"JACKSON:" "I thought, "I'm never going to make three films back-to-back again."" "Never such a long shoot." "I never realized that 10 years later we were doing it all over again." "BLANCHETT:" "if anyone can keep the spirit of the book it's Peter and Fran and Philippa and the gang." "BOYENS:" "In the scramble to get a movie made sometimes you don't really know where you are at any one time but I remember the day when I knew we were back in Middle-earth." "[ALL LAUGHING]" "WOOD:" "it's a mixture of nostalgia and surrealism and I didn't know how to, ha, ha, process it." "FREEMAN:" "That was probably what Pete was, rightfully, mindful of is like, what happens when a load of people descend on a small space?" "The Lonely Mountain." "FREEMAN:" "Lots of men, lots of testosterone all acting the hell out of each other." "You know what I mean?" "SERKIS:" "I took a bashing over those two weeks." "I took a real bashing." "And the thought of sitting in front of a monitor watching 3D with glasses on I thought, "Bring it on, bring it on."" "MAN 1:" "The process of making this film is one where everybody is just trying to keep up and deal with things that are happening on the day and sometimes they're quite major." "MAN 2:" "Everyone went, "Okay, if we can achieve that in that much time then we can make this movie." "We can get it done."" "TAYLOR:" "it's rare that a challenge will be so great that myself or our team are sort of hitting our heads against a wall." "But I think we were close to it." "McKELLEN:" "I've felt miserable, and thought, perhaps, "Has the time come for me to stop acting altogether if I can't cope with these difficulties?"" "[MEN CHATTERING AND McKELLEN LAUGHS]" "MAN 3:" "I think, in a previous life, quite a few of our construction and design people were part of some medieval torture kind of world, I don't know." "HENNAH:" "We put the same effort and ethic into this and Lord of the Rings but it just got bigger and it got more extensive on The Hobbit." "MAN 4:" "The was one of the things Peter told us very early on:" ""Don't think small." "Think big, think wide."" "[ALL SHOUTING]" "ARMITAGE:" "He has a big picture for the character that I can't quite see yet." "So even though there's stuff here I don't know if I can do it I just know that he'll take me there." "JACKSON:" "The making of the movie was almost walking step by step, stride by stride with our company, as they were on their own journey." "This is a very complicated movie times three, all at once." "This is going to be the hardest thing I ever do in my life, and I will never" "I've actually had enough of these complicated things." "My next movie is going to be really simple." "Whatever it is, it will be simple as hell." "When we made The Lord of the Rings, I was absolutely sure that was going to be a once in a lifetime experience." "Just run forward and give him a big hug." "And, you know, I thought, "it's done."" "it was an amazing experience." "Finished." "Then, you know, time carries on and post Rings he gets into the world of King Kong and then there starts to be these rumblings of:" ""What's going to happen with The Hobbit?"" "After The Lord of the Rings finished, all of us are, of course, anxious." "When is The Hobbit going to happen?" "CROWD [CHANTING]:" "Hobbit!" "Hobbit!" "Hobbit!" "JACKSON:" "Let's not shut TheOneRing.net down just yet." "[CROWD CHEERING]" "FALCONER:" "And there was all this fan build up and excitement about trying to get it made." ""Let The Hobbit happen," I think, was the campaign." "The idea of doing The Hobbit was always there in terms of the fact that The Lord of the Rings trilogy had been successful." "The studio was keen to do it, but there were rights issues involved which were quite complicated." "Primarily, because Warner Bros. didn't own all the rights." "They were shared between Warner Bros. and MGM." "A historical situation, I think, that goes right back to the '60s, actually when Tolkien originally sold the film rights." "And around 2008 there was a real will to sort out the rights issue." "But Peter had made the decision, "I don't need to direct this."" "The first time I ever mentioned it, or asked Pete if The Hobbit was ever something he would consider we were on location on Rings somewhere in a forest and we had a bit of downtime, and I just kind of:" ""Would you ever think about making The Hobbit after this is all done now that you've spent the time establishing the world of Middle-earth?"" "And he was quick to answer with, "No, not interested in that."" "I was always unsure whether I should direct The Hobbit." "I didn't really want to end up in a position where I was thinking back to what I did in The Lord of the Rings." "Feeling like I was competing with myself." "But on the other hand we kind of feel a sentimental attachment, a sort of ownership to the Middle-earth that's been put on the screen." "So the concept was that we would produce it and Fran and Philippa and I would be involved in the script as writers, possibly with somebody else and we'd have another director come on board." "He had a very strong inkling of who he wanted to direct it very early on." "JACKSON:" "Guillermo del Toro was one of our favorite filmmakers and he was very enthusiastic about doing it." "In our mind he was a director that would do an interesting version of The Hobbit." "I am exploding with the desire to just, argh, showing everything." "It's fun, but it's challenging, and it requires you to have your stuff together." "You know, you have to do your homework every day." "I really trust that we're in good shape." "BOYENS:" "We began writing with Guillermo and that was wonderful." "But, unfortunately, we had no green-light." "Literally, the movies weren't green-lit." "However, during that time, Warner Bros. were still funding the preproduction so Guillermo was able to do a lot of the work the director would do in that year and a half before you start rolling the camera." " That's great." "That's my favorite." " Okay." "LEE:" "Like Peter, Guillermo is really passionate about design." "DEL TORO:" "That's great." "It's a very intense and enjoyable period." "JACKSON:" "We had a workshop, we're building maquettes and I think they're even starting to build armor." "There was a lot of money being spent." "And yet, there was no deal between MGM and Warner Bros." "And when a deal was getting close when it felt like there was a deal, then MGM got into some financial problems." "That got to the state that each of our proposed start dates with Guillermo got pushed." "Delayed, delayed, delayed." "We got to the point where it really was difficult to maintain the drive that you need to make a film when you're in this suspended state." "And so it became a question of whether Guillermo waited for the next 6-month delay or does he move on and jump on board one of the other projects he was developing." "That's ultimately what happened around May and June in 2010." "HOWE:" "I remember the meeting where he announced that he had to leave." "And was very clearly heartbroken." "MULLANE:" "I saw Peter's face, which was gray." "And I thought the whole thing had just folded, to be honest." "It was a horrible moment." "We understood why he needed to move on." "Respected that decision." "But it did leave us with the issue of, "Okay, so, what now?"" "Peter didn't immediately, like, pick up the reins, either." "I think a lot of people think that." "That as soon as Guillermo left, Peter was in." "That was not the case." "I think Peter kind of struggled with it." "At the point that Guillermo left a substantial amount of money had been spent and a huge amount of work had been done." "And we talked about it and said:" ""Do we now find somebody else who would like to make The Hobbit?"" "And essentially start that journey again." "Or do we help the studio in a very difficult situation and do I step in and do it?" "MULLANE:" "I was in a tricky position with agents trying to start doing deals with people that we were wanting." "And agents were going, "Hang on a minute." "You don't have a director." "So, you know, we can't." "And you're not actually green-lit completely."" "And I spoke with Carol, producer, and said, "I'm completely stuck now."" "And she went, "Right." "Let's go and see Peter."" "And we went and saw him." "And I said, "I can't really go any further because nobody can take it seriously." "They need to know if there's some certainty here, because there is none."" "And I'll never forget." "He went, "You're absolutely right."" "Picked up the phone." "I think he was calling Ken Kamins, Peter's manager and he went, "Ken, we can't move ahead until this is confirmed." "So we need to confirm this." "And it was like, "Excellent." "All right." "Um." "Good." Heh." "It might be interesting to see Gandalf in something like this." "You think:" ""Oh, my God, Gandalfs gotten trapped."" "BOYENS:" "By this stage, I think, Peter had fallen in love with the story." "We'd spent 18 months writing it." "We had a lot of ideas." "It took us a few weeks after Guillermo left to really make up our mind to do it." "And then we still didn't have the green-light." "I mean, that's what is easy to forget now." "That after Guillermo left, it was another four months, maybe five months, before MGM did sort out its financial problems and we knew we were making the film." "Just sort of pick Bag End out as being the focus." "FALCONER:" "When we heard that Peter was going to step in and direct it it was like coming home, because he was there leading the charge for us on those first three films, and it's hard to imagine those happening without Pete." "Put the front entrance there, the main entrance there and put Dale" " Kind of cheat Dale down there a little bit..." "At the point that we got the green-light and everyone wanted to make these films I suddenly looked up and found myself with very little time to prepare." "On The Lord of the Rings I had two and a half years to prepare for three movies." "And on The Hobbit, I had about five months to prepare." "Valentine's Day, the 14th of February, was our original start to shooting." "The first question we all had was:" ""What's going to change and what's staying the same?"" "In terms of Guillermo's designs I looked at it and I thought, "This would be an amazing Guillermo del Toro film."" "But I can't do that." "I can't suddenly step in and impersonate another filmmaker." "All the ones I've identified as the current favorite. it would be good to do our layout." "What I thought I had to do at that point was to say, "Okay, you're the guy that made The Lord of the Rings." "Get back into that zone." "Get back into that headspace."" "TAYLOR:" "For me and our team at the design studio, we began a process of redesign because, of course, Peter is a director of his own vision and he therefore needed to remodel the work to suit the way he wanted to visualize the world." "We were able to start casting the film, to see people in particular roles." "It gave us the energy of, "We're doing this. it's going to happen."" "There was quite a long period in the years between The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit." "And Fran and I just took the attitude, "Well, if we end up doing The Hobbit it'll be because that's where fate has pushed us."" "So now, 10 years after The Lord of the Rings, we find ourselves back on set with essentially, the same crew." "So I've sort of done the once in a lifetime experience twice in my lifetime." "But not a third time." "There won't be a third time." "Whatever the best plan that's laid, sometimes you can never predict the humps on the road that will throw you off." "And we were ultimately left with just a matter of a few months before we started shooting." "At that point in time we were ramping up at record numbers of people." "We were trying to find crew from all over the world to come and facilitate Dwarven prosthetics, Dwarven hands, weapons." "Pretty much crafts and skill basis from all over the world." "The first thing to do is probably just to bog up a few of those and also then make a few that are more crooked." "HENNAH:" "We were going to be building over a hundred sets in four studios and I can't say we actually panicked but we started to develop strategies to make that happen." "I mean, one of them was we started to work out how to utilize our spaces and our facilities better." "And one of the ways we did that was put on a night art director a night team who could be very effective." "And so we basically got our studios working 24 hours a day, seven days a week." "The pressure was on." "Designs still needed to be locked off manufacturing was going guns." "We were casting hot metal, we were machining, we were forging we were molding and casting with urethanes and polyesters." "We've got 11 of the 13 Dwarves here, and this is final approval on the prosthetics sculpt before I take it and show the director tomorrow." "We were starting to come up with some beard and hair designs and some early concept passes." "Alan and John were furiously working into it, the Costuming Department. it was crazy." "So it's the excitement and buzz, but it's also quite a challenge to produce something so quickly." "The Camera Department had already started because that was quite a massive undertaking." "We had to turn over cameras within a couple of weeks of actually getting the equipment out of the boxes, out of the crates." "At one point we had A Stage itself, which was quite a large stage." "We had almost like a factory going with the rigs and various accessories and people building boxes with networking systems and sync pulse generators and wireless systems." "And we were very much learning the ropes at that point." "So there were many, many things that still had to be solved:" "Mechanical things, electronic things." "We had to basically hook it up and get it to run very quickly." "This balcony thing is a little bit too tall." "The railing, I think it should come down about two-thirds that height." "We had constant reviews of sets we were building key props we were introducing." "It's a scramble, you know?" "It's January, the actors are turning up." "I had no concept of what was ahead." "None whatsoever." "We were wondering, thinking, "What's it all going to be like?" "What's the makeup going to be like?" "What costumes?" "Where are we going to go?"" "Because we hadn't even really read the script." "Then we had our first taste of what it was going to be like." "We were given a tour of the studio." "Go on." "Go on, kiss it." "[CHATTERING]" "[INDISTINCT DIALOGUE]" "MAN 1: it's just amazing." " No way." "Oh, my God." "MAN 1:" "it's just extraordinary." "MAN 2:" "Look at that." "I am so impressed." "BROWN:" "it kind of felt like it was really happening." "This wasn't a surreal dream." "I was actually on this journey with these guys." "And then suddenly, the Dwarf Boot Camp happened." "[INDISTINCT DIALOGUE]" "[GRUNTING]" "Hey!" "Whoa!" "[ALL HUMMING]" "The boot camp was essentially a training period." "During which we were introduced to various aspects of what we would be required to do through the production." "Once you're on set shooting the movie, there's very little time to actually train." "So it allows the actor to look like they were born doing this." "And they've been doing it for, in the case of a Dwarf, a hundred years." "They're not just somebody, whoa, doing it nervous and doing it for the first time." "You want that confidence, you want that sense of:" ""Okay, this is who I am and this is what I do."" "And that only comes with quite prolonged training." "Roll and pop yourself back up, okay?" "BOSWELL:" "Tim Wong, who was on my team would put all the Dwarf actors through a routine to ascertain their fitness, basically." "You had people like Graham McTavish who'd been training for months leading up to this role and then had other people who hadn't done as much training and preparation for the physical side, anyway." "BROWN:" "Yeah, I'd never done any exercise prior to this in my whole life." "Heh, heh, heh." "Everybody then was beginning at varying levels of ability because you've got John Callen, 65." "I'm quite sure I was very frustrating for a number of other people who are so much more agile than me." "You know, you had some guys who'd never done a forward roll since they were 7 or 8 or 9 years old." "Can I do a forward roll?" "Who can't?" "I can't." "Those of us who maybe let ourselves go in recent years had to confront some challenges about aerobic fitness and weight." "WONG:" "Five." "Six." "FREEMAN:" "You were invited to do as much as you wanted to do." "Given that, if you want to be fit to do this job you'd probably be quite wise to get fit, you know what I mean?" "WONG:" "Three." "WONG:" "Martin joined us, I think, a week or two later." "Because of his character and the way Bilbo is in his ability he probably didn't have to be there." "But he told us that he wanted to be there." "WONG:" "Eight." "We did a lot of time with Tim Wong when we first started." "Our basic sword movements." "WONG:" "Six." "Seven." "It is muscle memory, and it is-- You're doing it so often that you don't have to think about it." "And that's the way it works." "[GRUNTING]" "We've been really chucked into the deep end, but all this we've been doing it as the 14 of us." "Not only do we have the actors to deal with, we had all the scale Dwarves to deal with." "We call them scalies, actually." "The scale doubles." "They ranged from 5' 2" down to about 4 foot." "We had some people return from The Lord of the Rings who'd been scale doubles." "There was Kiran Shah and Trevor and Brett." "And it was really good to have them back doing the work." "One hundred and two, 103, 104..." "All the scale doubles were put through the stunt training because we knew we were going to fight, we were going to fall we were going to do a lot of things." "They were probably going to be doing as much fighting and falling as the stunt guys." "So we had to try to make them as skillful and believable as the stunt guys." "[GRUNTING]" "We actually had a whole liege people training them because they had so many specific skills that they needed for their performance." "Nathan and Nick, in particular, were there for their acting." "Initially, we had the scale doubles and we trained them separately from the actors." "That was because we really wanted them to feel they were at a really good level before going to the actors." "WOMAN:" "Okay." "Rehearsing." "Sometimes they would be playing a scene opposite Sir Ian McKellen." "So you don't want to put kind of chops up there to work with them." "When you hear the word "noise," look, see where that white cross is?" "That's where you're looking, and then you can react to Gandalfs line." "In a perfect world, there would've been the perfect sized actors with the same credentials and qualities that our actors had, but there isn't." "BLAKE:" "What we needed were people who were just small people." "We needed their proportions to be very, very similar to the actors whose roles they were doubling." "So, for us, it didn't matter, male, female." "It was all about height, body type, and attitude." "MEISTER:" "So we had a gas fitter, we had a mom who was going to swap out with her husband." "He was going to be the at-home dad." "I don't think they quite believe that Mum's been sword fighting and wrestling." "Ha, ha, ha." "It's awesome." "MEISTER:" "We had a recovery nurse, we also had a former police detective." "Argh!" "And a young woman straight out of high school who wasn't anything yet in terms of career." "So we kind of had to teach them the film industry." "We had to teach them some of the things that they had to be required to do." "Nathan and I both have a lot of experience teaching acting." "So what we really developed was like an intensive first-year drama school course." "I would like you all to cast your eyes over the script from the top and identify what you think is the first beat in this scene." "In a hole, in the ground, there lived a Hobbit not a nasty, dirty, wet hole full of worms and oozy smells." "This was a Hobbit hole and that means good food, a warm hearth, and all the comforts of home." "During our rehearsal period, our boot camp period we were called to the read-through for the first film." "Have you seen the state of my kitchen?" "They've pillaged my pantry, there's mud trod into the carpet." "And I'm not going to tell you what they've done to the bathroom." " They've all but destroyed the plumbing." "MEN:" "Ha, ha, ha." "We were so nervous about that read-through, because they film that, of course." "It'll melt the flesh off your bones in the blink of an eye." "A flash of light and then poof." "You're nothing more than a pile of ash." "[MEN LAUGHING]" "Even though everybody says, "Relax, it's okay." "Nobody's judging you."" "Everybody's judging you." "Everybody." "Down to the guy bringing in the tea." "Yeah, that first read-through, that was really nerve-wracking for me because I definitely didn't have Thorin's voice at that point." "I am telling you, we act now or we lose what is rightfully ours." "And I was experimenting with vocal tone, and pitch and sound and at the same time you're nervous because you're thinking that Pete, Fran and Philippa are sitting there wondering why they cast this British actor who's not quite old enough, so I had all my reservations." "MAN:" "Must've come down from the Ettenmoors." "They cannot move in daylight." "MAN:" "No." " So they must have a cave nearby." "Just hearing the read-through was extraordinary." "Thinking about what was ahead was neat." "Really, it was for them to hear the story, to hear those characters evolving." "And it was interesting. it's always good to hear the script off the page." "It allows you to feel the pace of the film." "It's been foretold when the ravens of Erebor return to the Mountain, the reign of the beast will end." "At the first script read-through, the true realization of the journey we were about to embark on suddenly came to life." "It's all going swimmingly well, and I'm excited." "FREEMAN:" "Well written, folks." " Yeah, it's well written." "BOYENS:" "We were in the most critical part of pre-production." "And I remember getting a phone call saying Peter had been rushed to the hospital because he had an ulcer and it had perforated." "[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING]" "Award-winning, Kiwi filmmaker, Sir Peter Jackson had a health scare and filming of The Hobbit will be delayed while he recovers from surgery for a bleeding ulcer." "Sir Peter was admitted to Wellington Hospital last night after suffering from stomach pains." "So we got all the heads of departments got them all up in the cafeteria and let them know that Peter was quite sick." "I've said to our team here there's a few things in your life that you always visualize as completely solid." "It's like when you were a young child you never can imagine your dad falling unwell or being frightened of anything." "And to a certain degree it was like that with Peter." "He's always been this solid rock of a person soldiering through any storm." "It was not the most pleasant experience, I can tell you and the world, to go through but I was sitting there recuperating and storyboarding and actually working with Phil and Fran from my sickbed, as it were." "Of course, the immediate thought is, "Well, we'll go into some sort of hiatus." "Everything will stop for a while." But that wasn't to be the case." "In fact, we were going to carry on." "The camera guys all stayed on." "They kept testing." "All right, here we go." "This is the 3ality rig, straight handheld, no back brace." "We were able to just push out so many kinks in the system between, you know, what they were doing on set what was happening down at Park Road Post." "A huge amount of problem-solving." "The actors were here when that happened so they got a slightly extended training period." "I think their boot camp lasted a bit longer." "We got an extra month training together which was good, because we got to work out our characters and we got to spend time with all the other Dwarves." "We got to know each other, we got to socialize quite a bit. it was great." "I love it, I love it..." "How's my beautiful Molly?" "What a beautiful girl." "She's such a good girl." "Monday morning around here." "Can't get any better really, can it?" "This is Popeye." "This is Ori" " Oh, hello." "This is Ori's horse." "Beautiful." "We share beards." "This is Gypsy." "Gypsophila." "She's a beautiful mare." "As if I wasn't lucky enough, we get to go horse riding." "We have horse riding because we do actually ride horses in the film and we have to have competence so that you can actually sit on a horse on set." "Safety both for us and for the other people on set but also just to make it look like we actually know what we're doing." "HADLOW:" "Our riding instructors are just incredible." "The whole feeling of that and that's another thing that comes with it." "This wonderful feeling of camaraderie when we're out there on the horses." "[HUMMING]" "Good girl, good girl." "Yes." "I do quite like riding and we've done a lot of riding training." "So I was determined that Thorin wasn't going to be a poor rider." "But you know what?" "I really got it and, God, I love that horse, Shaman." "We got on so well." "I love horses." "I was brought up with horses as a kid." "It's just magical." "And again, that's part of our training." "The rest of my day:" "a bit of sword training, the gym and then an early start for me because I've got a 4:00 call tomorrow morning, so ah." "Getting into your ready." "Go!" "CALLEN:" "Terry Notary was our movement instructor." "He worked in the Cirque du Soleil troupe and before that was a United States representative gymnast." "I mean, he's just amazing." "He has an incredible ability to create movements for, you know any type of creature that you could possibly imagine." "[GROWLING]" "Let's start just moving the weight side to side." "Feel that weight distribution." "Terry took us through a long period of learning how to move as Dwarves." "Because they wanted it to be a signature movement