We’re so lucky they filmed Lord of the Rings when they did. Twenty years later, they would’ve had Viggo Mortensen riding a green bike that they CGI into a horse because that’s better for some reason.
This simple feeling… is beyond Disney’s comprehension.
Kids, kids. Are you telling me you think they didn’t use CGI in Lord of the Rings? One of the characters is entirely mo-cap and CGI! It has dragons and mammoths, and I promise they didn’t really build gigantic statues to sail boats through.
no, people are not saying they didn’t cgi the dragons they’re saying lotr used real horses unlike the above example of editing in a dog where they might have held an actual dog.
Exactly. LOTR was a masterpiece in balancing CG and practical effects, they didn’t overuse CG. That didn’t mean they didn’t use it, it means that when practical was better, they used practical. When LOTR used CG, it was because it could not be done at the time with practical effects; you just can’t make someone look like Gollum without making their suit and prosthetics impossible to act in. This was before motion capture, they had to animate Gollum BY HAND using Andy Serkis as a reference. Four tusked elephants with tiny people walking around on them aren’t exactly on sale, nor are fell beasts.
Isengard and Orthanc? Bigature (miniature but like, the size of a tennis court). Minas Tirith? Bigature. Helm’s Deep, the Black Gate, Barad-dur, Minas Morgul, Osgiliath, even elements of Lothlorien, Moria, and the Grey Havens? BIGATURES. Hobbits and Gandalf in one shot? Almost always tricks of perspective with, for example, a table set that was made in 3 pieces to move and make you think Tiny Elijah Wood™ was sitting at the same table as Giant Ian McKellan™, not greenscreen. They literally went so far as to make the Hobbits’ clothes (on the taller actors, not their little stunt doubles) with thicker thread to make their smallness look real.
Those statues, the Gates of Argonath? CG. The gorge and the boats? Real.
But the thing about the top example with the dog? They’re doing it because CG is less expensive because animal handlers have unions, while CG artists don’t and work in sweatshop conditions.
Regarding the “giant statues to sail boats through” especially, it was such a clever work of blending bigatures and real river exteriors filmed near Queenstown with actors/stunt doubles/scale doubles in the boats.
This is Richard Taylor with the bigature for a sense of scale and details from the behind the scenes special features (ngl, I want them to frame my front door):
And this is what it looked like with all the lighting and framing put in place, with bluescreens to add background and foreground digitally:
And the final result with the transposed river and sky and matched up colour-grading:
