Weta Studio - Heart of The Lord of the Rings
The spectacular digital and physical effects that have helped bring to life Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy sprung from the Weta studio, a Wellington-based business established by Richard Taylor and his long-time friend, Peter Jackson. Named after a spiny native insect from the cricket family (the giant weta is as large as a hand!), the company has developed into one of the world's leading effects studios. Weta Digital, formed in 1993, handled the special FX work for the trilogy. Weta Workshop, with its huge base of skilled technicians and artists, produced the physical effects, constructing the sets and props including armour, weapons, creature prosthetics, costumes and miniatures.
During the production of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Weta Workshop have made 48,000 separate items including an incredible 1200 suits of armour, 2000 weapons, 68 miniatures, 10,000 arrows and some 1800 body and prosthetic suits. This meant creating their own blacksmith's shop to forge armour from solid plates of steel. Each prosthetic foot and ear was also painstakingly crafted and sized individually.
The creaturesThe trilogy's revolutionary animation techniques, produced by Weta Digital, have brought worldwide acclaim for the studio, earning it both a 2003 BAFTA Award and 2003 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Headed by Randall Cook, Weta Digital's director of animation, Weta had the hefty task of creating a digital cast of thousands that would include Sauron's vast orc armies. Models up to 1.5 metres tall were sculpted, and using a hand-held laser scanner (one that was actually developed for scanning carcasses by the NZ Meat Board), the models were captured in 'real-time' at mega-high resolution. This created a detailed form guideline which the animators used for building up characters.
To manage the movement of creatures in the huge battle scenes, the company developed Massive, a ground-breaking piece of software that simulates crowd behaviour. It allows every individual character in a crowd to move both in response to its environment, including terrain and obstacles, as well as the actions of the other characters. The Return of the King will see hundreds of thousands of these intelligent 'characters' appearing simultaneously in each frame, allowing Jackson to recreate the spectacular battle scene at Pelennor Field.
Gollum
The character of Gollum was based on the voice and movements of actor Andy Serkis, who wore a special 'motion-capture' suit. Gollum was then brought to life using a combination of keyframing techniques, which were matched to the actor's performance.
For more information, visit Weta's website
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