that is unique to them rather than a human style of moving." "Dwarves have a deep foundation in their core and they leave a large footprint." "And they're gut-driven, so they lead with their gut." "We were spending lots of days with our stomachs pushed out kind of walking around this room in a very different way than humans do." "Excellent." "Excellent." "The walks were the trickiest thing." "It's getting the sort of lollop out of the walk." "Humans rise as they walk whereas a Dwarf is low and it just moves like a tank." "That's it." "That's it." "There it is." "You feel that?" "That's it." "Right there." "They're not characters that are light and that bounce or jump." "They're characters that when they move, their feet stay connected to the ground." "They are people of the earth." "That's it." "That's it." "Yes." "You concentrate on the center of you and you move accordingly." "Demonstrate Dwarf movement to you very easily." "So that's me at 5' 7" and a half." "So I just go down to that." "So it's like-- it's deep. it's down." "As Terry says, "Get down." "Get down, guy."" "Get it down." "Get it down." "Shake it down." ""You've gotta get down."" "Get it down." "Get it down." " "Just keep down."" " Keep down." "Keep down." "One of the most important things is how you move." "And the shoes make a hell of a difference." "McTAVISH:" "Oh, yeah, the boots." "Oh, boy." "Yeah." "Those boots, the first day, they brought them in." "And they just looked so big." "We pulled on these big boots and started walking around in them." "And everybody's thinking, "Oh, my God, this is so peculiar."" "My shoe is about this size." "And lifting your leg off the floor is about as much as you can do." "Ha, ha." "As soon as you got those boots on, there was really only one way to move which was exactly what Terry had been aiming for." "When you first put them on you feel like you've just suddenly wrapped your feet in concrete." "And then, "Please run now."" ""Please fight."" "Yeah, you can't imagine how you're gonna do it." "Left leg forward." "And then we did a lot of gestures, gesture exercises where they would come up with different gestures than from our culture but still have a recollection of meaning to us, you know, as viewer." " Brother." " Brother." "And this is people who know each other very well." "[ALL LAUGHING]" "[CHATTERING]" "WOMAN:" "Thank you for coming down to New Zealand." "Just a quick question." "We take our Hobbits pretty seriously down here." "How important to you guys was it that The Hobbit was shot down in New Zealand?" "It does feel like home." "We've all settled in quite easily." "And the weather's so fantastic and it's freezing cold back home." "This is the closest thing to summer camp I think I'm ever gonna get, really." " So I'm loving it." "ACTORS:" "Ha, ha, ha." "It is genuinely lovely and the people are bending over backwards to look after us and they're really appreciative of the fact that those of us who've left family behind and are starting new families here..." "ACTORS:" "Ha, ha, ha." "...they're being very mindful of that." "WOMAN:" "Richard, we haven't heard from you yet." "Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role?" "I just think it's a really amazing opportunity to take a character from a book that I was brought to as a child and that I was" "I mean, my first experience on stage was in a production of The Hobbit." " Really?" " Really?" "At the Alex Theatre in Birmingham." "And I played an Elf." "And Gollum was a little papier-mâché puppet with a man offstage on a microphone." "MAN:" "There's a lot of singing in The Hobbit." "Is anyone not gonna do their own singing?" "We'll all be doing our own singing and some of us will be singing for everybody else at the same time as well." "[ACTORS LAUGHING]" "[ALL MAKING NOISES]" "[ALL MAKING NOISES]" "As part of our Dwarf boot camp, we had Dwarf singing lessons." "[ALL HUMMING]" "Well, I've got a fantastic vocal warm-up, and I made them all do it." "Vi-va-vi-va-vi-va-vi..." "ALL:" "Vi-va-vi-va-vi-va-vi..." "That was wonderful." "I mean, everyone was joking and fooling around all the time." "There was" " Oh, I mean, it was just insane." " There's ******* Bilbo Baggins." "ACTORS:" "Ha, ha, ha." "Let's get him!" " Kill him!" " Kill him!" "I definitely think the actors were enjoying themselves." " They got a great sense of humor." " We took it seriously though." "Don't get the idea we're just out there to have fun." "We were working." "FREEMAN:" "I was just gonna come in and watch and listen, if that's all right." "MAN:" "This works out wonderfully." "All the actors at this point were sort of in their workshop phase." "So part of that was all sort of, you know, being together and going through these experiences together as a group." "Can we make a circle?" "[CHATTERING]" "It was actually fantastic to have Martin in the rehearsal room because he became the focus, and then all the Dwarves looked to him and were taunting him and could focus everything at Martin." "And he was great." "He was great to have around." "[ACTORS SINGING]" "[ALL LAUGHING]" "[ALL SPEAKING IN DWARVISH]" "That's it." "That's it." "And it's" " Just watch it's not Khazad." "Like, Khazad-dûm." "BROWN:" "Khaza." " Yeah, that's it." "We have Dwarvish lessons as part of our dialect coaching." "Absolutely fascinating." "And hearing Roisin and Leith do it and helping us learn was absolutely extraordinary." "It was a fantastic time getting to know and work with the actors in terms of the language work, introducing them to Khuzdul, to Dwarvish." "So what we want with the K-H, as in "Khazad-dûm" we've been going "Khazad."" " Bring it forward, so it's more "Khazad."" " Khazad" "Khazad-dûm." "Khuzdul has a very different feel to any of the other languages, I think." "It has a roughness to it as well." "[SPEAKING IN DWARVISH]" "So it's that feeling of, you know, just clearing something away." "It's harsh and it has those harsh tones." "[SPEAKING IN DWARVISH]" "McPHERSON:" "Yeah, so the K..." "[GRUNTS]" "There's a raspy sound." "There's a heavy sound." "It kind of really matches how the Dwarves move." "So let's try "Iron Hills," which is Urâd Zirnul." " Urâd Zirnul McPHERSON:" "That's exactly right." " So it just kind of becomes" " Do it exactly right again, John." " No, it won't happen ever again." "McPHERSON:" "Ha, ha, ha." " Certainly not when the cameras are rolling." "McPHERSON:" "No." "It's a very in-house, very private thing to talk Dwarvish." "Their language is secret." "They have a secret name." "We believe that if you say your name, you're giving your power away to someone and they can steal it and use it." "That gives you an ownership." "That gives you a particular connection to your character that I think is unique." "Show them how much Dwarf language you've learned." "[MUTTERING]" " Paying attention, weren't you?" " Yeah." "[SPEAKS IN DWARVISH]" "That means, "Not fit for a fight."" "William Kircher has a very particular kind of connection to Dwarvish because his character can only speak Dwarvish is not capable of speaking in the common tongue." "The entire interview is gonna have to be in Khuzdul because that's all I respond to so, please, fire away." "Heh, heh." "[SPEAKS IN DWARVISH]" "Like he said, never trust an Elf." "I hope you're all happy." "The things I do to get an extra few weeks of prep." "[ALL LAUGHING]" "It was the only plan I could think of." "YORKE:" "it was nice to have Peter back in charge and making decisions and stuff like that in person." "He recovered." "He had his energy back and his color back and is the same Peter again." "I remember the original Conan the Barbarian, you know, the first Conan film where he had that great big, bronze sword sort of hand and a half or two-handed sword." "You know, he made that fighting look incredibly heavy." "You knew that that sword had got real weight." "So within the boot camp as well, we had weapons training." "I mean, to really sell the weight, I think you also probably need to have to almost" "The weapon's almost gonna pull you off balance and you need to sort of use your foot to catch your balance a couple of times." "I think the good thing with Pete is not only can he tell you what he wants a lot of the times he can actually show you what he wants." "It's making sure that when you do it, it's not too kind of quick." "It should be, you know, if you're leaning back, it should be:" "MAN:" "Yup." "You know, it's almost like you've got to kind of fight against the weight of it but then you gotta... and sort of drag the thing forward." "It's getting that kind of feeling that you're as much fighting the weight of the weapon that you're gonna use and harness all that momentum." "So, what we did was we supplemented with heavy sledge hammers and they would swing them around to get the idea and feel of what a heavy weapon should feel like." "[GRUNTING]" "We worked with sledge hammers, learning how to get that really powerful swing because I have to use the Orcrist sword, which is really heavy and really long and it's quite a hard sword to balance, so I've had to work on my forearm strength so that I can actually wield the sword." "I'm gonna drop it forward and put the blade behind, point it down..." "Steve, the sword master, just takes you through it and by the end, we were zooming about, taking on five guys at once." "[GRUNTS]" "[ALL GRUNTING]" "McTavish just scares the bejesus out of me." "That Scottish man coming at 100 miles going, "Eeh!" "Argh!"" "And even Adam Brown, who's supposed to be my younger brother is scary as hell." "[BOTH GRUNTING]" "I mean, I don't know what's happened." "They're becoming these fervent angry little Dwarves." "[GRUNTS]" "[LAUGHING]" " What are you trying to do to me?" " I'm so sorry." "I think all the Dwarves all loved the fight-training side of things." "Should I be screaming like a baby?" "WONG:" "So the scale doubles had exactly the same weapons as the actors and the stunt doubles so all it would be was that their weapons were a little bit smaller." "[GRUNTING]" "As you can see, everything I have to do, Amy has to do." " So it's Dori, Dori and Dori." " Yeah." "So the aim is to make stunt double Jeremy expendable." " Yeah." " Dori number one, Dori number two..." "Ain't no room for a stunt boy." " Shit!" "My shoes coming off!" "ALL:" "Ha, ha, ha." "I think he's hitting a little hard." "You're gonna get some people who are just a lot more enthusiastic about swinging the weapons around compared to others." "Argh!" "Ah!" "Ah!" "CALLEN:" "Watch out!" "Ah!" "[LAUGHING]" "WONG:" "it's all about control." "Oh, Mum." "It's like being a kid on the playground." "Playing Cowboys and Indians." "Every boy's dream." "It's basically Cowboys and Indians with a paycheck." "It's basically what it is." "I've just been doing archery training." "I would pay to learn how to do archery." "McTAVISH:" "Yes!" "Doing a lot of archery stuff, yeah, yeah." "Kili, he's quite a skillful bowman." "Dwarves shoot their bow horizontally and low-slung." "And we had to do this obstacle course where we had to, like, fire from the hip, turn around and run and fire, and..." "Yes, varying degrees of success." "MAN:" "Ha, ha, ha." " Elegant." "Some people were really not that great." "Well, dare I use the word "shit."" " Oh, ****." "MEN:" "Ha, ha, ha." "Where's the ******* arrow gone?" "Oh, shut your face." "[MEN LAUGHING]" "[MEN LAUGHING]" "Yeah, but you totally forget that you're doing this as part of your job." "Looking back on it now, I think getting us together out in New Zealand all the Dwarves, for boot camp, was vital." "We ended up, I guess, being essentially three months of training." "And apart from getting us fit, we got to bond very, very much as a group." "So that period was invaluable in bringing us all together." "We've all really enjoyed it." "Yeah, I mean, I think that it's pretty commendable to say what these guys went through and what they did was hard work for them." "But I am now very, very fit." "I am." "Heh, heh." "What was achieved in that last two months before the first day of shoot actually defies human endeavor at some level and a real tribute to the teams across all departments that rallied around and got the work done." "When it's actually in pre-production and we haven't actually started to shoot our first scene yet, you can feel the anxiety." "Is this gonna get done in time?" "Is that gonna get done in time?" "You're looking at 18 months ahead and the enormity of the job is kind of almost overwhelming." "But you know what?" "I'm of the feeling that you could, you know add another two or three months to that process and that feeling would sort of still be there." "It would never really go away." "But once you start shooting, you're actually only looking a day or two or a week ahead." "You're just taking it one day at a time." "The beginning of the shoot has a calming influence on the entire company." "One of the things we wanted to do to mark the start of shooting was to do a pöwhiri ceremony." "Pöwhiri is a traditional Mäori welcoming ceremony." "So when you have visitors from away