosthetics, wigs, props, and weapons, and take the company from the soundstages in Miramar off to spectacular landscapes across both islands of New Zealand.
Bringing Middle-earth to life for “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” are Jackson’s longtime collaborators, led by director of photography Andrew Lesnie, production designer Dan Hennah, composer Howard Shore, make-up and hair designer Peter Swords King, Weta Workshop’s Richard Taylor and Weta Digital’s Joe Letteri, all of whom won Oscars® for their work on “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy, as well as costume designers Ann Maskrey and Bob Buck. “Ten years after ‘The Lord of the Rings’ production, we found ourselves back on set with many of the same creative talent and crew,” Jackson comments. “So there was a great family atmosphere from the first day.”
He also got a new crew member in the form of an old friend—Andy Serkis, who, in addition to playing Gollum, served as Jackson’s second unit director throughout the shoot. “Peter has known that I’ve wanted to direct ever since our experience together on ‘The Lord of the Rings,'” Serkis says. “He said, ‘Look, this will be a chance for you to expand into filmmaking on a big scale.’ And it proved to be the most extraordinary, challenging, and immensely life-changing experience.”
Jackson and his team hoped to carry over a sense of visual harmony from the previous film trilogy, with one major difference. “A decade later, a lot of the imagery of Middle-earth has become quite iconic,” he says. “But for ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,’ it was important that it feel like a more idyllic time. The darkness that will descend on this world is brewing but hasn’t yet expanded, so we wanted to reflect that visually by making it feel a bit more gentle, and have a bit more of a storybook quality in the design and photography.”
The foundation for this world emerged from the production’s art department. Working with a team of roughly 350 people, Dan Hennah was charged with designing a layered, multi-faceted and palpably real Middle-earth in the physical sets, going hand-in-hand with characters and environments to be created by Weta Digital.
This ever-evolving process began within thousands of drawings painstakingly and beautifully rendered by renowned Tolkien illustrators John Howe and Alan Lee, who also created the seminal imaginings for “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy. Their imagery grew organically out of their discussions with Jackson and Hennah, the screenplay, and their own love for the book.
“Working on a film requires so much more detail than what you might glean from reading the script or even the book,” Lee explains. “Tolkien used language as a way of creating the history and depth of the cultures of Middle-earth. He evokes a feeling, a sense of where you are, and an atmosphere without actually pointing out where the sun would be or where the moon would rise.”
Their conceptual art also at times expressed the emotional content of the material. Howe adds, “Peter mostly wants the viewer to get the same imagery from his film as they would get from their own imaginations when reading the text. So he’ll describe a place with practically no details, but he’s giving us the impression the characters have. You don’t necessarily know what it looks like, but you get how it should make you feel.”
With the concept art as a guiding force, Hennah then got down to the work of designing sets that would meet Jackson’s mandate for both realism and exquisite detail. “To build the set, I looked at what part of it the characters would interact with to gauge how much we needed to construct,” Hennah states.
Model builders created scale models of each set, which allowed Jackson to plot his action and iron out any potential issues. Hennah and supervising art director Simon Bright then oversaw construction, which was truly a 24-hour-per-day operation throughout production, with crews working alternating shifts to build detailed and fully dressed sets with a rapid turnover.
“We’ve developed quite a few techniques that we didn’t have ten years ago,” Hennah notes. “For example, all the natural things were molded from living or real elements. We’d go out into the mountains and put a big swatch of silicon onto a rock to get a mold of it. We had five or six pieces of rock face, each five or six meters tall, that fit together in all sorts of combinations. And we had trees on wheels too. It was almost like working with a theatre set.”
That style of set creation worked particularly well for sets like Trollshaw Forest, Goblin Town, and Gollum’s cave. The art department was able to change or extend a set overnight, thus allowing Jackson complete freedom and flexibility to shoot however he chose.
Between Elves, Hobbits, Dwarves, Wizards and the Goblins, each realm was distinctive and required the designers to establish identities not just through actors and costumes, but also through props and environment. “We had lots of different histories to honor, especially in terms of their use of materials, so we did a lot of research and laid down certain rules based on that,” Hennah explains.
Some of the sets will be familiar to fans of “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy. The small-scale set for Bilbo’s home at Bag End was pulled out of storage, restored and substantially enhanced for “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” Jackson wanted it to feel very much as the same place that was occupied by the older Bilbo and Frodo in the earlier films, which director of photography Andrew Lesnie describes as, “The most ideal place to live in the world—warm, inviting, simple, but breathtaking.”
Lesnie relished the opportunity to return to Middle-earth with Jackson, this time shooting in 3D on hand-manufactured, state-of-the-art Red Epic digital cameras. Compact and mobile, the cameras easily handled dolly, crane and handheld shooting while recording far more information than film cameras—an unprecedented 48 frames per second (fps). Lesnie notes, “It’s a completely different technical experience, showcasing amazing developments that have taken place in the digital realm in the last ten years.”
