Ringer Spy Busch-Man sends in his review of the SIX Minute footage seen at ShoWEST!
I had the great fortune of seeing the LOTR ShoWEST footage. It was about 6 minutes long, and I was stunned.
I just wanted to say that I cannot stop thinking about it. It’s truly staggering. I’ve read the books several times, and everything looked GREAT.
It starts off much like the internet trailer, with the booming voice saying ‘From the greatest book of the 20th century’. It also showed some video games like Final Fantasy, as well as a Led Zeppelin album cover, all the while the ‘voice’ saying ‘it has influenced millions of people around the world’. It then goes on to show Peter Jackson, saying how this is the time to make these films. But that is where it changes from the internet preview. There are many many shots from the films, a few stills and some great clips. The ones that stick out from memory are:
Viggo Mortensen fighting some soldiers in what appears to be ruins of a castle
Shots of Liv Tyler on a horse
A shot of John Rhys-Davies as Gimli.
A small interview with Sean Astin
Gollum Pics
Troll Pics
Tons of CGI and real armies fighting
A shot of Hobbiton from inside a Hobbit Hole
I got to also see dozens of stills that I’ve never seen before, and one thing I can say is, as good as the makeup and costumes look in the quicktime trailer, seeing them in higher resolution took my breath away. I was able to tell that John Rhys-Davies isn’t even recognizable under all that makeup, but he looks terrific. Orlando Bloom and Viggo Mortenson look perfect – I was able to see some more images of both of them, and it really made me happy how ‘right’ they look. There was one particular still of Liv Tyler in character, and I swear, she looks like… well, some supremely beautiful and mysterious member of another race. Not human. All the actors looked just fabulous. The orc makeup is unbelievably detailed, and the locations are simply too good to be true. It’s a Lee or Howe painting come to life.
There was more info about the CGI shrinking techniques as well, some shots they’ll be using two sets of dollies (Dollies: tracks along wich a camera can roll along), one for the camera and one for the ‘Small’ character who is standing or sitting further away from the regular sized actor (like that pic of Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood), when both are moving along opposite ways, you can move the camera, and have the ‘small’ looking character interact with the large one.
They also interviewed someone involved with the CGI fighting armies, the guy said that each individual ‘CGI fighter’ will have a mind of his own, and that no one will need to program them, they’ll know who is next to them, and if they’re challenged they’ll either sidestep, fight, dodge, or run away. They showed some of the fighting armies, it was amazing! They were lobbing off heads and fighting pitched battles.
From what I saw, we have absolutely nothing to worry about. The film is in safe hands.