coming to participate in a project we introduce ourselves to one another of the two groups." "A ceremony like that means everything to New Zealanders, all forms." "So it was absolutely the right way for us to start." "[HORN TOOTING]" "Up until the pöwhiri and that morning there was a little bit of foreboding kind of hanging over the whole Hobbitfilm." "And to open it in a very special way put a whole lot of hope into everybody." "[GRUNTING]" "And the pöwhiri is really saying, "We're here." "This is our place." "If you come with peace, then welcome home."" "[GRUNTING]" "And there was a challenge where a feather or a part of a tree is put on the ground and if you come in peace, then you, holding eye contact, have to pick it up." "[GRUNTS]" "And I remember everyone being up in this lovely sort of early-morning lights just waiting to go in." "[GRUNTING]" "FREEMAN:" "We weren't exactly sure what it was gonna be like, you know?" "We'd kind of been prepped for, you know" "Someone had come to talk to us about 20 minutes." "He was saying, "You know, it's a very traditional, age-old Mäori custom." "A sort of greeting and a kind of warning." "So I said, "Presumably, you know, people are gonna be wearing traditional gear, right?" "He said, "Yeah." So I said, "So I suppose it would be nice for us to make an effort."" "Went, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."" "So I arrived basically looking like Dr. Livingstone." "I must have looked ridiculous, know what I mean?" "Because this is New Zealand after all." "And so when someone had told me, "Yeah, make an effort" they meant you wear special all-black shorts and your special jandles." "Give them a shine." "So that's what I think of when I see photographs of it." "Just me looking way overdressed." "[ALL SINGING AND CHANTING IN MÄORI]" "That was really, really emotional, that first day that we came on for the pöwhiri." "That was really special." "I really enjoyed that day." "And my family could come as well." "My girls came, and so you know, they were part of that and they'd never seen that before." "[MÄORI SINGING AND CHANTING]" "I would like to give thanks on behalf of everyone here as visitors for this ceremony, for this celebration for the blessing of the soundstage and for the welcome that you've offered to us." "We're all deeply honored to be here." "And to everyone that has waited so long for this day to begin this extraordinary journey filming The Hobbit I would like to wish them good luck good health and good harmony." "[APPLAUSE]" "[SINGING] Far over the misty mountains cold" "To dungeons deep" "And caverns old" "We must away" "'Ere break of day" "To find our long-forgotten gold" "Each group sings a song." "The song is a vehicle for making sure that the words that were spoken travel to the places where they're supposed to be." "And that kind of puts you a little bit closer to the spirit realm and that's sort of where that tradition comes from." "ACTORS [SINGING]:" "it flaming spread" "The trees like torches" "Blazed with light" "[SINGING IN MÄORI]" "To actually have that traditional ceremony and the feeling of tradition and to bless the production and to start the wheels rolling of this massive machine was an incredible start." "[ALL SINGING IN MÄORI]" "You know, for a long time, I thought that going back to the amazing experience of Lord of the Rings wouldn't be a good idea." "But really, you know, now I've come completely around because films are stressful and they're hard to make but ultimately what makes them fun is the people that you work with." "And the fact that, you know, we're gonna be working with a lot of the old gang with a lot of friends, and obviously making some new friends is really the point of being here so I'm extremely thrilled." "But you know, if somebody came up to me today and said we can carry on pre-production for another six weeks, I'd say:" ""No, no." "Hell no." "Let's just start shooting."" "Finally, this was the day we were starting." "You felt that at that moment." "You've got a huge boulder at the top of a hill and it's just there." "And then you push that boulder." "And then it just develops this life of its own." "And that's kind of what it felt like when we started." "It's like, "Where's this gonna go?"" "BILBO:" "Why don't we have a game of riddles?" "GOLLUM:" "Too many bones, precious." "Not enough flesh!" "JACKSON:" "What you generally try to do at the beginning of a shoot, in your first few days or the first week or so is you try to shoot something that is-- I don't wanna say relatively simple, ha, ha because nothing is ever simple, but something that's sort of contained because we just thought, strategically it would be great to start shooting with Gollum and Bilbo just those two, and it would effectively give all the departments another week or week and a half to finish the work on the Dwarves." "Hey, Andy, how are you?" "All right?" "Love you." "JACKSON:" "it was also good for Andy Serkis who I had only a few weeks earlier invited to be the 2nd unit director." "I got an e-mail from Fran saying:" ""Pete would like you to be a 2nd unit director."" "And I..." "I mean, I must have appeared like some sort of crazy madman because I was looking at it and I was just going:" "it gave Andy a chance to just come to New Zealand, focus on that and get that part of his job done on this film and then his other job which was 2nd unit director, could begin a week or two after that and he was done with the Gollum part." "So that, in hindsight, that worked out really well." "You said, "Ask me a question," and that is my question." "What have I got in my pocket?" "SERKIS: it must give us three guesses, precious. it must give us three." "Very well, three guesses." "Guess away." "FREEMAN: it was really nice to do a little chamber piece first." "It was just two people hammering it out and it was really nice." "[CHATTERING]" "JACKSON:" "Maybe the first thing to do is for you guys to run it and do what you feel like doing, and we'll just see what happens." "We rehearsed it really well because at that time we had the time to rehearse it." " I don't know what your game is." " Games?" "Ha!" "JACKSON:" "Yeah, good, good." "SERKIS:" "Games?" "I love games." "We literally had a couple of days to block it through and Pete just sat back and said:" ""Look, just go where you feel right."" "[PANTING]" "Curse us and splash us." "That's a meaty mouthful." "It made a lot of sense, I think, starting there, for everyone for Martin particularly." "I think if Martin had been faced, for instance, with the scene with the 13 Dwarves it would have been a big thing for him to deal with." "And we use this rock and, like, Sméagol appears at one side of the rock and Gollum appears out of the other." "I think dealing with one..." "Is he lost?" "Well, two personalities, I should say." "We knows." "We knows the way out." "SERKIS:" "That was probably a good place to start." "And Andy is very good, he's very straightforward." "He's not at all precious." "He's, um..." "Precious." "Did we say so, precious?" "FREEMAN:" "He's the ideal actor you wanna be doing that stuff with." "What has it got in its pocketses?" "And, yeah, it was kind of weird just hearing Andy make that voice you know, and sort of suddenly do:" "[FREEMAN THEN SERKIS GASPING AND GURGLING]" "I" " I don't want any trouble, do you understand?" "FREEMAN:" "Because it's something you're so familiar with in pop culture but then you're seeing the creator of it and it's not a joke. it's not an impression." " Is it juicy?" "FREEMAN:" "Keep your distance!" "It's like, "No, this is who I'm playing the scene opposite."" "Let's finish him off now." "Finish him." "[RETCHING]" "No, no." "Wait." "I wanna play." "I kind of felt like anybody could do it, really." "Anybody can play Gollum." "There are so many good impersonators that, you know, would" " Really, anyone can go and do this voice now." "[IMITATING GOLLUM] Bless us and splash us, my precious." "A tasty morsel, yes." "[IMITATING GOLLUM] Gives us a chance, my precious." "Gives us a chance." "While we were in preproduction on the movie before we had the actors arriving in New Zealand I wanted to try to get a head start on some of the early scenes." "WOMAN:" "Action." "FREEMAN:" "A box without hinges, key or lid yet golden treasure inside is hid." "JACKSON:" "I got a couple of actors, Jed Brophy was actually one I got him to come in and perform Gollum." "This is nice, precious." "This is crunchable." "JACKSON:" "I spent a day or two shooting a form of previs with, like a virtual camera." "So it's really the system we built for Tintin." "You come away not with a prototype of the scene but you come away with a good idea here, a good idea there and you just put those in the back of your mind and so eventually several months down the track when you block it with the actors, get other ideas it becomes an amalgam of ideas from different times, different places." " String or nothing." " That's two guesses at once, both wrong." "You lose." "MAN:" "Good morning." " Morning." "SERKIS:" "Yeah, yeah, that's what I need." "Yeah." "So I'm officially the first person in the makeup chair on The Hobbit." " Officially." "Ha-ha-ha!" " That's amazing." "That's something, isn't it?" "[SINGING MAORI FOLK SONG]" "We missed it." "We were actually in the studio but what we were doing at the time of the celebration was we were at the back of stage, actually, dressing the actor a guy called Ravi, who was one of the scale doubles." "We ultimately ended up with 13 days to build this character." "Needed to be fully animatronic on an actor for the first day of shoot." "Ha, ha." "I got a little bit of sleep this morning, but some of them are 48 hours in now." "Dressed Ravi into his outfit, took him on set laid him down and they started filming." "WOMAN:" "You're on now, please." "MAN:" "Your first shot." "The first shot always feels like you are literally standing at the foot of a very, very tall mountain, and you cannot imagine a day when you are gonna be finished shooting this film." "It just feels like it's gonna be the rest of your life." "MAN:" "Action, Andy." "[SERKIS GASPING]" "Yes." "Yes." "Yes." "[SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]" "Unfortunately, an overzealous Andy Serkis bashed him over the rock and managed to smash most of the animatronics within the first hour." "So we had yet another long evening ahead of us getting him fixed for the next day." "Heh, so..." "But it was great." "It was great to be there on the first day." "Very, very challenging, but very rewarding all the same." "WOMAN:" "Coming through." "Thank you, Ravi." "You're wrapped." "Whole thing." "MAN:" "Action." "JACKSON:" "That's it, that's it." "That's great." "That's great." "Thank you." "Perfect." "And action." "GOLLUM:" "The cold, hard lands They bites our hands" "They gnaws our feet" "The rocks and stones They're like old bones" "All bare of meat" "[GOLLUM YELLS]" "Shh!" "Martin is the sort of actor who thrives on the situation being and feeling real." "Bless us and splash us." "That's a meaty mouthful." "Gollum." "Gollum, back." "SERKIS:" "And apart from getting over the fact that he was looking at someone in a crazy suit with dots all over his face and a head-mounted camera you know, once we locked eyes and got on with the scene I think he forgot about all that very quickly." "I think it worried him." "He was entering into this whole other realm of acting in an environment that he hadn't spent much time in." "I'm not used to going into a studio and just seeing banks of computer people." "It's like going into NASA or something." "It's not like going on to a film set for me." "It is now because I know this is the film set." "But at that time it was like, "Why are all these people on computers?" You know." "But then after that you're just in a scene." "You don't see any of that." "You just see Andy giving you this mad creature." "And if he loses, what then?" "Curse us and splash us, my precious is lost!" "We knew our gear were safe, but you throw water..." "There was one scene, and they went crazy, and our facial camera we enter the water, came up and they went: "Zzt!"" "Mustn't ask us!" "Not its business!" "And we were like: "Ooh." Heh, heh." "That's not good." "We had to check to the first AD:" ""You know, cameras aren't really good in water, they don't last."" "She was like, "Well, okay." "We'll have to talk to Pete." We talked to Pete." "Pete said, "How many cameras do you have?"" ""Well, we've got about three more." "You better order some more." Heh, heh." "I think that was day one." "So we did." "We did order some more cameras." "Peter did not want to pull back on Andy's performance." "He stole it." "JACKSON:" "Remember yesterday we did a thing where you lowered the sword and then bring it up again when he makes the threatening move." " If we could go back to that." " Yeah, cool." "Great." "Thank you." "All right, shall we give it a go?" " And action." " Go." "BILBO:" "I'm warning you, don't come any closer." "It's got an Elfish blade." "But it's not an Elfs." "It's about a 12-, 13-minute scene." "And we treated it like a piece of theater." "[SERKIS YELLS]" "MAN:" "Reset." "Reset." "SERKIS:" "We just kept resetting and doing it over and over again." "Let's have another one." "Oh, come on." "Do it again." "Do it again." "Let's do another one, but it was terrific." "SERKIS:" "Pete must have shot it over the course of 10 days and we shot the scene from beginning to end every single time, pretty much." "What have I got in my pocket?" "Not fair." "Not fair." "It is against the rules." " Ask us another one." " You said, "Ask me a question."" "That is my question." "What have I got in my pocket?" "Three guesses." "It must give us three, precious." "Three guesses." "Very well then, guess away." "FREEMAN:" "We did that scene a lot of times uncut, and it was lovely." "I could do that all day." "SERKIS:" "He stole it!" "[GRUNTING]" "And cut it." "Thank you, that's terrific." "I think we can check the gate on that." "MAN:" "You all right, Andy?" " Yeah." "It really taxed me, really taxed me." "Unh!" "Getting back into those positions and crawling over those rocks took a real bashing over those two weeks." "JACKSON:" "Reset." "Although, I like to think nothing has changed in the last 12 years my knees would like to disagree with that." "When we started doing this 10 years ago, we weren't even sure if it was gonna work as a potential tool to bring Gollum to life." "It was set in a very strange place, a very freakish sort of activity that happened in a tin shed away from everyone." "For a long time it was not even considered, you know, proper acting." "You know, I mean, it's crazy, but it hasn't been in the past." "Whereas, I think, now people are realizing that it is just another way of recording an actor's performance." "First, they champ Then they stamp" "Then they stand still" "Teeth?" "Teeth." "Ha-ha-ha!" "Oh, yes, my precious." "But we" " We only have nine." "[GROWLS]" "Our turn." "With head-mounted cameras and being able to shoot live on set meaning that there's no disconnect whatsoever." "As nobody sees?" "SERKIS:" "The performance that's caught on the day between Martin and I there's no going back and repeating that." "So there's much more of an emotional connection." "It was exciting. it was intimidating to see some of the shots. it was like:" ""Oh, wow, how are we gonna get Gollum to do that?"" "Like when he's trying to find an answer to a riddle or he's getting really angry." "He was pulling expressions that we'd never seen him do before." "Eggses!" "One thing we really wanted to push was performance capture." "We wanted to be able to literally channel Andy Serkis through Gollum, as best we can." "Every decision we make with Gollum we always look to Andy whether it's his skin textures or the wateriness of his eyes or the redness of his eyes." "He stole it." "As lighters and compositors, our goal is to make that look like Andy as much as we can, you know." "CLAYTON:" "The sliding of his skin as well, all those little extra details in CG that's what makes it feel real and compelling." "What we did is we got Andy." "He's a great friend." "So he came in and we did a face cast on him and we got his skin scans and so we were able to use Andy's skin scan." "So his pores-- And put them on the digital Gollum." "So there's a lot more of Andy into the new Gollum than there was in the old one." "I find myself laughing so many times when we're watching the reviews." "We know safe path for Hobbitses." "It's so Andy." "I mean, it's almost more Andy than Andy." " I didn't say anything." " We wasn't talking to you." "I mean, in the design of Gollum, you know, he's not so scarred." "I actually think he looks pretty hot, actually." "He's far more attractive than he was in Rings." "[YELLS]" "ACEVEDO:" "We had to take the scars off of his back because back on Lord of the Rings, he was captured and tortured by Sauron." "So this is before all that, so we had to take all that kind of stuff away." "We actually physically build the anatomy." "The muscles are attached to the skeleton." "So everything going on under the skin is true to the science that's there." "All those details go into giving you a sense that when you see this on the screen, visually, you're perceiving a weight and an organic quality to the character that feels real." "A box without hinges Key or lid" "We brought it into line with our facial system which we developed on Avatar and have been using ever since." "Like, you wouldn't animate his smile, you'd animate his lip-corner puller." "And you wouldn't do angry, you'd do brow lowerer, nose wrinkler maybe some squint." "You know, you're activating all the muscle groups." "So it's a really great structure to set up your facial puppet." "Yes." "Yes, just us." "The thing we spent a lot of time doing was actually working on his eyes." "Since Gollum is primarily big eyes, ha, ha, huge eyes, in fact." "With the new eye system in place, it gives it a lot more depth to the eyes." "So we're actually, you know, shading." "We're getting the light scattering through all the different layers of the eyes to properly shade and shadow and provide caustics and depth beyond a simple sphere with a texture on it." "Animation helped in certain things that you couldn't physically do." "For example, when he would go from being sort of a Sméagol-esque character to his Gollum-esque character." "Do it again, ask us." "No." "They did some really cool tricks in animation where they give him kind of a shiver or a quiver." "And his pupils would dilate between transitions so those beautiful little subtleties are wonderful." "Oh." "Oh!" "We knows." "We knows." "Shut up." "With all the new technology, not just with our textures but with animation and with shading and with the Creatures Department to get all the facial animation and the movements and things it's unbelievable." "I mean, it's still my favorite part of the film." "Getting to work on Gollum again in his final cinematic scene is pretty cool." "Curse it and crush it!" "We hates it forever!" "[HISSING]" "[GASPS]" "WOMAN:" "Thank you, everybody, for another long, hard day." "Bag End tomorrow and forever." "Very good, Andy." "Thank you so much." "Fantastic." "Man, you just went into Gollum like you'd never stopped." "Strangely, he wasn't that far from me." "Ha-ha-ha." "Strangely." "BILBO:" "I am a Baggins of Bag End." " Good morning." "MAN:" "Good morning." "JACKSON:" "When you're dealing with a huge, long movie that's 266 days of shooting, you've got to be as prepared as you possibly can." "We had sets built, we rehearsed, we had actors coming in, we blocked." "Dwalin, at your service." "JACKSON:" "I had Andrew Lesnie, our DP, there." "Oh, it's very good, this." "Any more?" "JACKSON:" "We planned the camera angles." "[ALL GRUNTING]" "MAN 1:" "Ha-ha-ha." " You might wanna be getting this fixed." "MAN 2:" "Oh." "Hello, Gandalf." "Ori down next to Bombur." "Dori and then Nori." "I really worried that we weren't gonna fit." "Seriously." "When we went in there in rehearsal, out of costume we could barely fit." "It was a dark and dangerous place, rank with festering evil." "Rumors have begun to spread." "The dragon, Smaug, has not been seen for 60 years." "Is he gone?" "Is he dead?" "Or is he merely sleeping?" "God, this is gonna be crowded, isn't it though?" " It's gonna be hot." " I'm already hot now." "We had this period of a few days where we could actually get our act together." "But it was for the first two weeks of the shoot." "The first 10 days of the shoot." "After that we had no preparation at all." "It's the weird thing about moviemaking you get hugely prepared for that first week or two and then you kind of just wing it after that." "MAN 1:" "Yeah, thank you, Graham." "MAN 2:" "Come." "Look at the freak show." "I remember the first person I filmed in there with was Graham McTavish who plays Dwalin." "When you rub his thighs they're particularly strong, I found." "[WOMAN LAUGHING]" "FREEMAN:" "And yeah, it was nice." "It was quite relaxed actually." "It was quite relaxed." "I love scenes where there's fewer people in because I get more screen time." "Shoot me." "I was very sort of pathetically proud of that moment." "MAN:" "Ready now, and action." "McTAVISH:" "When the door opened for the first time and there was a Dwarf." "Dwalin, at your service." "JACKSON:" "The way a first shot ought to be." "MAN:" "Aha!" "Yes, yes." "That was probably what Pete was rightfully mindful of is, like, what happens when it's the explosion of pent-up energy in a small space." "Bring me another Dwarf." "Lots of men, lots of testosterone, all acting the hell out of each other." "You know what I mean?" "I want another Dwarf here right now." "Oh, very good." "Well, you look great, Mark." "And thanks very much." " Thanks very much." " You can" " You can go back down." "Ori, old bean." "Hello, Adam." "I was like, "Oh, my gosh." "This is my first day on the set and it's in Bag End."" "JACKSON:" "Looking very good." "MAN:" "Yes." "We're gonna plug a Dwarf in here." "We've got a lovely little Dwarf socket for a Dwarf." "WOMAN:" "Action." "The constant factor of being Gandalf in the film is that you have to be taller than most of the other characters." "Certainly than the Dwarves or the Hobbits." "Now, this was achieved on Lord of the Rings by putting me the larger character, closer to the camera." "Your eye tricks your brain and you kind of think that these two people are side by side." "Now, of course, that trick is no good when you're dealing with 3D because 3D tells you exactly how far away they are and you can see that the whole thing's a big cheat." "So we had to devise a different way of creating this size difference." "Since we have Dwarves and Gandalf, who are actually the same height we need to make Gandalf 25 percent bigger than the Dwarves so that they're in the correct scale." "The only way we can make a person bigger is to put the camera closer to him." "So effectively, we have a camera that looks at the Dwarves and Bilbo in a set that's built to their scale and a camera that looks at Gandalf on a green screen which is 25 percent closer, which makes him that much bigger." "Now, these cameras are locked together so whatever one camera does over here on the live set with Bilbo and the Dwarves, the other camera on the green set does exactly the same thing except scaled down." "So effectively you're creating two different worlds that are in different scale but they're matched in terms of position." "So that when we take out the green screen, make a composite and put Gandalf in, suddenly he's 25 percent bigger." "A little glass of red wine is requested." "This slave motion-control system we'd been developing for a couple of months leading into our shoot." "And there was a couple of days of test shooting which we wanted to do as a proof of concept for ourselves and also something to show the actors so they could actually have some confidence that this rather bizarre system was going to end up working." "MAN:" "Gandalf." " Great to be back." "What a good-- it's good to see you." "Have a look around." " You've been busy." " I have." "You're right, I have." "I'll show you." "Marvelous." "Hey, Gandalf, this is Fili." "Fili is staying with me for a couple of days." " Yeah, I get a bit lonely, you see." " Yeah, I understand." "[ALL LAUGHING]" " Cheers." " Cheers." " Cheers." " Cheers." " Cheers." " Cheers." " Cheers." " Cheers." "[ALL LAUGHING]" "Whose table is Gandalfs left hand on?" "So Gandalfs on the green screen and all the props are scaled down." " So he's on a slightly" " But how come his hand is on--?" "Oh, dear." " I didn't know where your throat was." " I didn't know." "Well, I didn't even know where you were." "I couldn't see anything." "We did a series of tests and demonstrations to show to Peter where one of our crew guys would walk in, let's say carrying an apple and hand it to the other guy." "The other guy would go and get a basket and he'd bring it over and give it to the first guy." "So essentially we were handing things off across the scale line." "And those were just done very roughly, just to demonstrate the process." "Okay, here we go." "Rehearsal." "We rehearsed in costume and makeup with me with the 13 Dwarves." "All right." "Does that make sense?" "You look a little bit bewildered." " I'm over there, aren't I?" " Yeah, yeah." "You are." " But thanks for filling me in." " Yes." "Okay." "Okay." "McKELLEN:" "I then had to leave them for the filming and go into a set that was smaller than this set, in which I would look tall." "The problems for us were that they can't hear each other from that distance away." "So they had to work off ear pieces." "He would wear an ear piece and hear the Dwarves and Bilbo on the Hobbit set and vice versa." "As soon as you hear them say "mark," there's no mark at the door and you'll have an ear piece." "So you'll take your cue off Martin and then you close it." "If someone has to get up, walk somewhere they tend to do it off a dialogue cue." "There's no mark on my door." "Da-da-da-da-da." "So if the sound didn't