One of the first scenes to be shot that would test the techniques Jackson planned to leverage on “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” was the dinner at Bag End, when Bilbo is joined by 13 rowdy Dwarves and Gandalf, who towers over the group.
Whereas Jackson’s previous 2D visit to Middle-earth allowed them to use “forced perspective” to fool the eye into believing Gandalf to be much taller than his Hobbit and Dwarf friends, shooting in 3D rendered previous techniques mostly obsolete. As with the earlier productions, “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” makes copious use of scale doubles of each character, ranging in size from under four-feet-tall to over seven-feet-tall. But, for the Bag End feast, and many other scenes that required face-to-face interaction, Jackson took the opportunity to pioneer a cutting-edge camera technology called Slave Motion Control, or Slave MoCon.
This technique required the art department to build two sets to accommodate the action—one sized for the main actors in a scene and the other created on green screen for the taller or shorter characters appearing in the same scene. The actors would then perform the scene simultaneously on the two sets, with visual cues for eyelines and earpieces for dialog, while the cameras recording each set moved in perfect sync. This process allowed Peter Jackson to simultaneously direct both sets, which would then be merged together digitally into one scene.
“The master rig on the main set operated on a normal camera crane,” explains Slave MoCon supervisor Alex Funke. “However, it had every single movement encoded—boom, track, pan, tilt, and so on—so that everything it did was converted to numerical data, scaled to the correct percentage, and sent down a cable to the motion-controlled camera crane, or slave rig, which was filming to scale on the green set. That rig then exactly copied the master rig’s movements at a specifically scaled distance and speed.”
The resulting shots reveal Dwarves running in all directions carrying food from the pantry to the dining room, with a very tall, correctly scaled, Gandalf in their midst.
Jackson also wanted the freedom to follow the characters from room to room, so he expanded the set for Bag End, adding a dining room, bedroom and an extensive pantry, all of which were meticulously detailed in both small and large scales. “The way that Peter likes to move the camera meant that there is really no such thing as background, especially since we were filming in high definition,” comments set decorator Ra Vincent. “So everything in Bag End had to look like it belonged there, including some replicas of props people may remember from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ films.”
Middle-earth is a pre-industrial society, so everything had to appear handmade and unique, which was made possible by the company’s army of artisans, including a potter, a blacksmith, a glass blower, furniture makers, a food stylist, a saddler, a soft furnishing workroom, a boat builder, basket makers, and a fully manned foundry for aluminum and bronze slip-casting.
For the pastoral exteriors of Hobbiton, Jackson and company returned to the Alexander Farm in the Matamata region on New Zealand’s North Island. A decade ago, a section of the working sheep and cow farm had been transformed into a real life Hobbiton for “The Lord of the Rings,” and, to this day, offers guided tours of the set. The greens department moved in early to set up a plant- and tree-growing area to keep the Hobbit gardens replenished, and existing Hobbit Holes were refurbished.
A new set created for “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” is Rhosgobel, the forest home of the Wizard Radagast. Among its many eccentricities, a tree grows right through his house, which leans precipitously upon crooked floors and walls, creating many practical challenges for the builders.
Another new set is Gollum’s cave—an unforgettable setting to readers of the book—which Lesnie lit with moody and shadowy tones. “It is the calm in the middle of a storm,” he describes. “Its stillness only enhances the strange, eerie quality that exists in this cavern. It reeks of loneliness and the desperation of lost souls.”
In a rock cavern far below the Goblin tunnels, the creature paddles across a murky lake in a small boat, or coracle, constructed of the bones and skins of Goblins and Orcs. “There are lots of crevices, so he’s been living on what fish he can catch and, well, mostly Goblins that fall down through these crevices…very grisly stuff,” Hennah grins.
The Goblins themselves live below ground in an environment of scavenged scraps and decay. “In our color palette, we go from granite colors to mustard tones,” Hennah describes. “And the rot shows itself in these little holes in the rock. The deeper you go, the more obvious it becomes that the rock has been eaten away by all the acids the Goblins give off. And on its surfaces, Goblins have built spindly walkways and platforms.”
For the art department, dressing Goblin Town became quite an imaginative enterprise. “Goblins are a bit make-do and mend,” explains prop master Nick Weir. “They put things together for their own devious, and probably disgusting, purposes. It was great fun.”
The aesthetic opposite of Goblin Town, the Elven outpost of Rivendell is ethereal, mysterious and intimately connected to its forest and river surroundings. To return to Rivendell, Hennah restored and extended the original physical set from “The Lord of the Rings” production, which was even more substantially enhanced through visual effects.
For the chamber of Lord Elrond, Alan Lee conceptualized revealing more of Rivendell by adding the observatory where Elrond scrutinizes Thorin’s map, as well as an exquisite courtyard and the White Council Chamber. Lee says, “The White Council Chamber is a magical place, perched on a rock, with very dramatic views all around, courtesy of Weta Digital.”
