What do you do when you have come to the end of a long, intense adventure? When you’ve packed your bags, said your goodbyes and all is quiet? When you close your eyes and breathe in the first taste of “new” air? You know what I’m talking about… the first breath where you don’t have that “thing” hanging over your head. There are no more shots to finish, no renders to check, no emails to answer. You’re done. Fade to black. Roll Credits. The lights come up. What now?
I’ve just stepped out of a screening of The Return of the King, the final film in Peter Jackson’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, taken that breath and I don’t quite know how to react. You see, these films were an enormous journey, and I don’t mean for the characters you see on-screen. For those of us behind the cameras, who’ve fought our own battles, seen our own heroes rise and have helped give birth to this phenomenon — this enterprise that is LOTR — it’s been an experience that is difficult to know how to absorb.
In The Beginning…
How was anyone to know that the little spinning blue creature I saw before me would become an obsession for so many people in a little less than three years?
Gollum was unique in that everyone had their preconceived notions about who he was, what he should look like, how he should act, how he should move… but nobody really had the authority to define him other than Peter. We knew that he was going to be the toughest character to create, as he had to “live” along-side the pivotal actors Elijah Wood and Sean Astin, so Weta Digital took to him with a passion.
Only yesterday, it was March 1999. I was sitting in a hotel room in Las Vegas with John Sheils (Weta Digital’s effects supervisor at the time). He was showing me a tape of some of the work that Weta Workshop and Weta Digital had been doing to prepare for the upcoming trilogy. This was before any actors had been picked, before Weta Digital had grown to fill five buildings (including mo-cap) and before many of us even had heard of a little restaurant named Eva Dixon’s (destined to become the “Weta Cafeteria”).
Developing the Pipeline
By the time we completed work on The Two Towers our pipeline was well established. We could have more than 100 shots online at one time, all of which were being worked on and viewed daily.
It was at this time that we were starting to get feedback from the press about Gollum. It was probably one of the most exciting and energizing times to work at Weta Digital. One of the things you strive for when doing visual effects is being invisible. Any effects work that stands out is bad, as the point is NOT to be obvious. If the audience can see the wires, the matte lines, a sliding foot, a misplaced light, a bad render, you haven’t done your job. This, we all understand and work our best to make the audience believe everything they see on-screen is absolutely real. “Why, of course, those 15- foot trolls are real. We hired them pretty cheap. It’s amazing. They just wanted library cards and Internet access. They don’t need clothes. A couple of fresh loin cloths and they’re set for a year.”
Andy Serkis and Gollum
I think a lot of what was making Gollum appeal to the audience is the fact that he was driven from a single emotional “base.” We had the unique experience of working with this phenomenal talent: Andy Serkis. Andy had initially been hired just to perform Gollum’s voice, and we (the animators) were going to animate to that performance. It was soon quite apparent that in order for Andy to actually play the voice, he had to embody the character emotionally and physically.
When Joe Letteri came on board as the visual effects supervisor early on during the pre-production for The Two Towers, he really pushed the idea of a pipeline that allowed us to run shots through the facility at an insane pace. His goal was to have the animators be able to “publish” their daily work (i.e., send out their latest animation to be used by the rest of the facility) at 5:00 pm every day, and then be able to see that work skinned, rendered, textured and composited in dailies the next morning. What that meant was that we had to develop a pipeline that was as automated as possible. So Eric Saindon (creatures supervisor and CG supervisor), Greg Butler (3D sequence lead), Bay Raitt (senior creature technical director), Seth Lippman (3D sequence lead), Dana Peters (senior creature technical director), Bret Hughes (software engineer) and I plus a myriad of others wrote a system that could handle this type of throughput. We had weekly meetings where everyone would get together and discuss everything from directory structures to rendering software to disk quotas. It took a bit of time to get going, but once it started working, the shots would fly through the system.
With Gollum, we wanted the audience to believe he was real. We worked intensely to ensure the fact that the audience would suspend disbelief and not think, “Wow, what a cool digital character.” But, “Wow… what an amazing actor.”
