January 8, 2001
Week 2: Beren's
Adventures on the LOTR Blue Screen Set
Beren
On Thursday it was some stuff with Frodo, Sam and Gollum. The first one was on the Cirith Ungil stairs, this involved a large prop once again. So we wheeled this lump of rock stair into place and did a few test runs with our doubles. Because of people having to be up quite high we had to have the safety guy standing by to assist people down, not really because it was overly dangerous but just because of regulations. Once everything had been tested out we got in the actors and had them go up and down these stairs a number of times, filming them from different angles.
"The next shot was a Sam and Gollum shot in the Morgul valley. But for some reason I don't think we did it, it didn't get done till the following day. So I'm not exactly sure what we did for the rest of the day. But the following day was our first Gandalf vs Balrog day, and this involved three different parts of the sequence. One of which involved him in a flying rig, this was done last as it was the most taxing on Sir Ian.