Hennah sought to maintain consistency with the silver and blue color palette already established for Rivendell, with one key difference. “In the last films, the Elves were a dying culture and it showed in their environment,” he explains. “But, for this film, we’re looking at an earlier incarnation of Elven culture, so we intensified the blues and infused the environment with a lot more life.”
For Rivendell and all the sets on the film, the innovative camera systems Jackson and Lesnie were utilizing required an extra layer of design. These cameras capture exponentially more information in each shot but “eat up color,” Hennah explains. “So we had to allow for that in our color palettes, especially since we’re creating a brighter and, on the whole, happier rendition of Middle-earth. In the grading, we could take color out, but it’s harder to add it in, so the same thinking had to be applied to all the sets as well as costumes and make-up.”
The decade between the films and all the concomitant technological upgrades notwithstanding, Lesnie sought to honor the look of “The Lord of the Rings” films while fully embracing the possibilities inherent in this new technology. “Because the 48 fps picture is so clear and sharp, I lit more gently to create a more ‘filmic’ quality. And in the post-production grading process, we took great pains to give the film some softness and body.”
3Ality provided the mirror rigs necessary for 3D filming, but both these and the cameras themselves were still works in progress at the start of the shoot. The entire camera system needed to be synced to a finite degree as it collected and processed data in preparation for post-production. The team also designed new peripherals to enable wireless communication between multiple rigs and the master system.
As Lesnie explains, “We wanted to film 3D on a 2D schedule, and day-to-day use educates you in ways that are irreplaceable, but I think we lived in world of perpetual upgrades. Our head of technology, Dion Hartley, and camera supervisor, Gareth Daley, tailored additional hardware and our infrastructure to investigate every new challenge.”
Lighting set-ups were developed to allow Jackson complete flexibility in matching and replicating natural light between soundstages and practical locations. While Kino lights can’t be dimmed, Lesnie’s team came up with a program that allowed individual tubes to be turned off in a random pattern which created a dimming affect or allowed for changes in color temperature during a shot. This technique was particularly useful for sequences that started at dusk and rolled into twilight, especially in Rivendell.
“This mystical kingdom almost transcends reality,” Lesnie muses. “I kept this magic by portraying the realm always in dawn or dusk light. At night, Rivendell still has a magical glow.”
COSTUMES, HAIR AND PROSTHETICS: CREATING CULTURES AND CHARACTERS
A vital collaborator in the creation of the physical world of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” is Weta Workshop, New Zealand’s premier physical effects house, under the direction of its creative director and co-founder Richard Taylor.
With “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” that job began with creating distinct physicalities and accoutrements for the Dwarves. “Quite apart from the fact that, obviously, the Dwarves are played by different actors who bring their own personalities,” Jackson says, “Weta Workshop and all of our costume and make-up designers focused on creating thirteen distinctive, memorable silhouettes for the Dwarves that the audience can identify, even from a distance.”
For Weta Workshop, each new day on set meant an entirely new facial prosthetic for the Dwarves, though, fortunately, hand and arm pieces lasted longer. “With the exception of Bombur, who wore a full-face prosthetic, most of the others wore a T-piece, which just covered the forehead and nose and blended in with the surrounding skin,” Taylor explains.
The actors wore foam cowls that dramatically built out the backs of their heads, with ears moved outward to add width. This was all concealed under handmade wigs, which also added bulk. “For each Dwarf, we made seven wigs—two for the hero, two for the scale doubles, one for the riding double, one for the stunt double, and one for the stunt double masks—that is 91 wigs total for the Dwarves,” hair and makeup designer Peter Swords King notes. “Most of them were yak hair, but Thorin had a human hair wig to suggest his royal status and Fili and Kili’s were a combination.”
Thanks to innovation in makeup effects and the ability to pre-paint the prosthetics, the application process was reduced to about one-and-a-half hours. “Because the prosthetic T-pieces covered the actor’s eyebrows, we also hand-punched eyebrows into each T-piece,” explains prosthetics supervisor Tami Lane. “Similarly, we hand-punched hair into the Dwarves’ big hands and arms, because everything has to look totally realistic on camera.”
Each piece had flocking mixed in, which gives the illusion of blood under the skin, as well as freckles, wrinkles, blemishes, veins and scars to add realism.
Proportion was a major factor. The actors, being standard human height, had a head-to-body ratio of roughly 8:1, but Dwarf proportions are 5:1. Making each actor look shorter and stockier also involved some innovations in wardrobe in the form of articulated foam fat suits, which re-proportioned the Dwarves’ bodies. Because they were hot and weighty to wear in combination with costumes, a cooling vest like those used by racing drivers was worn underneath and, when needed, the actors were able to plug themselves into a hand-held device that pumped cold water through the vest to cool them down.
The costume design team, led by Ann Maskrey, used color and texture to suggest the Dwarves’ status. “For those of high status—Thorin, Fili and Kili, as well as Balin and Dwalin—there is a richness in the fabrics we used, like velvets, brocades and padded leathers,” Maskrey describes. “Their colors are more regal too: midnight blue, claret, teal green. We went down the scale for the more working-class Dwarves, where you have browns and grayish shades and less sophisticated fabrics, such as hessian. The filmmakers wanted Ori to be softer and more innocent, so he’s in pale lavender hand knits—a waistcoat, a sort of scarf-hoodie and gloves.”
And then there are the painstakingly detailed and extremely large leather boots, each of which was fitted with a lightweight inner ankle boot to support the actors’ feet. Maskrey notes, “Some of the cast really felt they discovered what it was like to be a Dwarf the moment they put those boots on and walked in them.”
Designing costumes for Bilbo represented more familiar territory—brightly clad in timeless clothes that suggest a bygone rural idyll. Maskrey says, “It’s brighter and cheerier than last time, with more color and print and maybe a slightly more sophisticated cut.”
As reflects his station in life, Bilbo is a well-dressed Hobbit—corduroy jackets, waistcoats and mid-length trousers. With a wardrobe inspired by the color palette and patterns of 19th century designer William Morris, Bilbo’s wardrobe was largely made up of gold, sandy brown, burgundy and green, and very much in agreement with Ian Holm’s previous incarnation of Bilbo.
The final touch of Freeman’s transformation into the Hobbit was a pair of Hobbit feet. For this, Weta Workshop created innovative reusable, slip-on, above-the-knee silicone Hobbit feet socks built around sports shoes with individual toes. They then added urethane toe extensions to allow him to wiggle the prosthetic “Hobbit toes.”
The ageless figures of Gandalf, Saruman, Elrond and Galadriel remain much as we have seen them before. Gandalf’s battered hat and grey robes have the addition of a silver scarf. And Elrond and Galadriel, complete with their gelatin ears, are resplendent in their finely woven costumes.
Recreating the White Lady of Lothlorien was a joy for the costume department. Maskrey notes, “There was a particular iridescent fabric that just draped so wonderfully on Cate. We used that to make her a dress with a long train for The White Council scene. Peter even asked the art department to build a set of steps just to showcase it. She initially looks like a statue in the scene and then, suddenly, she comes to life and turns. It all looked beautiful.”
Radagast the Brown is the antithesis of sartorial elegance. His robes must once have been beautiful, but now the rich brown chenille coat is frayed and tattered, his beautifully hand-embroidered waistcoat is distressed, and he wears odd shoes and a battered hat. “Peter believed that Radagast should be asymmetrical and also wanted his hat to in no way resemble Gandalf’s,” Maskrey explains. “Instead, it should have a suggestion of ears. It was and remains very much one of my favorite costumes to design.”
Peter Swords King adds, “He has bird droppings all down his face and birds’ nest in his hair—the birds just pop in and out under his hat! He hasn’t combed his hair for years either. It’s so matted that on top of his head it’s in the shape of his hat. He has a big prosthetic nose and snaggle teeth too and you just know he smells very bad, but he has this wonderful bumbling, endearing quality that I think people will just fall in love with.”
BEYOND IMAGINATION: WETA DIGITAL AT WORK
Creating the worlds and civilizations of Middle-earth would not have been possible without the imagination, artistry and innovation of Joe Letteri and 850-strong team at Weta Digital.
The plethora of digital creatures that would populate the film—from Trolls to Stone Giants, and from Goblins to Gollum—were all brought to life by Weta Digital. Peter Jackson would review the creatures as they developed, often suggesting further enhancements once he had seen the creatures coming to life.
“People have to relate to these characters and believe in what they are seeing, no matter how fantastical it is,” Letteri relates. “It’s often the tiny details, as well as the more obvious big things, that give the game away, so we paid meticulous attention to every detail.”
Skin, for example, had to look and behave like the genuine article. “It was important to get the texture exactly right and register the way that light reacts when shining on or through skin,” he says. “Too perfect is not natural. Natural appearance, texture and movement of hair is key.”
But the most important feature of any character, as Gollum’s otherworldly presence proves, is eyes. “They can dictate whether or not the audience can empathize with a creature,” Letteri affirms.
Movement also had to look natural. “It was all about building a physical personality,” the senior visual effects supervisor says. “Often these are things you wouldn’t consciously notice, but when they are missing you know something isn’t quite right.”
Azog, the powerful and cruel Pale Orc played by Manu Bennett, was an entirely digital character. One of the most terrifying of his kind, Azog began life on the Motion Capture (MoCap) stage, as did the three Trolls—William, Bert and Tom—with actors Peter Hambleton, Mark Hadlow, and William Kircher, respectively, doing double duty on the MoCap stage in addition to their Dwarf roles.
MoCap also played a role in the creation of the grotesque Great Goblin, played by Barry Humphries, and all of the Goblin hordes. By contrast, two of the Orcs, Yazneg (Jeff Rawls) and Fimbul (Stephen Ure), were acted in painted silicon and foam latex prosthetics designed and made by Weta Workshop, and later enhanced by Weta Digital.
The events that unfold in Goblin Town proved to be one of Letteri and his team’s most complex visual effects challenge. “You have all the Goblins moving around, but they are all individual characters,” Letteri details. “You also have a set with many levels, so there is activity and movement everywhere. One of the most interesting things is that the perspective in the caves is always changing because there is no ‘ground,’ so it creates some very dynamic shots. In scenes like this, the line between live action and visual effects is very fine.”
One of the earliest, most sophisticated digital characters ever created is Gollum, the one-time Hobbit first and unforgettably brought to life in “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy by Andy Serkis. The character was a collaboration between Serkis and Weta Digital through the then-breakthrough technology of motion capture performance.
Ten years ago, the system required Serkis to act his scenes on a separate stage, and his digital performance was then merged with the live action actors in post-production. On “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” Weta Digital’s MoCap team had the luxury of recording Serkis live on set, performing opposite Martin Freeman.
The enhancements Weta Digital has made to its Motion Capture pipeline allowed Serkis and Freeman to fully interact together live as they performed the lengthy “Game of Riddles” scene from beginning to end. This process gave Peter Jackson the ability to direct and frame the camera for two live actors even though a digital character would later replace one of them.
As with all Motion Capture performances, the animators took the performance data they recorded on set and translated it for use on the digital character, in this case Gollum. This also gave them the ability to animate Gollum’s spiderlike movements and ability to climb vertical surfaces that humans cannot perform.
Digital artists also brought to life supersized animals, including large and vicious packs of wolf-like Wargs, and the larger-than-life Rabbits pulling Radagast’s sleigh, among others.
To facilitate the film’s array of visual effects, a team led by visual effects supervisor Eric Saindon was on set full time collecting data for creating set extensions and the exquisite vistas of Middle-earth. This included constant monitoring and tracking, particularly of the marker information—little orange dots placed on the physical sets—that allowed accurate measurement for digital additions, including the big set extensions.
Saindon worked closely with director of photography Andrew Lesnie to ensure absolute visual cohesion between the live action and digital shots. Every element had to feel like it belonged within the same world that was built by the art department. “We basically gathered the geometric information for every scene, all the detail, color and photography, so we could accurately re-create the set and work on it, whether we were adding a digital detail, a building or a backdrop to an environment,” Saindon notes.
They also used photography to create the larger environment of Middle-earth. On location, Jackson loved the look of the skies above Hartfield, so dome shots—360° shots of the sky—were taken for use throughout the film. Dramatic mountains and landscapes were also photographed for potential extended backdrops to the action.
Between Jackson’s collaboration with the visual effects crew collecting data and images on the set, and the artists using that data to help bring images to the screen, anything was possible.
FROM WARHAMMERS TO STING: MIDDLE-EARTH WEAPONRY
The aim with the creation of every tool and weapon in “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” was to make pieces that would help define the essence of the character who bears them. Weta Workshop was responsible for the design, development and production of a huge number and variety of weapons for the film. Approximately 800 weapons were made for the Dwarves, including actors and their various doubles.
Weta Workshop engaged in significant research to make the weaponry as authentic as possible, but because the film takes place in Middle-earth’s alternate history, they could be uniquely stylized. Taylor explains, “If the axes we made for the Dwarves had been made of iron or steel, they could never have been wielded by a human. But Dwarf strength means that they could conceivably carry and use these massive hunks of weaponry.”
The actors were invited to give their input so that their own physical abilities, as well as the nature of their Dwarf characters, could be embodied in the design. Each Dwarf has a distinctive weapon or two within his impressive personal arsenal. “The Dwarves’ weaponry is stoic—hard lines and very architectural—and, obviously, function plays a huge part in their design,” Taylor says. “So we also created lighter aluminum and urethane versions to help with weight issues.”
Graham McTavish, who plays the muscled warrior Dwalin, proved to have incredible ambidexterity in his arms and hands, which allowed for the creation of two enormous axes, which he nicknamed ‘Grasper’ and ‘Keeper,’ and wore strapped to his back, to be drawn over his shoulders. He also carried a very mean warhammer.
The weapons of young Dwarves Fili and Kili reflect their very specifically honed skills with throwing knives for Fili and a bow and arrows for Kili. Some experimentation took place with Dean O’Gorman, who played Fili. And Fili’s throwing knives evolved until they eventually ended up attached to his boots at the ankle.
There were certain practical challenges that had to be ironed out during preparation. The large, hairy hands that gave the Dwarves the proper dimensions on camera ended up creating a problem when it came to holding a weapon. But the stunt team and prosthetics team came up with a solution: adapting the prosthetic hands with fabric webbed palms to allow some feeling and grip.
