There’s much more to The Return of the King’s visual effects than just a guy named Gollum. Photo by Pierre Vinét - © 2003 New Line Prods. All rights reserved.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
“Here are some fun facts” was how Weta Digital visual effects supervisor Jim Rygiel began his introductory remarks. “We finaled 1,700 shots and 1,400 were in the film — more shots than in the first two Lord of the Rings movies combined.” He noted that visual effects dp Alex Funke had shot “mountains of miniatures” and that animation supervisor Randall William Cook had overseen “thousands of pieces of animation.” This resulted, Rygiel acknowledged, in an enormous task for visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri, and the Weta crew that put all those elements together.

Rygiel, a two-time Oscar winner for the previous LOTR films, highlighted the animated creatures that appeared for the first time in the third film, including the giant spider and a phalanx of elephantine beasts. He explained that it took 300 animatics before they arrived at something that pleased director Peter Jackson. The battle scenes featuring these creatures running amongst real and digital horses, admitted Rygiel, “was an amazing three-ring circus.”

Special mention was also made of the digital character Gollum, which Rygiel quipped “ had a face-lift for this film. He had lots of close-ups, and you can see crow’s feet around his eyes.” Because Gollum’s body gets grimier as the film progresses, Rygiel added, “We had to keep modifying him.”

If it seemed like more than a five-minute introduction, it probably was. The red light that was supposed to glow had malfunctioned, prompting Edlund to interject, “You’d think with all our high-tech skills we could get the light to work!”

Following a chock-a-block effects reel, the Rings team was asked by an audience member “If any of you ever said, ‘No,’ to Peter Jackson?” Rygiel gave an emphatic “No! We worked seven days a week, sometimes 18 hours a day. We had 100 days of pick-ups, and Peter was still shooting in October. In the last eight weeks, we did 800 shots.”

Tinker Bell was a major feat for the artists on Peter Pan. Credit: Industrial Light & Magic. All images © 2003 Universal Studios. All rights reserved.

Peter Pan
“I feel like I’m in a magician convention,” said ILM visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar as he stepped to the podium to introduce director PJ Hogan’s take on the classic Peter Pan. “This was an aesthetically-driven picture,” asserted Farrar, who noted that the assignment contrasted markedly from the realistic effects usually done at ILM. He said this had challenged him to spend more time on the “art” of visual effects — the color and lighting — than ever before.

Of course, there were also the practical challenges of working with “11 flying children and a dog.” For many shots, recalled Farrar, they had to replace all or parts of the flying children with CG. “The technical term is ‘switcheroo,’” he cracked. Added to that was a digital crocodile and Tinker Bell, who required 14 layers of rendered elements. Farrar recalled that it was daunting to find a depth of field that was appropriate to macro photography. “We almost ran out of particles.”

Joining Farrar onstage was special effects supervisor Clay Pinney, (an Oscar winner for Independence Day.) Despite the fact that the film was shot entirely on sound stages, Pinney noted that the director “wanted an organic look.” Pinney employed teeter-totter rigs for many flying shots, and used a high-tech gimbal to create a rocking ship’s cabin for Captain Hook.