Over the holidays i went Around New Zealand with my family. And on the plane we were on, Air New Zealand, they had the most creative safety video. everyone who has been on a place knows the agony of being forced to watch a safety video in case there is an “emergency”. No one is really made to, its not like a clockwork orange type of deal where they peel out your eyes and you scream as you watch the video. but its a safety measure.

Since New Zealand is famous for giving life to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and more recently the Hobbit, they’ve sort of squeezed the milk as much as they can by using a middle earth themed video. thanks to Peter Jackson, he put his country on the map.

they boast of their achievement, and rightly so. LOTR is pretty awesome. So, we ventured into the world of Hobbitton. And to my disappointment, the shire is a fake. they’re just doors and nice little decorative fishes and fire wood, but real fruits and a well tended garden. It wasn’t just one ‘hobbit hole’ it was a whole village!. So its amazing now to watch LOTR and The Hobbit knowing that those doors we see don’t lead anywhere but a wall of dirt.

What made the films so.. Magical I thought, whilst taking a stroll through the shire, was it the casting, the plot, the meticulously planned sets and CGI? of course they all play a part in the overall film. But I think its the soundtrack they used. It sort of immerses you into this world where you do believe hobbits live in holes under the ground. The flute sure does that.

I don’t particularly think Peter jackson is the most creative director, but the most specific. hobbitton is actually placed inside of a family owned farm, and within those farms are..well.. animals. sheep were used in the film, but not the ones from the farm. they looked “too modern” said Jackson, so he ordered a hand full of english Sheep because it would fit more with the story.

The tracking shots that he curates are simply marvellous. And maybe thats why it’s so beautiful.its nothing fancy or experimental. Plain and simple. But of course helicopters and cranes were used for most of them. New Zealand is PERFECT for orcs and elves running around mountains. the camera work that establishes the location throughout the films are colour graded nicely and whatnot, but it probably isn’t too hard to film an already scenic locale. those are one of the defining features of the film, the view and how were made to see middle earth.

The most famous camera trick of course are the forced perspective (angles) he uses to make the hobbits look small while the wizards, elves and dwarves larger. They achieve that by placing the hobbbits farther away from the camera whilst the ‘larger’ characters are at a normal distance. And when we see hobbits from behind and lets say they were walking off screen, Peter jackson used children as stunt doubles.

But my personal favourite camera gimmick is in the first LOTR, where Frodo senses that he and his friends were followed (fig 1). Peter Jackson made the forest sort of morph inwards and shifting the motion forwards.

Me and my brother had a go at trying to get the same effect. So, you start of with the subject focused and nicely framed, then you drag the camera backwards whilst simultaneously zooming back into subject. A dolly was probably used for the movie.

Epiphany:
One needs to be familiar and equally passionate about the things they do, in this case show/present. Peter Jackson could have used so many other countries or even make it all Computer Generated. but he chose to include his homeland as his playground. It was all in place and well thought of. How do you make a country known for sheep into the place where middle earth was mostly filmed.