Another challenge came from the prospect of using weapons in 3D. Because some of the usual stunt tricks wouldn’t work; green weapons and pads were developed, to be replaced later by Weta Digital.
The Dwarves’ arsenal also includes a beautifully crafted mace for Balin, a boar spear for Bifur, Bofur’s cross between an axe and a mattock, Oin’s fighting stick, Dori’s bolos, Ori’s slingshot, Nori’s fleshing knives, and Gloin’s two axes, which will be familiar because they will be passed on to his son Gimli, as seen in “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy.
Other weapons familiar from the earlier films are those salvaged from the Trolls’ cave by Bilbo, Gandalf, and the Company of Dwarves. Master swordsmith Peter Lyons recreated the legendary Elven swords Glamdring, or Foehammer, which Gandalf acquires, and Sting, the first sword Bilbo has ever carried. Lyons and Weta Workshop took pride in the creation of Orcrist, or Goblin Cleaver, a new sword claimed from the Trolls’ cave by Thorin. An elegant weapon, Orcrist features a dragon’s tooth handle anchoring a gnarly blade.
Another of Thorin Oakenshield’s weapons is perhaps less showy, though no less legendary—the bulky oak shield from which he takes his name. Taylor credits senior model maker Paul Van Ommen with developing ideas over a period of seven weeks that ultimately yielded the piece seen in the film. “It’s easy when you read it in the book, but when you actually try and build it, what does the Oakenshield actually look like?” Taylor muses. “It was a chunk of wood broken off a tree to protect Thorin from a vicious enemy blow. It’s the mythology of his character. And because it saved his life, he has carried it at his side for years, adapting it, and tending it to stop the wood from cracking. So it needed to look fashioned but still like a piece of wood.”
Far more graceful are the weapons and body armor of the Elves, as worn by Elrond and his soldiers. As with all things Elven, they harken back to art nouveau forms connected to nature, complete with elegant curves and intricate engraving. In stark contrast, the Orcs in the film are armed with stabbing and slashing weapons made of carved and sharpened bone—homemade, unsophisticated, and deadly.
DWARF BOOT CAMP: FIGHTING AND STUNTS
Months prior to cameras rolling, Martin Freeman, the Dwarf cast, and the full complement of stunt and scale doubles were put through their paces in weapons training, movement training, and horseback riding, in what they came to call “Dwarf Boot Camp.” The fitness requirement also took into account what the cast would be wearing, including heavy prosthetics, fat suits, bulky costumes and weaponry.
Given that all the participants had widely varying levels of strength and experience, stunt coordinator Glenn Boswell and his team worked out general routines, along with character-specific actions. Swordmaster Steven McMichael also trained them in how to use their individual weapons to allow the stunt team to choreograph the action.
The work of movement coach Terry Notary also became vital for the actors in finding their characters. The different species of Middle-earth move and fight in specific ways. Notary explains, “They each have their own little innuendos and quirks that had to be carried consistently through everything they did. I’d go from the script and visuals, as well as talking to the filmmakers, to work out the characters’ ‘footprints,’ their rhythms and personalities.”
Following Jackson’s lead, Boswell, Notary and the cast developed fighting styles for each character. Some of the Company are already old soldiers at the start of the quest, but, what of the peace-loving Bilbo? “Martin, like Bilbo, was not used to weapons and fighting, so we used that learning progression, particularly in the beginning where he didn’t really need sword wielding skills,” Boswell recalls. “But he caught on pretty quickly and then the trick was always to remember how good he should be at any given time in the script.”
As a Hobbit, Bilbo’s large feet help define his gait. As Notary explains, “Hobbits are knee-driven. They have strong limbs, are sure-footed and they move with purpose.”
Dwarves march in a four-count, lead with their gut, and are truly earthbound. “They are like little Sherman tanks that cut through soft earth,” Notary describes. “Despite their stature, they don’t think of themselves as short at all.”
The willowy, regal Elves are at the opposite end of the spectrum. “Thought is action,” Notary explains. “No ponderous shifting of gears involved. The Elves move in extreme grace and contained emotion. They are deeply spiritual and at one with nature, so, unlike the Dwarves, they leave no trace of where they have been behind them.”
Goblins, he adds, “are little balls of nervous energy. Living in a pack, they are head-driven and looking for danger all the time; they scurry, jerk and twitch, living in a constant state of fear, tension and competition. Whereas their slightly more developed cousins, the Orcs, are bullies, they lead with the upper chest and are about ego, pride, muscle and competition.”
Over the course of Dwarf Boot Camp, the group not only gained the physical skills they’d need, they also formed a bond. Boswell says, “We were very lucky—there was a great rapport among the actors, doubles and stunt team. They all put their heart and soul into it.”
