Taking time out from the production of extra scenes destined for the Special Extended DVD Edition of Return of the King, Joe Letteri, Weta Digital’s visual effects supervisor, takes us through the final instalment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Joe Letteri
Letteri worked at ILM starting in 1991 on Star Trek 6 and was responsible for the look development and lighting design for the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Other productions he worked on at ILM included The Flintstones, Casper, Mission Impossible, Star Wars: A New Hope Special Edition, Jack Frost, Magnolia and Daylight.

Letteri joined Weta Digital as visual effects supervisor at the start of the preproduction for Lord of the Rings The Two Towers, continuing with the third film Return of the King. “The thing that was most intriguing for me“, explains Letteri, “was the idea that Peter Jackson was building this whole world, Middle Earth, and Gollum was also looming as a big challenge for The Two Towers. Ever since Jurassic Park I’d spent a lot of time on creature and skin development and Gollum would take this to the next level.“

The effects load
Bringing the fantasy world of Lord of the Rings to the big screen required a substantial amount of visual effects shots to recreate a wide range of locations and creatures. The first instalment, Fellowship of the Ring featured around 400 effects shots; while The Two Towers featured almost double the shots at 775. Following the trend, Return of the King featured almost double the amount of shots as the previous film at around 1,500. “We completed more shots in the final film than we did in the first two films combined“, admits Letteri. “Half of those shots were done in the last two months before the deadline“.

With a similar post-production timeframe to the previous films, the completion of Return of the King was a significant achievement. “The way we did it was with a lot of preparation“, explains Letteri. “We have a terrific pipeline at Weta Digital geared towards creating large-scale scenes and our really talented crew know their roles. The animation department worked well with the model department. With creature modelling, everyone knew how to set things up so when animated, everything moves properly. Muscles do the right thing, textures work with body surfaces, and shaders work with lighting, compositing and photography. The whole system was also set up to mimic the real world with real-world measurements for scale, photographic standards, printing, compositing and colour. All this gave us a commonality we could all work towards.“