Lord of The Rings The Two Towers Behind The Scenes

[Music] [Music] seems to be slightly slightly thinner but longer yeah but use yours as well yeah it's longer so is just working on um scene with the um as in god and we're saying with the hobbits where they um the dukes of hazzard i think no the the knights of rohan yeah pippins pippin's thing gets infected and um there's no doctors of course i have to operate so don't emery you can cut that out hey haley yeah we'll just start from here hey just a normal day at the office hayley welcome to merriam pippen captured by orcs stroke urakai do you want to start yeah we'll do if you want them all right hello at the end of the first movie or i think first book as well we that's mary and pepin get captured by the ox and taken to um on the way to mordor and it's sort of um very strange for the two hobbits of course because having never left the shire before this point and then to be in this sort of fellowship heading out to do this mission is weird enough but then to be cut away from anyone who knows anything about this world gandalf aragorn boromir yeah and just to be left the two of them with no idea what's happening a kind of a mirror sort of young young men in war prisoners of war like who in the country they don't know captured by you know the enemies as i've always been told [Laughter] we know that they're kind of interested in us because of the ring but we don't have enough of a knowledge to ring yeah the ring of pillar you want to be past the camera [Music] mary gets hit by uh by the one of these guys unconscious for the whole run which just kind of adds a bit of drama for the audience because they're quite keen on making it look like mary could be dead or could be really badly injured so it just kind of scares the audience into thinking that something really really matters these guys are all pussycats too nice i've been giving us food and drink looking after us we don't see elijah and sean as much as we used to be started off pretty much doing two maybe three months with them every day and viggo and ian mckellen and orlando we just hung out all the time and now we don't see them at all and we kind of count the days to when we're seeing him now and once we once we're on to john and he's saying his dialogue just sprint up to that rock would that be right john these hawk boys have mighty appetites they picked them clean even more markets so that's why we spend our days comparing chest hairs and touches and i've got a new one you got a new chestnut yeah oh 137. isn't it a cracker it's the kind of thing you do when you have an extra river isn't it usually it's fish but in this case basic scene is elmer riding through the battlefields looking for threadriff and and sort of picking his way through the dead bodies of orcs and rohan and hence why we've got dead orcs and dead raihan and wetsuits in the river trying not to freeze and far-off lands well we're shooting penguin forests all the backgrounds of the england forest they've all the actors have been shot on the blue screen stage and now these are all the the forest itself that the the tree beard and the actors walked through a big soft light from above was about 260 space lights in it or something like that huge amounts of wattage um generators are known and every bit of power in the vicinity holding it all together [Music] i'm doing this miniature because i filmed the live action i i instigated the lighting setup for the live action set the mood for the live action stage so um peter jackson asked me to come in and and do this one and we're treating it as a bit more of a live action shoot rather than a conventional miniature shoot so we're turning over setups a little more regularly than normal basically the atmosphere we're looking for is not scary but a little spooky not somewhere you'd go for a picnic those are specially scaled sifted graded leaves on perfect sixth scale that you can only get in new zealand all of these trees only occur in new zealand apart from the introduced ones the most marvelous things about making miniatures in new zealand is that so many of our native plants i mean commercially grown native plants are they've got tiny perfect little leaves lots of just drapey things not too many because we want it to be spooky but not evil we built a small portion of it full size and the full size one we built had 12 trees in it and this one here has got about a 140 trees in it now so this is it's about 12 times the size or the or the number of trees if we build it full size it would probably cover acre and a half the forest was absolutely packed full of wetters which live in all these tiny little holes and they all came out first and walked away and all the spiders came out big spiders and made these big dense nests and then they went away and their eggs hatched and yesterday we must have had 150 tiny little baby money spiders all came dropping out all over the place as the heat got too much for them and about one all of them one hour they all just descended and the forest was full of gossamer trails and these microscopic spiders which goes on camera but i mean spiders about this big they were good scale spiders but they weren't any use to our footage so we got the spider wrangler in to clean them all away ah it's you [Applause] we're just looking at doing a shot of you halfway up the tree climbing towards that top bed and then training off you on to dom starting his climb kill very good technique just go at it just go out here is a step-by-step approach how many steps what's the first step look at it look at the bucket look at the tree you just visualize the trees your mind with your eyes it is well i've done that that's the first step done so what's step two get close enough to actually hold it hold it and smell it okay just hold it hold it just to feel the motion all right and what's step three please just rattle right up just run run up it run up it work with your legs and hands and your feet and your [Music] [Music] this guy used to be all about us it was all about mary and pippin and now since his new best friend has come in he doesn't care about us anymore don't care at all he's gonna he's just told us he's gonna crush us to death with his new favorite the thing about it is this guy doesn't talk back trivia was something that we um we touched on sort of very briefly at the beginning there was a period in which peter said to us okay guys you can go for it just free form on all the various different characters that are going to have to be designed in the film and so at that time initially i did some drawings of tree beard and peter really liked the look of them and said yeah that's fantastic that's the way we're going to go the process we go through goes from drawings to small three-dimensional marquettes to the final if it's a completely digital character what we then have to make is what this is which is a scannable maquette which is at a larger scale to the design models that peter locks off on um and then this these are sort of sculpted in kind of a neutral almost leonardo da vinci style pose that our digital guys can scan and use in their handheld scanner and turn into a completely digital model they'll be referring to this one for little things like the placement of leaves and other small things that we won't put in the scandalable marquette [Music] the hobbits will sit on these on these bicycle seats here all the fingers will be spring-loaded in they're just sitting static at the moment and it's to make it look as though they're being held by the tributes big hands it's all the fingers or sort of wrap around and how weird is this yeah it's very comfortable [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] um [Applause] yes [Applause] [Music] not anywhere [Music] stop squeezing my balls this is the debut shot of treebeard opening his eyes for the public you can do his eyes move his head left and right his mouth head up and the down going to turn a little bit later i mean you'll still look and see the eyes and i think it's like you'd rather take your hands away you just like put your hand off the nose yeah and then and then you've got so you're going to see the eyes black blink you'll take your hand off the eyes and then the face is going to turn towards you and yeah it's always like the face the intensity of the face turning is what actually slows you up yeah all right just to let you know that this actor's bark is worse than his body [Music] maybe we should bury that a bit of the headquarters [Music] [Music] [Music] gollum's climbing down a wall toward the hobbits and basically uh we're going to put him in there digitally i mean this is all tech technical stuff that [Music] down like this we can get him through here we'll get the back going and then we'll cut yeah yeah okay so so we fill us fill the frame with his back what's your luck so i mean make this make the same move but pick maybe the last third just to slide out again give them room at the ends there we are there you are there it is i'm not in it at all i'm not in it at all that was your shot let's see that again that's that's that's quick so yeah [Music] absolutely and then and then you're preparing to get your face up there to really present yourself and you're sitting there thinking lunch is almost no i'm thinking no let's do that again i'm thinking no see i'm like that hand could go all the way there he could be around like this i mean it could it that could work and also it could work so that if that hand is pulled there this shoulder is pulled forward we don't see where shawn's hand is it's it's your typical straightforward gollum introduction shot i'm playing gollum i'm playing the character with gollum and now character golem does tend to kind of belong to a lot of different departments obviously because it's a computer-generated character um but i guess what i'm doing is really providing the acting side of it the emotional drive behind the character the physicality um and i suppose most importantly the voice we shoot by the motion control which is basically when the camera is linked up to the computer and can repeat moves exactly so um you know if i do something and the interaction's good between us they can basically just repeat the move with the other actors and wipe me out and then the other the other way of doing it is like a reference pass where they just shoot me acting it and then they do the scene again with the other two actors so they they usually uh then have to reenact the scene with me stepping out and then the other type is is for them is a mind pass where i'm not there or something you know it's almost yeah and then you're coming down when andy lands but you're not actually using him as your reference when you're tilting up so you get the thumb of him landing and then as he rolls you're pulled up and you're basically coming down with that with [Music] about it's very vicious and cat-like and they're all the descriptions that tolkien has about the different physicalities that golem has i've tried to incorporate into the past there's a lot of energy that goes into the performance on the day on the take and then you realize of course that nothing that is nothing i do every day nothing of it is is in the can you know uh and that's weird because you just go home at the end of the day thinking great okay i've done my performance i think i've got it there i can nail that scene or whatever and then and then it's like it's it's really yet all to be done in post-production i mean when i'll really be nailing it will be uh when i do the vocal track action we give them a bit of a foundation of a fight and then to suit their inability and whatever they change if they wish we were hoping to do it really technically but um turmeric was a difficult one but they threw they had the door so we wouldn't end up doing it unfortunately but they did a great job it's really cool i love what they do and gollum's just so much energy it's just fantastic you get really exhausted because you're um giving it a 100 and as you can notice on that last take they're pretty exhausted because they're not just acting and fighting they're actually you know given everything they've got and the muscles just get tired at the end of the day and you just gasp for a hair because you're just given the heaps that's their energy was great and tested that's the reason why stunt guys got to be so fit too basically because forget how much energy you have to put into it until you do it yourself there's big rocks over there 320. we had some foot deathmatch [Music] it's though the most uh you know sexy of costumes or maybe it is i don't know maybe some people for some people somewhere and if you're out there have fun go i mean it was a pretty good moment there oh that's fine yeah i reckon that's fine nobody was that was great that was great i think we should just buy that shouldn't we this is the kind of the motion capture phase of of the gone journey what i'm doing now is actually getting a chance to to do the performance proper because um on set it was really you know kind of a case of getting the choreography right and the positioning and you know presenting the other actors with with stuff to play off but now this is where i get to to really physicalize that goal i'm using the gollum puppet by means of using the sensors on here going through into the computer i mean this is cutting edge stuff here this technology is just being evolved all the time as i move the puppet i can see him moving in real time inside the goggles let's try to restart all the lights are the cameras here and they will pick up on the reference on the dots so to link this up to the golem puppet i have to start from this kind of similar starting position each time we go for a take gollum's got to be real as any other character in the in the films be integrated into the scenes as much it's just this is a rather protracted way of doing it oh sorry let me put salmon friends [Music] oh [Music] but it is really highly enjoyable and i would recommend it for anyone to try at home if you've got if you've got 15 cameras and um and a black suit and some sellotape [Music] [Music] great [Music] be silent and keep your crooked for your fork turned behind your teeth i did not pass through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a witness worm his stuff i told you to take the wizard stop [Music] this isn't going to take a minute i'm just going to um hook this up right and then i'm going to listen to your heart for a while so i'm going to get you to open your chest and then um well i can't do much because of these bloody great big things well your mother called me she's a little bit worried about you so we're just going to have a wee listen there right now cough [Music] i'm sitting into bernard hill body doubling because it's too it's like a too much for him to do it all in one day you know [Music] very ironic because it's the part i wanted to play so pets bernard might meet with an accident very shortly i know where he is now wow wow three stitches that's three six it's a result of friendly fire i got hit by my own assistant gambling what me on the air with his sword complete accident of course that's what he says i think it was the first night i was filming with him too so it was a bit of a rough introduction sorry about that boom i think he's after the job myself it's after my job [Music] i think the reaction um guys the reaction to the door slamming is too big it's too dramatic it's one of those things where you guys are playing it cool and it's like you know you're noticing everything around your door slams so you bounce back at the door it's not sort of it's not a big dramatic thing but you know you can but you're well you can just you can glance back but maybe maybe glance back and have a look at each other [Music] late is the hour in which this kundera chooses to appear lot spell by name you knew [Music] yeah you american american american banks [Music] [Applause] this is pretty dangerous stuff like you get that many horses together some big horses here come off a couple times but the horse just run over the top of me so put your shield on your back and your hat on you're pretty right i jump so that you just hang around and tighten up bits of gear on horses and look after horses and just see the needs of the riders and the horses basically probably more the horses and the riders [Music] i said i want a big black guy but this is going too fast see women with beards there's one going past now the worrying thing is it's uh it's hard to know myself after a while you know which luge do we use yesterday simon was calling everyone gents and i think that the majority of the people on horses were in fact women every night we have to clean them with alcohol and make sure they're looking really pretty for the next day [Music] they get really because these guys are riding horses so they get really dusty and they do get pretty dirty so we have to really clean them at the end of the day because if they're not clean they won't stay on properly the worst things when you're trying to eat lunch big plate full of crayfish and you can't open your mouth that's torture man i'll tell you and it's even worse through sticking it after lunch because you've got bits of food and crumbs cowboys never get to do this anywhere else ever again [Music] we just put it in and then the carbs come along and do their magic on it carve it all up stop it all up then paint it so we just prepare the surfaces for them and then they come and do it i grew up reading tolkien and and i guess in lots of respects the rohan seemed to be based at least a little loosely on i guess nordic celtic type people in the highlands and the snow and obviously the motor transport and getting around and generally the horses but i must admit horses frighten me we bought 10 acres of bank crop to do all our fashion with various buildings we're currently the biggest thatchers in new zealand you know there's not a bigger company than us we've got uh four guys and myself at the moment another man coming tomorrow it's just a trial and error thing we started out with a hand stapler and a piece of string you know and we've upgraded the tools and yeah this is the result first few hours i was here i couldn't concentrate very well because i keep catching these fantastically panoramic snow-capped mountains all around me and kept forgetting the measurement i'd just taken and stuff like that we couldn't have asked for a better day than today i mean to see the crew's face when they came in this morning uh you know the sun was just coming up and the tops of the mountains were were all sun kissed and glistening uh and everyone was kind of in a very good mood uh it's it's really tough when on a miserable day people come in and they are miserable and they will pick holes in everything we've had our problems this morning like every morning but everyone's like yeah no worries don't we don't care about that and uh they give us a chance to sort things out bring in the helicopter yep make it up the this hill was a huge fan of the books and he just spent his lifetime building building this thing on top of the hill and she was like he just died oh yeah that's good it's a great day for being here a first state interest and uh let's see it's taken eight months to build and we already got not much more than eight days to shoot then it'll be gone so it's a funny on business really still it'll always survive on film for many generations to come yeah higher high get rid of that foreground the small ground that's the tussock us to do with the pan and and the crane it's all to do with those two marrying into each other and this was this was a quantum leap better than the previous stake still like to have more of that in the foreground but i can always wreck it down i mean i can actually do a little bit of fixing of that that later date as well yeah okay good day good i feel quite privileged to be on a film set like this it's probably the biggest one uri or anybody ever be on it's magnificent everybody's just or inspired by the grandeur of it probably strip a few away and just drop them around there i've only ever served you my lord as a faithful steward that's like a life thing really enter us because you never would sit in a place like that in in the world that place is now gone you know you can see pictures of it but no one i mean you know i had an opportunity to have an experience very few people could have it was beautiful sitting in this place that with it with these thatched roofs and you know overlooking this in this gorgeous valley that would just it was a fairy tale and i just remember thinking my god you know this is this is something extraordinary i'll never forget this i think it's check the gate and move on to the next shot number which is steady cam at the top i think we just put them on a rostrum and everything walking along and we've just pulled the camera up and it's like i don't know what we did coming up well she could be a silhouetted figurehead um we're talking sort of head to toe at the end here you can try one where you're a little bit wider just in case it's nice to stay wide and we'll the frame is like about four times her height yeah and then maybe maybe when you when you've nailed one like that just just you can get around the disc [Music] stabilizing thing which means it's actually going to get in to a very tight tight shot it'll be hovering out here but it'll be it'll be nailing you in a quite a extreme close-up the biggest concern for us is obviously we're starting off pretty early in the morning in a lot of cases a lot of people a lot of stuff going on so i guess um the most important thing is to establish uh that the actors are comfortable that they arrive safely and um that if they've got a heavy duty scene on that we're not in their face that we're just sort of there to support them getting through prosthetics and makeup and that sort of stuff this book was given to me by some friends for my birthday on the 17th of december 1977. oh that's cool yeah roger leslie luke and jay that's right another delivery that was my birthday what 77 this morning what were you doing in 77 you'll the sky's closing in and it's looking like [ __ ] up there at the moment the wind is also way too much for the choppers we are going to start off with the gandalf and scale double scene quickly one shot out of that and then we're moving into the barrows into the funeral stuff okay so we'll be into 260 women to do the funeral in reverse yeah brilliant funerals bury him then walk through the streets with him [Music] we've got about 200 extras on today most of them have had about three hours sleep the ones who were on yesterday their bus broke down on the way to christchurch last night they got back at 11 pm and their call time to meet the bus again was 3 30 a.m again this morning unbelievably they're still happy soldiers make a hole [Music] all righty we just gotta run a rehearsal no uh but you will have to just clear the path for me there guys i'm sorry you slip out of that and pull grab them snap snatch them back and then a struggle and lift and lift it'll be good to get a proper fall in here instead of just falling into the frame yeah yeah [Music] come on um yeah so just just skip that bow just grab it with the one hand and hold them just grab them and put them put them what now we're no friends of mordor if that's what you're thinking where are there some troubles come on come on [Music] your left hand right your left hand come through yeah you don't actually have to physically do it i'll control myself but do that so my left shoulder will you know you're just sort of pushing through my left shoulder and i'll just move it out of the way and you want to practice it once yep that's that's good yeah and then you can follow through with that too like bring your once i go down bring your left leg through yeah yeah and just yeah and stand with your hand with your sword and when you get the vote kill them it comes out yep yep it's gonna work and action camera what no we're no friends of mordor if that's what you're thinking we're innocent travelers i tell you it's pretty good just try we'll just try one more um i just wonder when you go up with elijah being grabbed i think as soon as we have pulled hook forward you can get like play play because it's like it looks pretty creepy you know ah oh spies and action background okay guys um can i just grab all your attention here those of you who are coming straight across the cave across the way stick to the right as you're coming down come straight through that cave there's a little cave that leads over here come through there again sticking to the right i'll be in that area over there to turn you around and feed you back in we've just got a huge bottleneck over there because of this architecture so just stick to the right come on through and i will turn you around and send you back through so you can be recycled and action working background [Music] david aaron would bring you into these lands we are hobbits of the shire brutal baggins is my name and this is my scanty you got your bodyguard his gardener set out from rivendell with seven companions then you were not alone one was lost in moria two were my kins everybody walked right through where the hockey stay rather somebody with arrows on their back before every scene i always have a little shot of bliss they're just kind of wild rugged men that never wash and clean or anything so that's why we have to make more custodians she's not getting they're not the most attractive bench so it's a little difficult after a while it gets a little towering a little hot a little uncomfortable it's a scene in which uh saruman the wizard which which uh chris christopher lee over here is playing um he is uh he is trying to cause trouble for the people of rohan and um and what he's done is he is he has got the wild men and the dunlendings which you guys are down from the hills the people of rohan stole your land off you several hundred years ago and they banished you to the mountains and you've become like sort of you've become like like the kentucky hillbillies you know you've inbred and uh which i'm sure if you stayed here long long enough it wouldn't happen as well but uh we'll get we'll get you home tonight late in good time [Applause] rocks [Applause] those of you with flaming torches it is very important that you hold them up when i call cut hold them up and let the effects guys come to you and put them out [Music] if you fall over is important that you pick your torch up and hold it out of the grass if you can't get up that's fine just grab your torch and hold it up i do not want to start a scrub fire [Applause] it's been a big game between the brohans the walks of your guys in the wild man it's hard work but uh the bad is with the winners on the day unfortunately it's hard to judge on the uh exact rating of it mate because um obviously they all died but um i think they're putting a strong game it's a big defense it was uh went like a house on fire actually hey jeff you got any um small kittens or goats or children you want to put in here take one [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] beautiful sunny day today it's good because when it's not it's really cold up here with an excellent queenstown background going on at the moment hugely awesome background just being here up here is just quite incredible and it's great because people come and give you lollies and and fuss over you and it's great so this isn't real it may look real but the five guys that i gave out [Music] because of the head probably just before the start of the track [Music] yeah the thing is when i'm doing it if i'm firing like this yeah that's this is the way i would normally fire yeah so if i'm flipping it then i should be like that for it to be believable at the moment we're just seeing we're running and trying not to get run over by horses like that pretty much yeah um yeah one guy just ran right in front of a horse and i thought he was gonna get trampled but uh the horsemen were really really good so he managed to get out of the way sounds like he's joking aren't you guys all good humor can we not have the shouting we're freaking the horses out so we have to yell at this and if you hold your release to the end because what happens is you can go and fly you just let it go and the axe [Music] a warning that's coming if greg just goes at the beginning of the word fire and you release well the horses run through the mud and uh dig it all up you have to follow through through that's pretty hard on the ankles that will rest you out it'll be okay one three by stephen bravo looks a bit dodgy has followed that his costume by its nature is extremely petted there's a lot of wardrobe garments even the axes that he falls on are actually very light foams so um it's not as dangerous as it might appear to be [Music] could be better you all right [Applause] [Music] i love coming to tiana because we get to film on indoor sporting i think we should get a basketball game we did kira thundel on a tennis court and now we're going to do the gates of maurya maybe didn't have enough rocks on set this morning so um the riverbed of the local river is uh two foot smaller very small set very low roof and uh limited everything make something as you go along basically one of those prime examples of um working through it thinking you got it and not quite getting it and starting again but uh it'll all be fine at the end we'll get there the hobbits are sitting on top of the rock looking down onto the gates and then the gates open okay yours being a miniature we don't want it to look like a miniature we wanted to look like the real thing so the gate would slowly open come to a pause and hold and then with all the inertia behind it to close it again much the same effect so it closes on the day we'll probably see a whole bunch of total digital characters all acting their part onto the screen it's opening i can see way down [Music] very very windy today i heard it was 70 what is it uh 70 kilometer per hour gusts something like that it's pretty mad i i nearly fell over on sean as as he was tucked into the rocks there and uh i had to jump over him because i was i was going for him the wind was pushing me hard it's very interesting to work and win like this well they've um the wag sequence coming up which is majorly effects intensive because a lot of the wags are going to be computer graphics so uh i guess they just want to nail down the sequence and the most definitive way to visualize that you know before we before we start is storyboarding it and john's going to be shooting a lot of it so i think also for his peace of mind to make sure he's shooting what pete wants we're going to board up a few ideas and run them past pete and you know he'll make any alterations that he wants and uh yeah hopefully we'll all end up on the same page with what we're shooting and john you really need to take that moment and sense what the horse is doing and then start looking around so that your concern is what starts the line from from gambling oh okay so yeah when you first come to that mark yeah you can still look up there clear that of your you know today we're up in deer park in queenstown sound problems here today we've had airplanes going overhead and helicopters and stuff like that as well as the regular onset sound problems but the biggest problem of all is the wind noise it's absolutely phenomenal because as you're about to see there is a huge storm front coming in it's about to snow in a big way this is another snow sequence another unscripted snow sequence so what we have to do in situations like this is uh survey all the terrain that the wag walks on also the light and advise on the animation of the wag so it can come to life in the environment that the plate was filmed [Music] we [Music] okay that was the whole thing joey what do we see back there dog dog towards us looking down at what's happening a big giant wolf jumps off that ledge behind us let me ride up we're marked out by the weak dots there there's no double computer it hurts computers they can do anything now don't know what we're in there for but um not much better on computer the form of shiatsu massage apparently it helps increase your intelligence just before it takes you once does it but it's so intelligent i know exactly what's going on my cummerbund in case i'm called upon to work in a restaurant because refugees have to be fair judah well i could actually go for this i don't know if work would let me but i could go for this get a harley davidson cruise across the country join a heavy metal band if you all think of this cold i'm thinking yesterday morning up here so that real misery and you've been walking for a long time very tired and we should be talking to each other not just walking straight ahead so you can interact so you can be saying i wonder what's happened to the the fighting men i wonder what's happened to the homes we've left and some of the older people can take a bit of a stumble and the younger people can help them up if somebody in front of you can stop and get some breath but look really miserable all the way through this and it will be worth it because it'll be it'll be great when you watch this you'll be really proud of what you've done not smiling smiling injured man coming through my job in a shot like that is to get uh sort of detail of the column just something that uh allows them to cut into the white shots and make it look like it's a continuous long endless match they're not even scared of us we're finding it hard to frighten them there so we've trained them too well you could say rock them up as it comes down i'll call wag which is when it's bouncing on this ledge here and leaping off you would be pulling your horse out of the way and as the wire comes down we take cg wag and a cg horse and hammer to the ground i think you'll find the cgi me much more realistic [Music] good all right aah riding [Applause] three two i'm going to slash an imaginary orc sitting on an imaginary walk with an imaginary sword i don't know why i'm here i should be in bed in a real bed get some real sleep actions [Music] hard-working extras and a big day today and then we'll come pan along and we'll catch our most laziest workers jesus we're shooting two sets at the same time it's coming down coming down action this is what we call in the stunt department are brohan i'm already trying to feel i'm always trying to be around hey oh we got your secret uncovered brother you're not gonna get away with it you're false you're another funny vote yeah he likes it he does this when he learns at home he does this with me in bars at night and this morning i sort of i got out of bed on the wrong side kind of in the sense that i was thinking oh god we got a whole day of things that we're not sure what we're how we're going to do them and time is pressing now more than ever as we're getting towards you know the last phase of the shoot a lot of these stunts that we've been doing are things that normally if this if you didn't know each other well you didn't trust each other you really wouldn't be able to pull off uh a well so that it looks good you know and believable and b safely [Music] action [Music] [Applause] [Music] helms deep is a very ancient fortress i i wanted it to look like a real castle that we could believe actually exists but at the same time have an architectural difference to anything that we recognize here on earth and tolkien is very specific it has the the long wall the deeping wall it has the hornberg which is the massive keep and the tower which houses the horn which blasts through these like echo chambers the causeway leading up to the to the gate of the hornberg is also the scene of major fighting during the battle we've created a a miniature of helm's deep which is actually we're going to be using it in the movie for wide shots but it's useful just taking the cameras close to this miniature to at least have a look at some of these design aspects it's a plywood base with 50ml polystyrene put on it which has previously been textured with a water blaster and a saw believe it or not and then we um sort of bed it in and plaster it with a big plaster blaster which spurts plaster at it flat out and guys come along and brush it into the polly so we end up with a reasonable sort of texture and after that we finally get to paint it which is the best bit well this is the uh quarter scale behind me and uh we've uh the reason we build a quarter scale is basically economic reasons it's uh impractical to build a full castle and uh if we did build a full castle we probably need helicopters anything to film it so it's um it's where we can film the full castle but we do build full-scale little sections of it we call this the d-set it's actually the central part of the castle the main gate section really when you come in the main gates and uh and we use that for all those sequences where we're shooting the front of the castle we occasionally with computer effects we'll blend this with the quarter scale over to the left but um uh it's it's the uh it's the minimum we could get away with building to shoot what we the main action that happens in the main gate this is a bit of film timber it's a hollow in fact this is the quarter scale version of what we're standing on here and although there's a few slight differences the this rock here for example is supposed to link up with that one meaning we shouldn't be able to see through here but uh we the economics of of it all is mean we don't build whatever we don't need and uh as a result um this little opening is here although it has caused a bit of concern for the filming crew they would have preferred us to have built this rock and uh we often argue about whether it would be cheaper to have built this then have to uh put it in in post-production with the uh this causeway and also the subsequent ramp up inside the castle caused us a little bit of strife um there's a major horse action that has to happen on it and right from the start we knew we needed to um make it so the horses could gallop down here reasonably safely um we uh the horse guys had these special hooves with some titanium sort of stuff welded into the hooves and that sort of all worked and when we first laid the causeway with these concrete cobbles the horses came down and it all worked well but one thing that we didn't take into account was that the concrete was still green it was still soft and subsequently when they came back a few months later with the horses the horses were skidding around all over the place and uh we had this major problem where we built the set we we'd gone through the whole process and we needed to find a way that the horses could uh gallop down here and still have plenty of traction so we went through an evolution of different thoughts and we've ended up with the rubber hooves rubber rubber horseshoes and a special epoxy paint that's been painted over the top with grit put in it and now it's it's actually better than it ever was that's very bizarre working in the same place on two different such different scales well the flames are the small ones and the full scale ones are a bit of an exercise to get them both the same we've wound up having to mix gases and bits and pieces to actually get them to look the same the problem is that the one flame in full size is not the same as a flame and miniature they don't uh they're not as wispy that look as good so there's quite a bit of time involved in actually getting them to look exactly the same and bring me report every hour sarah man's arm would have grown long indeed if he thinks it can reach us here comes deep is not a strategic castle it's a refuge it's at the end of a valley and it's where the people of rohan shelter during the time of war but what they don't realize is that sauron is intent on wiping every man woman and child out genocide basically so he he's deliberately attacking the refuge to try and kill all these people so that's really the significance in the story a great host you say ten thousand strong at least plastic toys of your lordship from your skull stand in a small dark room my lord i tell them it is all right my lord someone get the phone [Music] this is a new silicone piece so far we haven't he hasn't done many stunts in it yet but it holds up pretty pretty well holds up all day with fairly low maintenance the real test will be when he's fighting if he has this on otherwise we'll go back to the foam latex which is really durable but it doesn't look as nice it's better for closer because it it looks more flush flashy and it looks more realistic you can't really see my brows moving all the rest of it yeah and no real sort of neck movement bit like having a bucket glued to your head a certain cue you're going to rush forward and give them an embrace down in front of the steps here yep this is great you can kind of just about shut your eyes or squint and believe it's a real medieval castle it feels like we're shooting somewhere in yugoslavia or eastern europe somewhere but it's um it's all polystyrene in fact if you look look down here you can actually see bits of genuine polystyrene you see you can you can break the break helms deep with your own fingertips it's um but it's good yeah done a great job and uh it feels real what i like about it is that it doesn't feel like a set in the sense that it's all neat and clean and some movies you see castles that have that have been built and they're all just a bit too tidy and this one feels old and ancient even in the time that the story said it's very old it's about a thousand years old so we wanted something that had a certain decrepit feeling to it and all the little bits of moss and lichen and things that the art department put on the walls where's the queen where's the queen upstairs you are the luckiest i'm the most reckless man i ever met oh bless you laddie where's the king hey now there's a man i'll distinct from you other miserable cow clanking all buggers thank you very much thank you for your patience that's excellent now um john john can start to de-rig himself thank you very much oh one two three left happening all around this area okay um [Music] is [Laughter] how much making sure he can be get on up there and then come forward as they're climbing up and double the foreground crosses please very good [Music] hey [Music] you don't look down at the water if you can help [Music] [Applause] into the pool oh [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] nowhere else we're hurting the making of this uh feature promotion or your expert wow [Music] [Music] he should react to that at the moment he's going absolutely stone cold as he gets the uh the elbow and then the plane froze we've got to get closer so he's shorter all elves up there are cut off and killed story-wise we've been battling away against the elves for quite some time now this is about two-thirds of the way through the battle so behind me and further away than that wall there's about 10 000 of you guys fighting like crazy and trying to climb up the uh battlements on those ladders and new chaps in the background here behind these big crossbows you guys will be jostling to get your turn at the alps you're okay [Music] you've obviously because you've got the helmet on there the most fantastic guys we've got are the guys that came up from queenstown just the very fact that they've come back for a second ago some of them done 25 30 days of burakai straining and uh you know that the fact that they're there in the front row cracking into it we put different helmets on them every night and just shove them back out again and uh it's been great great this is our aerophone rig uh it fires about 60 arrows randomly all at the same time and it just runs on air compressed air and what else can tell you about it the soft safety tips you've got the big flattering ram like a big oh [Music] [Applause] himself is going to stab me right in the neck with a sphere i think i've this is the medieval mullet old school [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] where's your housewarming present they haven't managed to get through yet they've been trying for hours take after take after the tape we keep telling them just don't pass the dress code we've got both aragorn and gimli in what we call flying harnesses with wires coming off of them attached to a crane my role specifically is to make sure to get them from point a to point b get their body angle at the right place and and above all to do it safely [Applause] tonight we're using vigo the lead actor in this sequence this is a relatively safe sequence to put a lead into and vigo is the type of guy who really likes to get in and do all his own stuff and he does a very good job at it too so one of the problems we've had tonight is making the flight look realistic for the particular camera angles that we're shooting with as we stepped off it looked like we pushed [Music] feels unnatural feels like a moon spring [Music] okay we didn't have much luck breaking in this time but we're feeling confident we're gonna get a half cup of tea and then we're gonna come back and and come on in doors there is a bomb release which holds the doors closed with the battering ram hitting the doors therefore it won't open on a command the release is tripped and the next hit of the doors the doors will come open i have complete faith in the grips sit first [Applause] [Music] [Applause] ah okay okay [Music] it's a bit tight here but yep run back good um there's a better feeling we've been working with miranda for uh probably about three four weeks off and on now since she came over um it's been quite a short lead up time compared to some of the the actors and actresses we've worked with but she's really taken it on board quite amazingly actually some of the stuff they're getting today well i think it looks really good and i think she surprised them a little bit actually i think it's going pretty well i think it's going well i mean i'll tell you what it wouldn't be so good if it wasn't for the strong guys because they have just been so encouraging all along and if i felt stupid it wouldn't i wouldn't have been able to do it but they were always telling me that it was good hit them harder hit them harder hit the bottom quite a petite little thing but she's coming off as uh very very powerful sword fighter so it's worked really well [Music] it's incredible fun walloping them as long as i don't hurt any of them it's actually a fun i think women should get to do more of it [Music] [Applause] [Music] right now what we're doing is theoden who is the king of the rohan is leading all the other top guys like aragorn gimli and legolas leading them into the urukai and now on the causeway and now attacking the castle and theodon is leading the charge into uh the yurakai and knocking them out killing them by the hundreds because we're the good guys you see on this side of the camera we're the good guys on your side of the camera you're the bad guys everybody should be on that side of the lamp i'm part of the health and safety team and there's four of us that work for lord of the rings we have two onset users and we have two safety officers that cover the three units while we're filming and primarily we're here to uh avoid injury hi i'm sola i'm stunting and the reason we're here today is because of our fight scenes are big and uh and people do make contact with their swords one guy uh lacerated the front of his chin we had another guy who was hit across the top of the head with a with a sword and required staples in his scalp there are staples instead of stitches a little bit that's cool greatest hits of lord of the rings it's uh it's made up of a belgium of a number of previously loved sets generally we've been able to join them all together and make the ruins of australia taking our sets out into the water to make it look like a sort of riverside um sunken dome glitch i've always been interested in producing pictures that feel as though they have a three-dimensional quality that they have you know they have corners that you could you could go around and uh imagine you know something else that's there and this is really uh following that path to an extraordinary degree okay guys come on over here to sketch something and make little models and then come here and see it all made real and wonderful but you've got to make a room for the people that are arriving so you might want to be crouched either side under this the good thing for this shot is that we're just using invisible arrows so i think we should do all right you reckon perfect every time remember your lives are at stake you've just got to jump up pop off an arrow and duck back down again it's all looking great [Applause] we do a bit of a clean up on them every now and again send them back to the workshop but um they're pretty durable and both moss is good no problem there's both masses like same like you are already moving finishing your work about 12 months without with mass no problem rehearsal elijah and i got on our knees so that we could simulate the height of the hobbits just for a reference just for a reference saw us kneeling down and even though they're only three feet tall they assumed because their job is to mimic armor they came in and took a knee so instead of being three feet all their foot and a half so just mid sean was like bk get up stand up again he's marrying my sister i love her man she's uh she's a beautiful girl just amazing the peace has come good meets evil makes beauty you know that's all it is why can't we all just get along where else can you get paid for uh playing dressing up and um play acting i love you [Music] let's do it man action [Applause] i'd say um 18 months that amount of prosthetics concentrated would have to be a record but maybe someone like freddy krueger might have done an awful lot over quite a few years you know six years or whatever it was but um yeah not as concentrated or such a heavy full-on prosthetic oh it smells like it just comes down [Music] concentrated [Music] because i've got a bigger bow than him he's threatened it's understandable he's got his fiddly little bow which [Music] i'll do it [Applause] no burns you see it's um special kind of chemical glue that burns face don't have this problem this part burns the worst because it's quite sensitive area of skin [Music] down by the light those pipes have we got another lighter two lights would make things a lot quicker [Music] good idea and don't don't get many we're dumping about 55 tonnes of water on eisenguard and this is for the sequence where the ants break down the wall and the flooding of eisenguard after dumping 55 tonnes of water obviously we've got the issue of getting rid of it and what we do with it so we're actually recycling it because to fill these two containers with 55 tons of water takes about an hour and a half so to save time and to save water we're actually recycling it put additives in the water to stop foaming because foam is quite often an issue with shooting the water effects [Music] hey i get what you want i send them out to get some haagen-dazs ice cream some double chocolate shut it he brought back macadamia nut i don't like macadamia [Music] [Applause] hold on a second i see that people see those people we've been in there four hours bourbon he's an idiot you

Channel: ET95

Views: 6,592,552

Keywords: lord of the rings, lord of the rings behind the scenes, lord of the rings soundtrack, lord of the rings the two towers, lord of the rings the two towers behind the scenes, lord of the rings return of the king, funny lord of the rings, lord of the rings fellowship of the rings, LOTR the two towers behind the scenes, making of the lord of the rings trilogy, lord of the rings orcs, behind the scenes, making of lord of the rings, lord of the rings facts, lord of the rings details

Id: Rg4VkFWBby4

Length: 106min 24sec (6384 seconds)

Published: Sun May 07 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

"Even the fucking trees walk in that goddamn movie"

[u/Alaishana]

They were not 'stunt' riders.

They called for extras from NZ riding clubs. And of course most that answered were women.

But that's ok, as Aragorn said: "It's the beards!"

[u/W_I_Water]

Smart, if you're riding against the Lord of the Nazgûl.

[u/robynflower]

When you need a lot of people who can ride it helps that there are a lot more female riders than male.

[u/Piemaster113]

Well even in LOTR movie they claim women were still fighters as well, so it's not that unbelievable there would be women among the Rohirrim, but yeah sourcing people who can ride for certain scenes can be a challenge when you have a large group so you gotta make get creative

[u/bolanrox]

No man can ride these mounts

[u/thebigt42]

I guess that's because you don't have to pay women as much?

/s

Edit: I fully believe women should be paid the same for the same work.

[u/ThaNagler]

"I am no man! You look upon a woman" -that one chick protecting that one dude from that emo guy.

[u/sephstorm]

That explains my boner.