work, the shot didn't work." "WOMAN:" "Is it going to work, Colin?" "COLIN:" "Oh, I sincerely hope so." "I wouldn't have found it at all had it not been for that mark on the door." "BILBO:" "Mark?" "There's no mark on that door." "It was painted a week ago." "There is a mark." "I put it there myself." "And that means immediately on the monitors we are interacting with Gandalf as a much bigger person at precisely the same time." "And that has actually never been done before like that." "[ALL CHEERING]" "[BELL RINGING AND CHEERING STOPS]" "That's all very well and it looks very good but when you're actually doing it, it means that you the Gandalf actor, are on your own when you're filming." "You can't see the faces of the other actors you're working with who can all see each other in the adjacent set." "McKELLEN:" "This is not what they promised." "ALL:" "Ha-ha-ha." "McKELLEN:" "I get to be choosy." " Yeah." "McKELLEN:" "Middle-earth?" "It's hard for Ian." "A lot of his acting is on the green screen." "He was coming in to see all these Dwarves whittling around him and running everywhere and taking food and he had to name all the Dwarves." " Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dori, Nori." "BILBO:" "Not my prizewinners, thank you." "GANDALF:" "Ori!" "We get to the end of it and we've all got ear pieces on and we can hear Pete go:" ""That's almost it, but Adam, you went through Gandalf with your arm."" "I'm like, "Oh, no, I'm sorry." "I'm sorry." "Let's do it again."" "[ALL LAUGHING]" "MAN:" "That's it. it's about time." "JACKSON:" "Okay." "Very good." "It was very tricky and took a long time." "GANDALF:" "A little red wine, I think, for me." "WOMAN:" "Cut." "Finally Pete comes over the cans going, "I think we've got it." "I think we've got it."" "And it was like, "Yes." "Thank goodness, we've done it."" "[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]" "WOMAN:" "Thank heavens, we did it!" "MAN:" "Yeah!" "[ALL CHEERING]" "Confusticate and bebother these Dwarves!" "My dear Bilbo, what on earth is the matter?" "The main problem with Ian was he's a big guy on a little set." "When you're lighting him you have to light him exactly the same way for both sets." "If he's walking from one part of a set to another you've actually got to put shadows in areas where there should be shadows." "Because he has actually got to be real-time matched with the other people he's interacting with." "But what shall I do with my plate?" "GARSIDE:" "And also we had to give him the correct eye lines." "So we gave the AD a dimmer board where they could switch lights on and off so Ian could actually see who he was talking to on the other set." "JACKSON:" "What you should have is you" " You should only have their eyes glowing." "SERKIS:" "Ha-ha-ha." "It's, like, something to do with:" "[MAKES BLEEPING NOISE]" "And they were all put in at the right ratio position and the right ratio height." "So his eye lines were correct to the other set." "ORI:" "Now I understand." "That's why we need a burglar." "BILBO:" "Oh, yeah, a good one too." " An expert, I'd have thought." "GLOIN:" "And are you?" "You might think, acting to a tennis ball, what's the difference if you know where it is." "But suddenly that person doesn't react or that tennis ball doesn't smile or doesn't do anything." "It means what you do is affected by that." "You need to have a pre-planned idea of the way you're gonna say things the way you'll receive dialogue from people and that's quite difficult." "GANDALF:" "The answer lies somewhere hidden in this map." "I do not have the skill to read it, but there are others in Middle-earth who do." "For me, that's the most difficult thing because I really like to be able to look into the character's eyes that I'm talking to." "It puts much more importance on the rehearsal because you have to give the rehearsal everything as if it's a performance." "Because what you're doing, you're programming their memory to what they'll be getting when we come for a take." "Yes, thank you." "I was saying, Bofur the task I have in mind will require a great deal..." "Oh, gosh." "I got absolutely miserable and had a little cry to myself." "But I didn't realize that the microphone I was wearing was open so everybody could hear me muttering to myself about how I wanted to go home and so on." "[SNIFFLING]" "To put someone in what is-- it's not even sensory deprivation." "It's like sensory torture." "May be too strong a word." "But for some actors, it looked like torture to put them in that situation." "And then to ask for those natural acting instincts to just be there and the expectation of actors upon themselves is, "Well, this is my job." "I should be able to do this."" "Yeah." "For Ian, especially, he found it particularly challenging at the start." "I'm sorry, everybody." "MAN 1:" "No." "MAN 2: ignore it." "MAN 3:" "Don't be silly." "MAN 4: it's impossibly difficult." " When I say sorry, I mean sorry." "ALL:" "Ha-ha-ha." "It was so distressing and off-putting and difficult that I thought, "I don't want to make this film if this is what I'm gonna have to do."" "it's not what I do for a living." "I act with other people." "I don't act on my own." "I can't just get it." "He truly had such a miserable time on the first day or two of the shoot." "We felt sorry for him, being just dumped in green screen land." "We wanted to make him feel a little bit better." "We wanted to make him feel loved." "So Zane Weiner, our producer, had a great idea of giving Martin and Ian a surprise." "We should do something special for Ian." "Do you think we could sort of do up his little tent where he relaxes?" "We knew about it the day before because this was a surprise." "[GIGGLING]" "We wait until the crew had finished for the day to go in and dress these things." " The actors are all gone." " Great." "And they're just moving his tent." "So they'll be side by side, which works so we can make it funny." "Add some Elven fabric onto this La-Z-Boy, it'll be gorgeous." "It was kind of obvious to us what we should be doing for Ian." "He was making his return to Middle-earth and they had to have a bit of a Middle-earth theme." "Beautiful relic from the Lothlórien group of Elves." "Definitely Ian McKellen." " My God, this is Alan's curtain." "Ha, ha." " Is it?" " We've got our stuff out." " Yes." " Is it?" " It's okay." "VINCENT:" "Floor mat." "We dressed up his room in a kind of '60s eclectic mix of stuff." "It was a little bit retro." "I discovered that Martin was right into his music." "The Commodores, Diana." "Little bit of Stevie Wonder." "Awesome. if I had a place to chill this would be my music." "Well, that night I felt pretty miserable and thought, perhaps, has the time come for me to stop acting altogether if I can't cope with these difficulties?" "Ian e-mailed me a couple of days into this Bag End stuff and he just says, "Listen, I'm struggling." "You know, I feel really depressed."" "it was quite a sad e-mail and I had actually kind of already written him an e-mail." "Which crossed with one from him saying, "Don't worry, it was all fine today." "We've got some good stuff." "You'll be very pleased with it."" "I'm seeing this scene come together really great." "And I just wanted Ian to know that it was all okay." "Everything was gonna be fine." ""It's lovely to have you back and well done."" "Me having felt that I'd absolutely failed." "I guess we could leave them set up like this the whole time they're in Bag End." "Yeah." "McKELLEN:" "Oh." "Who's done all this?" "Who's done all this?" "How beautiful." "Who does this?" "It's an Appreciate Gandalf Day today." "And we do appreciate" "[BOTH LAUGHING]" "As another, not pat on the back but arm round the shoulder, in my little makeup tent it had all been decorated with bits of old scenery from Rivendell." "Look, and fruit." "Oh, just gorgeous." "[ALL CHEERING AND APPLAUDING]" "Well, you're all very, very welcome to come and visit me." "[ALL LAUGHING]" "He stepped into his tent and he was sort of into this really weird retro 1960s world." "[LAUGHS]" "FREEMAN:" "I love that." "That's very good." "We thought it'd be a little Martin Appreciation Day today." "WOMAN:" "Oh, look at you." "FREEMAN: it's really lovely." "It's beautiful." "I'm back." "JACKSON:" "And you've learnt" " You've learnt your lines?" " We'll see about that." " We'll see about that, right?" "I was made to feel, as so often happens when you're working with Peter Jackson and his colleagues, that you belong and they want you to feel at ease and happy and at home." "However, once the flowers faded, I noted they weren't replaced." "I think I was meant then to get on with the job." "Ha-ha-ha." "WOMAN:" "About 20 minutes remain and then we'll..." "Thirteen, including Bilbo and Gandalf, were cramped around the dining room table." "And the Bag End set is quite small anyway." "You can do the newsreader thing where you don't have to wear your trousers or boots for the scene." "MAN:" "Yeah." "I beg your pardon." "BROWN:" "So underneath we had fans blowing up our bottoms." "Don't think Mark Hadlow had any trousers on underneath the table." "To work in the space was hot, uncomfortable and a little bit perspiry." "It's so hot." "We were told it would be hot." "It was gonna be crammed and difficult." "Oh, dear." "Heh, heh. it was very cramped." "Thanks, darling." "We have electrolytes standing by." "We have water." "Constantly having to drink loads of water." "Loads of electrolytes." "Bag End was a bit of an oven at times." " Ready?" "One, two, three." " Oh, yes." "HAMBLETON:" "We're lucky enough to step out and the whole team of people that are devoted to our comfort making sure we have water and cool air blowing on us, helped us get through." "[CHATTERING]" "WOMAN:" "Nice and quiet now, thanks, and roll camera, please." "MAN:" "Shooting." "Shooting." "Ian was the very first actor that I worked with as second unit director." "The very first shot, in fact of the second unit was Gandalfs eye appearing at the window at Bag End." "Which was an incredibly technically-difficult shot because it was a beveled window." "And the precision with which we needed to kind of execute the shot and the positioning of his eye, you know, for it to read." "To your right." "Stop." "McKELLEN:" "Oh, bugger." " And out." "WOMAN:" "Stand by!" "It's great having second unit with us filming finally." "It was their first real day of shooting today." "What happens if you're on the same stage is they have to stop every time we're starting." "The main unit gets priority." "WOMAN 1:" "Action." "WOMAN 2:" "Action." "SERKIS:" "So we've had to down tilt or stop while shooting's been going on or turn over very quietly." " And this is reset." "MAN 1:" "Still rolling." "MAN 2:" "Shooting!" "WOMAN:" "Rolling!" "[SERKIS WHISPERING INDISTINCTLY]" "McKELLEN:" "Why are you whispering?" " They're rolling next door." "JACKSON:" "Cut." "Lovely." "That's excellent." "We've got that." "WOMAN:" "Here we go now." "[SERKIS WHISPERING INDISTINCTLY]" "WOMAN:" "And action." "It was great because Pete was able to then come over and chat, and it was just fantastic to have his input." "It's quite good to see there's a nail on it because you get it and when Bilbo hears a scratch it's like you're sort of knowing something's coming." "SERKIS:" "Okay, all right." "No, it's okay." "Yeah, no, no, it's cool. it's great." "That is the best thing about being 15 feet away from the director, basically." "But I think it might be the first and last time." "Most of the time the idea with second unit is you don't actually share the same stage." "You shoot on different stages so there won't be a problem." "Like tomorrow, they're in Bag End and we're out of Bag End." "So we've been in here for, I don't know, how long is it?" "About 12 days or something?" "DWARVES [SINGING]:" "Blunt the knives bend The forks, smash the bottles, burn the corks" "Chip the glasses and crack the plates" "That's what Bilbo Baggins hates" "[DWARVES LAUGHING]" "Thirteen, fourteen days?" "I don't know." "It seems like a long time." "[JACKSON LAUGHING]" "It's fun." "I like Bag End." "[LAUGHS]" "Yeah, it's:" "MAN:" "And then it's the feet one." " Ha, ha." "Yeah." "There's juggling." "And I think the more chaotic it got, the more Peter liked it in the end." "DWARVES [SINGING]:" "That's what Bilbo Baggins hates" "JACKSON:" "And cut." "MAN: it's great." "[SINGING] Just a little lighting tweak Enough to make Caro weep" "Put the schedule right to sleep" "That's what Cunningham hates" "That is the truth, that's Caro." "JACKSON:" "That's lovely." "[CHATTERING AND LAUGHING]" "JACKSON:" "Thank you." "So after Pete had finished shooting a lot of the early scenes in Bag End then we moved in." "And it was really lovely being able to work with them and for them to individually get a chance to work on their character." "WOMAN:" "And action!" "SERKIS:" "Just experiment and play around and have fun, actually." "We had a lot of fun." "Being given a free hand by the director was wonderful." "And salute Bilbo." "Go "cheers."" " Bilbo Baggins!" "ALL:" "Bilbo!" "We really went for it." "I was pouring beer down John Callen's ear trumpet." "I thought, "Crikey, what am I gonna do with that?"" "So I just blew into the end that fits in my ear and out comes all the liquid." "DWARVES:" "Ha-ha-ha." "It's what I spent most of my teens doing so I have plenty of training for it." "[ALL LAUGHING]" "Probably the most memorable moment is Bombur crawling along the table to grab the big mutton hock and pull it down the table." "[LAUGHING]" "Stephen Hunter is an animal." " He's choking!" "He's choking!" " Great hard one, Nori!" "He's so enthusiastic." "He's so up for anything." "I was truly worried." "Ha, ha." "And I had to throw this egg and have it land in Bombur's mouth." "First egg we threw?" "Nailed it." "Couldn't hit it again after that." "[LAUGHING]" "I think one night I must have eaten about 13 boiled eggs." "Because I chose to actually eat them properly on the first take." "But then after that I really just had to roll with it." "Just stuffing them in his face." "I mean, it was literally like recreating Cool Hand Luke in Bag End." "I had basically two half of eggs in my mouth." "And then Andy goes, "Now put a whole one in."" "SERKIS:" "Put the whole egg in your mouth." "Just put the whole egg in your mouth." "HUNTER:" "Mm-hm." "And luckily about three takes later, he said cut." "SERKIS:" "Cut." "And I fronted up, like, two days later I had eggs for breakfast so, you know, so no worries." "MAN:" "Action." "[ALL GRUNTING]" "They set up the scene in Bag End with the food and it looks amazing." "And everything is in place and it looks really delicious." "Fresh thing of food at least seven or eight times on that table." "And we're just told, "Okay, listen, just wreck it."" "And it would just get destroyed." "[ALL SHOUTING]" "We trashed the place, good God, on a daily basis." "[ALL LAUGHING]" "Towards the end, he said, "Just go nuts," and it was chaotic." "Because that's what it's like." "We're just, you know just a pack of rowdy boys, really." "We love to eat, but then when we're full, it's just food fight." "I was aiming for Ken Stott." "Because he couldn't take it." "The dude can't handle an orange to the head." "Hit him with a leg of lamb when he's not looking." "I mean, vicious stuff." "Nothing playful about this at all." "I never told him this." "Surely he's gonna hear about it now." "But I was hitting him hard." "I think I nearly took his nose off." "Yeah, for goodness sake." "That dining table was kind of pretty rank actually." "It was kind of filled with the smell of 13 Dwarves pretty quick." "Ian's been on beans all lunch, and he's still here." " He should have some pretty good wind too." "ALL:" "Ha-ha-ha." "MAN 1:" "Enough!" "MAN 2:" "This is what it is." "MAN 3:" "A wizard's wind is not to be scoffed at." "Looking back on Bag End, it's like we're just so innocent." "We were all so happy as characters in that place about to begin this journey." "And that's absolutely how it was for the actors as well as the characters." " Thank you, Dori." "MAN 1:" "Yes." " Thank you, Doris." "Dori." "MAN 2: "Doris." Ha-ha-ha." "Now, Bag End was a good laugh actually." "It was a really good laugh." "We were all there together." "And whatever nerves people had, I think they kind of just worked themselves out." " This is a Dwarf waltz." " A "Dwaltz."" "[ALL LAUGHING]" "We were all just, "Okay." "Great, we've started work now."" " More Hobbit gold." " Some of my best work there." "Some of my exquisite work." "WILLIAM:" "What are you, then?" "An oversized squirrel?" "Trollshaw was the defining moment as an actor for me to go, "Wow, this-- it is this big."" "Great to just see a big set." "I think we're on the K Stage, you know, which is one of the bigger sets in Stone Street." "I'm hoping Bilbo can sort of get himself up, and go, "Wait, wait, wait."" " And then" " So the Trolls all kind of turn." "MAN:" "Yes." " So we'll obviously be up high." "MAN:" "Yup." "TURNER:" "And I just remember it being huge." "I remember thinking, "I finally made it." "I'm finally in a big movie."" "Daisy and Bungo are missing." "Massive big trees, you know." "Awesome set." "Turf grass." "Tons and tons and tons of dirt." "There was an old ruin farmhouse that had taken three or four days to put in there." "A lot to coat." "JACKSON:" "As big as a film like this is, it's always wonderful when you can be flexible, adapt on the spot." "There was one day of shooting in Trollshaw Forest where we were shooting a sequence with Bilbo and a couple of the Dwarves." "And when we were blocking the scene I wasn't happy with the way the scene was blocking." "And I wanted to shoot it in slightly more continuous shots and not, you know, break it up into a lot of different angles." "And in order to do that, the set that was built wasn't really gonna work for us." "It was interesting because he then came up to me and basically said we need to clear the stage and get the next part of the Trollshaw Forest in there." "We had to change the set and there was nowhere else to go." "None of the other sets were ready because it was a last minute thing." "Our task was to change the edge of the Trollshaw Forest into the Trollshaw lab." "Heh, and so this huge task which is, you know, really days of work Peter was going back to his office and would come back to shoot some more when we had finished." "The crew could see that the eight of us on-set team would be rather pushed to get this set out and turn around by lunchtime to shoot something else that day." "And suddenly, I looked up and there was 200 shooting crew out there throwing sandbags, rolling up turf, helping our guys." "That's one of the marvelous things about New Zealand film technicians is that everyone went:" ""Right." "This is a huge job." "Let's all get together and let's get this done."" "So every department, and I mean every department, was in there." "Here in New Zealand, we take Easter egg hunts seriously, all right." "Hello again." "Just this ferocious effort by the crew." " Quick." " A major reset like this involves as many people as we've got, as many as we could find." "To go as quick as we can." "The last thing we wanna do is hold up any shooting crew." "The world's fastest set change." "I think we did it in about a couple of hours." "Which given" " There were tons of dirt." "Took up half of Kong stage." "It was really sort of a bonding moment." "And it was very early on in the shoot and every department realized the importance of doing this thing for Peter." "MAN:" "Easy does it." "And that was pretty hard work at the time, but looking back, you're pretty proud of it." "[ALL CHEERING]" "You don't get that every movie." "You don't get that." "I think it was actually a turning point in the morale of the whole crew as well." "Like, everyone went, "Okay, if we can achieve that in that much time we can make this movie." "We can get it done."" "WILLIAM [ON RECORDING]:" "Quit your griping." "These ain't sheep." "These is fresh nags." "Leathery old farmer." "All skin and bone, he was." "I'm still picking bits of him out of me teeth." "Hello, Mum." "HAMBLETON:" "Three of us Dwarves, Mark myself and William are portraying the Trolls as well." "There's more where that came from." "That involves, uh, mocap, motion capture which is a whole other world." "So there I was minding my own business as Dori, being a Dwarf and suddenly, I'm flung in to the volume to become a Troll." "We love it." "I actually thought of John Rhys-Davies doing Treebeard because I knew that he played a different character." "Treebeard is my name." "According to some..." "I thought I would love to have a go at auditioning for one of those characters." "We had done some stuff as Trolls in some of the readings of the script and it just seem to fit." "What are you, then?" "An oversized squirrel?" "Shut your trap." "You'll eat what I give you." " Right." "Just trembling?" " Peter is not" " Just only a moment." "Just sit there for a bit because we just wanna now send the signal through, and make sure you're all set." "First thing to do is to make sure you're sitting where you need to be set sitting there." "We really wanted to have something on set for Peter to use for framing of the cameras." "So we had some idea what the final composition of the shots were gonna be." "They were there working on a wee little volume on the side of the film set." "So we could comp the Trolls in real time." "So that Andrew Lesnie and his team could be framing up of what space in those frames the Trolls would be occupying." "The camera operator and Peter could really see how big the Trolls were for framing." "Here we go." "MAN 1:" "Action!" "MAN 2:" "Action." "SAINDON:" "So that when we panned off Martin, went to the Trolls he could get the right scale, get the right proportions." "So that when we get it back into the digital realm everything fits better because the cameras really work for the scale of the Trolls." "[YELLING]" "WOMAN:" "Action!" "[ALL YELLING]" "Trollshaw was quite a challenge." "Uh, it's the first time that we've really fought properly." "We've got a particularly dangerous fight with a bunch of very nasty Trolls." "I think you charge in with your hammer already cocked back ready to go, you know." "Yeah." "Yeah, that's gonna be fine." "The Dwarves are getting used to their weapons." "It was the first time they're holding their ax." ""Do I use two axes or do I use my sword?"" "You know, really learning the tools of their character." "JACKSON:" "That's good." "Yeah." "Good, good, good." "MAN:" "Hold there." "Hold." " Good." "Good timing." "WOMAN:" "And three, two, one!" "Action!" "[ALL YELLING]" "Fighting big plastic legs which would then be Trolls, which was quite amusing." "We were working with Troll legs, you know, manfully operated by the stunt guys who wore full combat outfit." "You know, crash helmets and-- it was like the riot police, basically." "We're the Trolls' legs." "So they can hit us or the leg." "So that gave the physical presence on set." "And also too, if we actually-- When the leg's hit one of the actors or stunt guys that actually would look like an impact." "So when they put CG character in it, it's gonna be more believable because of the interaction with the physical world." "SERKIS:" "They just took a beating, those guys." "They had to stand there and puppeteer these great big, huge weight bags." "MAN:" "And cut." "Cut, cut, cut." "That's great, guys." "That's terrific." "I think we're good." "NESBITT:" "Take a look up to a Troll-- WOMAN:" "That's right, Jimmy." "It's tennis balls and sticks." "You're told, "This is a Troll, what he looks like."" "You see a little figure Weta brings over." "You see, "Okay, brilliant." "Okay, that doesn't help me at all."" "You're looking at these tennis balls going, "Holy mother of God."" "it's gonna be a wee bit hard to look at that there and not that." "WOMAN:" "Swipe!" "And fight!" "[BOTH YELLING]" "But then you look at this playback, yeah, and it shows the Troll moving." "And with you in mind." "It completely makes sense, then you kind of go, "Oh, right."" "You know, relatively speaking, the size." "They're always way bigger than you think they are, even on the set." " So one Troll there." "WOMAN:" "That's funny then." "Really..." "Okay." "We should run a rehearsal." "[ALL YELLING]" "We were playing Dwarves attacking ourselves as Trolls." "[CHUCKLES]" "So there was a scene where Bifur ends up clutching onto my leg as Tom the Troll." "So my character Dori gives my character Bert a shot in the pills with bollocks." "[SHREIKS THEN GRUNTS]" "Ouch!" "[GRUNTS]" "I smashed out one of the Troll's teeth." "And I just remember the first time I did it swinging the hammer, and everybody standing off camera flinching." "Because they thought I was gonna let go." "As if." "[YELLS]" "MCTAVISH:" "if I'd let go, it would've been bad." "WOMAN:" "We're a cut, thank you." "We're cut." "Very nice." "It's a sight for sore eyes, yeah?" "This is the best place to have you two be-- if I could get my hands to you now..." "Yes, yes." "Lucky, you guys." "Count yourselves lucky." "Some of them were lucky enough to just be lying in bags." "But some of us were put on this spit." "I think in a previous life, our Construction and Design people were part of some medieval torture kind of world, I don't know." "MAN:" "Nice." "We're gonna have six of the Dwarves on a spit." "And very tight fit, I might add." "Everything's gotta be really fast and efficient." "So that's why we built plates onto the harness they already have on before they actually get their wardrobe on." "Brackets that get bolted to the actual log." "MAN:" "How are you doing?" "Ahem, this is actually the most comfortable position." "All right, guys, let's go." "One minute." "Time is gonna start." "Vinny, you're on first." "This a test to make sure that we can, uh, put six Dwarves on a spit." "One of the main factors here is how long it takes to do that." "I'm just sort of timing this at the moment." "You've gotta put them on, get your shot, get them off of the thing." "So this is all practice." "We ended up being like a Formula 1 kind