She’s Berries, Baby

I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into? I wonder. But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (2001)

happy october 24th!

LOTRWEEK 2024 Day 3 — the green earth in the daylight (insp)

i feel like they just finished a grand musical number.

Like this?

bless you.

♦ LOTR WEEK | day one: 'the road goes ever on'

LOTRWEEK 2024 | Day 1: the road goes ever on

“My dear Frodo!’ exclaimed Gandalf. ‘Hobbits really are amazing creatures, as I have said before. You can learn all that there is to know about their ways in a month, and yet after a hundred years they can still surprise you at a pinch.”

LOTR20 / day 4 / 14th december / friendship

Gandalf throwing his staff at gollum is what really makes this

Thank you for commenting because I was going to scroll past this. 

Witch King Toad

MIDDLE-EARTH locations part. 2

The Ring: If I had a quarter for every time a hobbit picked me up, I’d have two quarters.  The Ring: Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.

Of all the bearers of Sauron’s ring, 4 of them were hobbits.

I was wrong. It’s 5. Not 4

The lineage of ring bearers is as follows.

I love how Deagol counts as a ring bearer even though he had it in his possession for all of like five seconds

He held it for the rest of of his life!

[Image description: Tweet by @banalplay saying “but something happened then that the ring did not intend. it was picked up by the most unlikely creature imaginable: a hobbit, the same fuckin thing that just had it for like 500 years.” End Image Description.] Link to original here. Otherwise reblogging for the final rb there, which made me cackle.

From the ring’s perspective:

1. Home, the finger of my creator and other self.

2. Well, I don’t like it but I can work with this. Cause some trouble, get some revenge, find my way home, this is fine.

3. What the fuck is you?

4. Right personality, wrong species, I don’t know what you are but I hate you and I don’t know why you’re so resistant to my powers.

5. NO NO NO there are goblins everywhere how did I find another one of THESE horrible things. This one’s even more resistant than the last one and also disgustingly nice. I suffer.

6. Listen, I’ll cooperate, just get me the fuck out of this hellhole full of small cheerful people my power doesn’t work on properly. No, not like that. I hate you. Please stop. 

7. FUCK

8. (Frodo again) I still hate you with every molecule of my mortal form but at least you’re not number seven. Think I’m starting to get through finally. 

9. (Smeagol again) YES it’s you I actually missed you now get me back to the Master and NO FUCK NO I HATE YOOOOUUUUU…. *fzt* 

you CHAIN The One Ring?! you chain it like the prisoner?! oh! OH! trauma! deep psychological trauma for hobbits for One Thousand Years!

Heh. :)

Rivendell

#THIS ISTHE MOST ACCURATE REPRESENTATION OF THE HOBBITTHAT I HAVE EVER SEEN

We’re so lucky they filmed Lord of the Rings when they did. Twenty years later, they would’ve had Viggo Mortensen riding a green bike that they CGI into a horse because that’s better for some reason.

This simple feeling… is beyond Disney’s comprehension.

Kids, kids. Are you telling me you think they didn’t use CGI in Lord of the Rings? One of the characters is entirely mo-cap and CGI! It has dragons and mammoths, and I promise they didn’t really build gigantic statues to sail boats through.

no, people are not saying they didn’t cgi the dragons they’re saying lotr used real horses unlike the above example of editing in a dog where they might have held an actual dog.

Exactly. LOTR was a masterpiece in balancing CG and practical effects, they didn’t overuse CG. That didn’t mean they didn’t use it, it means that when practical was better, they used practical. When LOTR used CG, it was because it could not be done at the time with practical effects; you just can’t make someone look like Gollum without making their suit and prosthetics impossible to act in. This was before motion capture, they had to animate Gollum BY HAND using Andy Serkis as a reference. Four tusked elephants with tiny people walking around on them aren’t exactly on sale, nor are fell beasts.

Isengard and Orthanc? Bigature (miniature but like, the size of a tennis court). Minas Tirith? Bigature. Helm’s Deep, the Black Gate, Barad-dur, Minas Morgul, Osgiliath, even elements of Lothlorien, Moria, and the Grey Havens? BIGATURES. Hobbits and Gandalf in one shot? Almost always tricks of perspective with, for example, a table set that was made in 3 pieces to move and make you think Tiny Elijah Wood™ was sitting at the same table as Giant Ian McKellan™, not greenscreen. They literally went so far as to make the Hobbits’ clothes (on the taller actors, not their little stunt doubles) with thicker thread to make their smallness look real.

Those statues, the Gates of Argonath? CG. The gorge and the boats? Real.

But the thing about the top example with the dog? They’re doing it because CG is less expensive because animal handlers have unions, while CG artists don’t and work in sweatshop conditions.

Regarding the “giant statues to sail boats through” especially, it was such a clever work of blending bigatures and real river exteriors filmed near Queenstown with actors/stunt doubles/scale doubles in the boats.

This is Richard Taylor with the bigature for a sense of scale from the behind the scenes special features (ngl, I want them to frame my front door) :

And this is what it looked like with all the lighting and framing put in place, with bluescreens to add background and foreground digitally:

And the gorge they transposed it over:

And the final result with the transposed river and sky and matched up colour-grading:

There is so much detail on the bigatures as well, that they incorporated the concept that the statues were only carved out of the cliffsides to a point, but that they constructed a quarry and cut the rock to build the rest. The bigatures actually include the worn down and aged remains of the quarry.

Definitely not the same as pasting on a dog for budget reasons.