And, over the course of the film, their skills were put to the test when their characters are chased by Orcs and Wargs, swarmed by masses of Goblins, pummeled and thrown about by Stone Giants, and nearly roasted by three giant Trolls, among other hazards.
In all stunts, safety was the primary concern and demanded heavy preparation, particularly at Trollshaw, where Bilbo and the Dwarves are ambushed by the three not overly intelligent Trolls. Sneezing Trolls and flying Dwarves meant timing and control was key, even though the actual Trolls would be added to the scene later by Weta Digital, based on MoCon performances. When hit by the ‘sneeze wave,’ the stunt men were pulled backwards by wires at almost 20 mph, flying a precise distance to land safely on special impact mats.
This complex sequence also saw actors and stunt men hoisted onto the Trolls’ roasting spit, which required individually made harnesses and metal plates that allowed the stunt team to get everyone on or off in just 5 to 6 minutes. Such efficiency was key considering how disconcerting it was for all involved to be tied upside down to a spit.
In the film, Radagast’s sleigh is dragged across a bumpy woodland floor by large CGI rabbits. An elegant creation the art department crafted from tree branches, the sleigh was ridden by stunt man Tim Wong, in place of actor Sylvester McCoy, for the high-octane chase. Under Serkis’s direction, the second unit shoot saw the sleigh being pulled by a wire attached to a special effects winch, reaching speeds of 25 mph. Fortunately for McCoy, when he rode it, the stunt team became his “rabbits,” pulling at a slightly more moderate pace.
TO THE EAST: LOCATIONS
Location shooting took place across eight-and-a-half weeks on sites all around the North and South Islands of New Zealand, the cinematic Middle-earth already known to so many people worldwide. Supervising location manager Jared Connon and his team had been prepping the mammoth location shoot for many months. He worked closely with the art department to ensure consistency between what was being scouted and what would be created on a soundstage, such as Trollshaw, which became a composite of the Mangaotaki Rocks, near Piopio, and a stage set.
For each location, Connon and his team sought out and secured permissions from everyone from landowners, local councils and the Department of Conservation to the local Maori representatives, the Iwi, and, on the South Island, the Crown. “Everything had to be agreed beforehand so that we caused the least disruption and local people knew exactly what to expect,” he says.
For the locations team, access was key. Connon notes, “We sometimes had to put in roads to carry the trucks and equipment, so locations could always be scouted. But we always took great care to preserve and protect environments, too.”
Such attention meant that the production was privileged to be able to shoot on in the Fiordland National Park and at Mount Owen in Kahurangi National Park.
Recycling and safe disposal was a major activity for the production. It set up its own electrical and plumbing systems, as well as an IT connection, no matter where filming was based, which meant carefully positioned satellite dishes.
The remoteness of many film sites, plus shot requirements, also demanded a lot of helicopters to ferry cast and crew up to a mountaintop or inaccessible land, as in the case of the landscape of Braemar Station in the McKenzie Basin. “The crew was accustomed to location shoot logistics, including helicopter-only access, but New Zealand’s capricious climate makes for more adventures than normal,” Andrew Lesnie comments. “A portable stereoscopic station was designed, which gave us full 3D mobile units for helicopter-access sets or walk-in areas. Taking two 3D production rigs, two SteadiCam rigs with lightweight 3D rigs, sometimes 3D handheld, double the lenses, cameras, stereo processing, and then running wireless in forests and up cliffs meant a big package. Add to that airlifting technocranes into isolated areas if needed as well.”
To reach the remote location for the scene in which the Dwarves are pursued by Wargs, helicopters flew from a base that was over an hour’s flight from location, at Klifden Station in the Ida Valley. Because most of the aerial shooting was done by the second unit, the aerial team dubbed itself “Andy’s flying Serkis” after second unit director Andy Serkis.
Much of the remote shooting of New Zealand’s wild and varied landscapes was used to evoke the breathtaking scope of Jackson’s vision for Middle-earth. Such locations included Kaihoka Station and Ngarua Caves, Takaka; Mangaotaki Valley, King Country; Middlemarch, Strath Taieri; and Treble Cone, Wanaka.
Accommodating the massive production was only possible through the grace and support of the local people. “We relied on them so much wherever we went,” Connon states. “They were moving out of their homes to accommodate us, and if we had a requirement, they went out of their way to help us. They were just brilliant.”
FROM ENGLISH TO KHUZDUL: THE LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS OF MIDDLE-EARTH
J.R.R. Tolkien, who was fascinated by words, created the rich and varying languages that are spoken by the different civilizations of Middle-earth. For “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” language expert David Salo developed and broadened the languages woven throughout the text, as he did for the “The Lord of the Rings” films.
One of the more fleshed out was the language of the Elves. “Although Tolkien sketched out the structure of his Elvish language in some detail, he didn’t write very much in it,” Salo notes. “But working on dialogue in Elvish was a fairly straightforward task of translation, with only the occasional gap to be filled.”