This was a huge boon for the animators and motion editors, as now even though there were more than 20 of us working on Gollum, there was one psychological base to start from. Either we would take the motion capture he performed and tweak it as necessary, adding the facial animation, or we would take the emotional connotation that Andy had projected and animate to that.
It was a completely awe inspiring experience. You could see some remarkable work coming from the animators. Senior animator Mike Stevens was one of the first to really “capture” Andy’s emotional state in a shot. Atsushi Sato, another senior animator, was so amazingly fast, he would get a difficult shot and turn it around in a matter of days, and your only comment would be, “Gah. Wow.” (Animation supervisor) Adam Valdez animated one of my favorite shots in The Two Towers: when Frodo says Smeagol’s name for the first time and he looks up shocked. “My name…my name…” says Gollum. Stunning. Each animator was pushed and it became obvious how much better all our work was getting. I honestly feel it had to do with the fact that Randy Cook (creature effects supervisor/designer), screenwriter Fran Walsh and Andy were able to clearly communicate Gollum’s emotional state through Andy’s physical and auditory performance.
It certainly wasn’t just the performance that made Gollum so believable; it was everything about him. The lighting and texturing was so spot-on, people were second-guessing the fact that he might be a silicon mold. The interaction with Sam and Frodo and the environment around them took a talented team of roto/paint artists and compositors months to do. Some of the work was so spectacular; you still couldn’t believe it even when you watched it being slowly completed day by day.
Taking Gollum to the Next Level
First, we made minor modifications to his body to make him appear more emaciated. Then the creatures department re-worked the muscle model to fix some of the issues we found while working on The Two Towers, including his shoulders and hips. Most of the work, however, was focused on Gollum’s shader and textures.
Throughout the film you can feel everything that’s happened to Gollum throughout the journey simply by looking at his face. We’ve added cuts and bruises, scrapes, road rash and lots of dirt and sweat. One scene, in particular, that is stunningly executed occurs on the windy stairs when Gollum is telling Frodo that the Fat One (Sam) is going to take the ring from him. Both Gollum and Frodo are face to face, directly in-camera, and they’re dirty, sweaty and exhausted. And it’s absolutely beautiful.
Gollum and “Us”
Without a doubt, Gollum does not belong to any one person, department or company. He was conceived in J.R.R Tolkien’s mind; characterized and developed by Phillipa Boyens, Walsh and Jackson; designed by the amazing team at Weta Workshop, performed and analyzed by Serkis and brought to life by every single department at Weta Digital in New Zealand.
Roll Credits
So, what’s left? How do you let it go? How do you leave Middle-earth and continue on knowing that this experience is going to be one of the ones in your life you’ll tell your grandkids about? What happens after the credits roll and the lights come up? How does it end?
It doesn’t.
Jason Schleifer is currently on holiday after living and working in New Zealand for more than four years on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy as a senior animator and creature technical director. When not enjoying the generous variety of seasons available daily in Wellington, he spends time with his lovely bride, two dogs and works on his short film Jonh and his Dog [3].
Not only did we work to enhance Gollum’s acting between The Two Towers and The Return of the King, but we also worked quite a bit on his appearance. In The Return of the King, Gollum’s wretchedness and addiction come to the forefront of his personality. His desire to separate the two hobbits and his obsession for the ring become paramount. The stress of the journey and this constant battle between his two selves takes its toll and you can see it etched onto his face. In order to demonstrate this deterioration, we made a number of changes.
Because of this mutual understanding, the breadth of Gollum’s character, the subtlety in the acting, the ability for the audience to sympathize with him grew between The Two Towers and The Return of the King. We all learned to work together to create a better Gollum. In my opinion, his look and performance in The Return of the King far surpasses what was accomplished in The Two Towers.
It’s this intense passion and spirit of cooperation that has perforated every experience I’ve had here at Weta Digital and in New Zealand. I came out to this beautiful country to work but instead I lived. I made amazing friends, met my wife, bought a house, got two puppies, been on more incredible adventures than I can shake a stick at and now it’s over. I’ve submitted my last shot, cleaned out my desk, said goodbye and I’ve watched the final movie in a trilogy that has marked the last four-plus years of my life.
Links:
[1] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/6748
[2] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/6749
[3] http://jonhandhisdog.com
