From Sprint comes the latest on what has recently been shot in the Rangipo region and around Tongariro…
Continue ReadingFrom Sprint comes the latest on what has recently been shot in the Rangipo region and around Tongariro lately, no details as of WHAT was shot, only the scenes…
What has been shot in the recent days has been the following.
The Black Gates of Mordor scenes, Chetwood Forest, Emyn Muil West, The foot of Mount Doom and the Gorgorath Plains.
A little report on how PJ is using his body doubles, and how it’s not all CGI ‘Shrinking’ that’s going on down in NZ, plus the names of a few of these ‘Body Doubles’ you’ll never see anywhere else! [More]
As we all know, Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves and Men come in all shapes and sizes, but in the real world the actors who are playing these characters are of average size and build. We have all heard about the digital ‘shrinking’ that WETA and Peter Jackson are planning to use, but there are more realistic (yes I said more realistic) than CGI and much cheaper ways to get the process done:
Body Doubles
And in this case, it seems that almost every character has their ‘Large’ or ‘Small’ double waiting on the sidelines to step in front of the camera.
We realize that the actors playing the hobbits would need doubles of much smaller stature to stand in at certain parts of the story, but why would, say Gandalf and Legolas need ‘large’ doubles? Well, just flip the coin, and look at it the other way: if we have a shot of the Frodo body double walking along with Ian McKellen, it looks perfect, but what if we wanted a shot of Elijah Wood walking along with Gandalf? Elijah and Ian do not match the proportions of Frodo and Gandalf, so in comes the 7 foot tall Gandalf stand-in and suddenly Elijah is Hobbit-sized!
TheOneRing.net has learned the names of some of the ‘small’ and ‘large’ body doubles; these folks are unknowns, but work just as hard as the stars themselves!
From an earlier report we know that the Hobbit body doubles are mostly from India. I do think, however that most of the rest are local Kiwis, here they are:
Gimli (Small): Brett Beattie
Legolas (Big): Paul Randall
Gandalf (Big): Paul Randall
Pippin (Small): Fon
Merry (Small): Kiran Shah/Murugan
Sam (Small): Bhoja Kannada
Most of the Hobbits, and as you can see Gandalf and Legolas, have the same body doubles… they must switch around from time to time.
The latest newsletter is away! Do you want to receive our weekly newsletter? Packed with tons of info to keep you up to date on the latest? Plus filled with exclusives from time to time? Join the list of more than 1600 mailing list Ringers! Sign up now! [More]
You can catch Sean Astin (Sam) in ‘Boy Meets Girl’ on TMN. [More]
You can see Ian Holm (Bilbo) in ‘The Advocate’ on Cinemax. [More]
I haven’t received any answers correct or incorrect to the last Tolkien Fun Section, are the questions too hard??? Hurry up folks! I’ve got a million of ’em……Gamgee