The filmmakers decided early on that the Dwarves would speak English in conversation, but use various United Kingdom accents—encompassing Midlands, Northern, Scottish, Northern Irish and London dialects—to establish their family groupings. But English is not the true language of the Dwarves.
Salo developed the Dwarvish language using what information he could find about it. “There are enough Dwarvish words recorded for us to know most of the sounds, and Tolkien describes the connection between spelling and pronunciation in the appendices to The Lord of the Rings,” he relates. “I followed his precedent carefully, but, even so, a lot of new structures had to be invented.”
Creating a spoken version of the Dwarves’ obscure secret language, Khuzdul, was one of Salo’s greatest challenges. “Everything Tolkien wrote about Khuzdul can be put on a single page,” he explains. “However, he made clear the type of language it was and the sound it should have. Khuzdul was inspired by the Semitic languages, so I drew on my knowledge of those for inspiration. There’s not a single complete sentence in the language, so to translate dialogue into Khuzdul required a lot of innovation, creating a large vocabulary and grammar from scratch.”
The amount of vocabulary related to the Orcs is almost non-existent. Salo found that he had to rely again on a process of invention and discovery, while being true to what Tolkien provided, particularly with regard to the aesthetic effect of their sounds. He notes, “You don’t need to know the language in detail, but you do need to know how it feels, in the mind and on the tongue, and to make anything you invent consistent with that feeling.”
THE SOUND OF MIDDLE-EARTH: MUSIC AND SONGS
Howard Shore’s sweeping music for “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy garnered multiple honors, including three Academy Awards®. Infused with the memorable threads of that musical opus, his evocative score for “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” expands into a musical expression of a great adventure at a more innocent yet also dangerous time. “I have looked forward to returning to the imaginative world of Middle-earth for quite a while,” says Shore. “I read all of the books by Tolkien, including The Hobbit, when I was in my twenties, and his deep love of nature and all things green resonates deeply with me.”
Shore and Peter Jackson discussed at length the use of music in each scene and what they hoped to achieve. The music is never more lyrical than it is in Bilbo Baggins’ beloved Shire, where the composer employed folk instruments, like the penny whistle and dulcimer. The theme of his home accompanies Bilbo throughout his adventure, but evolves with the character as the experience changes him.
With Gandalf, the music evokes the call to adventure and the changes that are coming to Bilbo’s life. Shore also developed thematic music for the Dwarves, a fierce yet melancholy melody, with Thorin’s musical signature being a lonely French Horn that recalls Erebor, their lost homeland.
With a return to Rivendell and the Elves comes Galadriel’s theme, illuminated by a female chorus and string harmonics. The music echoes the ominous developments at Dol Guldur in the meeting of the stately White Council. As the journey progresses, percussive rhythms mark the Goblin caves, and beneath it pounds Gollum’s principal theme of wretchedness.
“I find that choosing the musical palette is a lot like casting,” Shore comments. “It is important to match the sound of the music to the essence of the characters, as well as the story.”
The film also brings to life some of the songs from the novel. As readers of The Hobbit know, the Dwarves express their mood and history through singing. “There are a lot of songs in the book,” notes Fran Walsh. “They very much speak to the identity of these characters. So we wanted to include some of them just to add that flavor of Dwarven culture.”
“Blunt the Knives” is a lively example of Dwarves in chorus, a song they sing as they throw Bilbo’s dishes around Bag End, leaving the Hobbit frazzled. Music for the song was written by Wellington-based composer Stephen Gallagher. Later in the evening, Richard Armitage as Thorin begins the haunting and soulful “Misty Mountains,” in which the Dwarves recount the story of their once glorious past and how it was taken from them. The music was composed by David Donaldson, Steve Roche, Janet Roddick and David Long.
The end credits feature “Song of the Lonely Mountain,” performed by Neil Finn, the Kiwi musical artist behind such seminal bands as Crowded House and the Split Enz. He also co-wrote the song with Donaldson, Roche, Roddick and Long, developed from the Dwarves’ own song, “Misty Mountains.”
The score was ultimately recorded at the famed Abbey Road studios with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which, Shore says, “has a unique and beautiful sound that is well suited to bringing the world of Middle-earth to life.”
The themes of the film follow the characters on an adventure that will carry on in the coming films “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” and “The Hobbit: There and Back Again.”
Jackson sees a parallel in the creation of those films. “The Hobbit is a story of a journey, a quest that takes the characters over a year to travel ‘there and back again,’ and, in a sense, making these movies has almost been like walking step-by-step, stride-by-stride with our company on their own quest,” he reflects. “I feel very fortunate that, as a filmmaker, I have access to both tried and true film techniques as well as technology that is still evolving to even greater heights. I always want to have the audience immersed in the films I make. I don’t want people watching a film on screen—I want them to actually feel like they’re going on this adventure into Middle-earth with me.”
And the adventure continues…
All images © 2012 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Related Articles: