December 11, 2000
Special Effects in
Lord of the Rings
Adam Valdez
Adam spoke of the different types of effects being prdocued for the films, from invisible effects, which he calls them assisting effects, to full fantasy creatures and digitally crafted crowd scequences.
Tradional filmmaking tricks like forced perspective are also being used, along with miniatures and extensive bluescreen work to produce the hundreds of effects sequences for the film.
WETA Digital is using Maya extensively in the production of these effects, and is using it as a base to build their special plug-in applications. One of those applications is called Massive. This tool is being used to create the battle sequences which entail the use of tens of thousands of people, fighting, scaling walls, shooting arrows etc.