of team." "People with pneumatic drills and getting them on and off." "It was like, "Bzz, bzz."" "MAN:" "Done." "WONG:" "One Dwarf on, "Bzz, bzz."" "One Dwarf on." "Once they're all on, they go, "Clear."" "Everyone steps back, started filming." "[ALL CHATTERING]" "I hadn't realized we were gonna be in a spit." "I thought it would be our stunt doubles." "The hardest thing was the waiting because you could only be put up one at a time and bolted on to it." "[ELECTRIC DRILL WHIRRING]" "We had to get a few guys on then we're gonna rotate the spit so the guys are on their side put some more actors on, rotate the spit so we had to do that to get them all on." "And they said, "Look, you'll be on there for half an hour, tops."" "Then I saw what was gonna happen." "We were being layered on top of one another. it was brilliant." " All right, Mark." "How's that feel, Mark?" "HADLOW:" "Peter, it's fabulous." " Pete, this is known as Jackson's revenge." " Ha, ha, ha." "Well, I drew the short straw in that I was the first on and the last off." "MAN:" "Okay." "MCTAVISH:" "Oh, mother." "Oh, no." "[NESBITT LAUGHING]" "MCTAVISH:" "Who's laughing?" "Who's laughing?" "[MCTAVISH GROANING]" "MAN:" "Look at their faces." "Seeing the guys on the spit, the Dwarf kebab, was quite enjoyable." "Watching Jimmy Nesbitt spinning round on a Dwarf kebab." "Hello." "I made a special visit just to see that." "I couldn't stay away for that, could I?" "MAN:" "B marker." "JACKSON:" "And action." "As we came around towards camera, we were trying to do a line if we weren't feeling sick." "Heh, heh, heh." "This isn't good for my hemorrhoids." "I didn't realize how fast it was gonna go round." " If you let us go now" " Have we got this--?" "It was great until about three-quarters the way through." "We were starting to get nauseous as it got faster and faster." "It became then getting through to the end without being the first one to heave." "Everyone, blow!" "Blow!" "I don't do rides at the amusement park well at all." "In fact, I'll come off the ride, and it: "Uh-oh, I'm gonna vom:"" "[RETCHES]" "And there's vom." "So I don't go on the rides." "Now, I had completely and utterly forgotten about this sort of thing." "And we got on the spit which goes round and round and round." "It gets faster." "So we were going round really fast but also looking up to see where Trolls were." "And looking at the fire and screaming and shouting." "MAN:" "Caro's enjoying it." "Aren't you?" " We are all enjoying it." "What's funny about is" " Because you're doing it and Peter's giving direction and he wasn't in the tent for that, he was outside watching us." "And you can't help as you're going around seeing him laughing but not sort of necessarily at what we're doing." "He's just laughing at the kind of uncomfortability" "At the world he's put us into." "Okay, guys, stills." "Rotate them around, guys, so we get some bunch of stills." "MAN:" "That's it." "Light her up, yeah." "All right?" "Okay, all right, get them down." "Hey, that was great work, guys." "Fantastic." "HADLOW:" "I did think my spleen was gonna come up at one point there." "My head was spinning after it." "Everyone should do it." "Mark was getting pretty sick." " A bit dizzy." "MAN:" "Yeah, yeah." " Very close to vomiting." "MAN:" "Yeah." "I said, "I need the bucket." I didn't vom, but it was the closest I've come." ""I'm gonna vom, I need the bucket." "I need to vom."" "Poor little Adam did, my little brother." "So I was over there, sort of, "Are you okay?"" "Then, "Whoo."" "Yeah." "Just a little bit of sick, maybe." "Heh." "In his hands." "He won't mind me mentioning it." "MAN 1:" "You all right?" "MAN 2:" "You all right?" "Turning." "Some got more ill than others, but we all-- You got off, suddenly you felt queasy and you sort of think, "Get me a bucket."" "I nearly did the vom." "And that would have been very embarrassing." "They all" " Peter thought I had." "I never heard the end of it for the next three or four days." " Who threw up on the spit?" " Well, no one actually threw up." "I nearly came close to it. it was terrible." "That was terrible, wasn't it?" "That's not what I heard." "Ha, ha, Peter, that's terribly unfair." " Is this me here?" "WOMAN:" "That is you." "Dean O'Gorman joined us near the end of block one." "Um, he was cast as Fili." "O'GORMAN:" "And I came to it three or four months after everyone had started." "It had its challenges because there was this thing that was happening." "I was like, "What's going on?" "What do they do?" "What's happening with prosthetics?"" "And I was sort of walking around like a deer in the headlights." "Hm." "[BOTH CHUCKLE]" "MAN:" "He'll be all right." " That's fine." "[GROANS THEN LAUGHS]" "Dean just had to arrive and get in there basically." "Ha, ha!" "I never had two swords in my hands, obviously." "Why would I have two swords in my hands?" "So I had to get the coordination of that going." "Which was challenging in the beginning." "But actually, once I got it, it was really fun." "Hoo, ha-ha!" "That's good. it's fun. it's kind of like what you dream of doing when you're a kid." "JACKSON:" "Not only did he just join and obviously carry on shooting the scenes that we have been doing we were able to go back into scenes we had not had Fili around for and pick up some shots of Dean." " Hello." "SERKIS:" "Come and have a look at this." "My first shot, my first day on a green screen standing on Aidan's shoulders in a wire harness trying to catch an ax and then hit a Troll in the face with an ax." "Well, that's my first shot." "And Peter came up to me, just before the shot, and went:" ""We got some good ball-crushing scenes for you in this one."" "Because I was wearing this harness, and it's kind of strangling the lads." "And I was like, "Oh, my God." "This is my first scene, my first shot in The Hobbit."" "And Pete came up and went:" "I thought it was pretty funny." "Oh, all right." "If you're in the harness for too long, it cuts off the circulation in your legs, and you go:" "And I was like, "Please, don't let me faint."" "I thought, I'm supposed to be playing this guy that's like, you know, a little bit of a young warrior a bit cocky, you know, sure of himself." "And I thought if I fainted I fainted on the first shot, first day, it would be so embarrassing." "WOMAN:" "Action!" "Gloin." "[GRUNTING]" "But I manned up and I got through it." "[CHUCKLES]" "MAN:" "And cut." "It was good to get the first day, you know." "Now I feel like I'm on my way." "Now I'm gonna home and take off my nose." "Ha, ha, ha!" "GANDALF:" "He keeps a watchful eye over the vast forest lands to the east." "And a good thing too." "[PEOPLE CHATTERING]" "So this could be like a shot of the kitchen when we pull the other wall out." "Look, we tilt up and he turns, and we see a POV of the hedgehogs." "WOMAN:" "Rolling." "When do I--?" "If you could say "action" for me." "WOMAN:" "Action." " Action?" "Oh, okay, good." "Maybe he comes over here." "And tilt it down to the hedgehog." " Hey, how's that?" "MAN:" "Yeah." "That sort of thing's good." "JACKSON:" "All right." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "This will be-- This is a good day to start with actually." "WOMAN:" "Have you met everybody, Sylvester?" "MCCOY:" "No." "JACKSON:" "Careful" " Hello, everybody." "WOMAN:" "This is Sylvester." "Our Radagast." " We've met." "We wanted that very, you know, forgetful professor or forgetful wizard, in this case." "And Sylvester McCoy is a genius at doing that." "[SNEEZES]" "JACKSON:" "That is a persona that he does so well." "And the mice can sort of scurry up here and just go into there and scurry up here and sort of burrow into there, so:" ""Whoo, whoo!"" "And sort of armpit" " So touch the" "Peter, you know, he's a good bloke, you know." "And he's just" " He's a bloke, really." "He hasn't any airs or graces." "He's so relaxing." "He brings a lovely atmosphere to the set." "JACKSON:" "So this shot, Sylvester, is gonna be-- if you would just stay there cradling the hedgehog." "MCCOY:" "But he does work and work and work and work." "And he lives and breathes the whole thing." "You're trying to concentrate on what you're doing as the attack is underway." "Three, two, one, action." "Crates, knees." "Spiders." "Go, go, go." "Go, go, go." "And look behind." "The windows behind you." "The camera up here too." "Lovely, and cut." "WOMAN 1:" "Cut." "WOMAN 2:" "Cut." "We're happy we got that." "That's terrific." "Thanks, Sylvester." "[BIRD TWITTERING]" "The old fortress?" "Show me." "I can't remember quite how it happened, but I just came up with an image of a sleigh towed by rabbits." "The large rabbits, they are towing the, uh, sleigh." "I think it was the first preproduction meeting." "He sort of took us all by surprise by saying:" ""Of course, Radagast's sled will be pulled by large rabbits."" "The rabbits are, you know, will probably be reasonably large rabbits." "HENNAH:" "I" " Personally, I thought he was joking." "What do you mean, large rabbits?" "That's crazy." "[ALL CHUCKLE]" "Yeah, that's crazy." "What?" "JACKSON:" "We need to find the biggest rabbit in the country and see how big they are." "At the back of my mind, "I don't buy this."" "But I mean little, small, normal sized ones all look a bit silly." "And I saw this thing on the internet, where they actually have rabbits that size." "Giant Norwegian rabbits." "And there's some photos of people with their giant pet rabbits." "Yes." "That's the bastard there." "God." "What a" " Look." " They're-- WOMAN:" "Oh, my God." "JACKSON:" "That's the German guy." "And there's a photo of this guy holding this rabbit up." "And they're literally the size of big dogs." " Those are the rabbits." " Oh, my God!" "[ALL LAUGHING AND CHATTERING]" "They're all gonna be CGI, every single rabbit shot." "They were one of the first things we got turned over to us." "And Pete had this idea of really feral rabbits." "You know, they were gonna have mangy fur." "These had to be natural rabbits, but large, you know." "And certainly not anything domestic about them at all." "But they had to be big enough to believably be able to pull Radagast through the forest." "Some fantastic animation." "All key frame animation, obviously." "We're not gonna motion-capture rabbits." "You build walk cycles, run cycles for the rabbits." "Knowing that you're gonna have a lot of chase scenes." "You do rabbit tests and finding some nice footage of rabbits." "There was an animal trainer out in the hut who has all these big, enormous rabbits." "So we were able to kind of go and take detailed photographs of them." "And also we recorded video stuff of how they moved." "There's only a couple of scenes where we see them just not running at full speed." "There's rabbits laying there on their back." "There's rabbits, like, just itching their ears." "We even had it where the one rabbit stands up and starts tapping his foot as a warning to the other rabbits." "I'm not entirely sure that's a real thing to do." "I think we referenced Bambi." "Heh, heh." "That's shorthand for-- That's how rabbits warn everybody." "Heh." "But we still had to make a sled." "A practical sled that you would believe could be pulled by rabbits." "And something like that." "But I do think it should have a curve at the front." "My first drawings of the sledge actually had the wheels on." "I was kind of cheating." "[CHUCKLES]" "There shouldn't be wheels on it." "It should skate along on logs." "I think wheels make it look like a chariot." "Pete was determined it should be a, a sledge." "A lightweight, wooden sapling framework." " Yee-ha!" " Wow!" "HENNAH:" "Lightweight aluminum frame with a rubber texture over it to look like branches." " It's great." "LEE:" "Not bad, huh?" "And it was good fun in the testing phase." "Mt." "Crawford is at the top of the hill behind Miramar." "We thought we'll do some testing at Mt." "Crawford with the stunt guys." "And before you knew it, it became into a full camera test." "You know, every man and his dog was there." "We needed a Radagast stunt double." "We did have other people within the team who were very similar to Sylvester's height but they were really busy." "So it kind of left me." "Yeah." "At first, we did think, "Well, Tim as Radagast, that's crazy."" "But he could come on, and, you know, he figured out how to steer it relatively quick." "WONG:" "There comes a time when you probably have to hang your hat up and retire from stunts officially." "I don't quite feel I'm there yet." "I have this ego in me that still says I can do stunts as well as everyone else." "You know, I still like to keep proving it to myself and challenging it." "I don't know who decided that Tim Wong should be the" "Would be the best candidate to be the stunt double for Radagast." "I mean, Sylvester McCoy and Tim Wong have nothing in common." "But I think it came down to height." " We're twins." "MCCOY:" "What?" " We're pretty much twins." "Yeah." "MCCOY:" "Yeah." "So that's Sylvester's face there, with an early nose study on it." "What we're doing right now is we're doing the prosthetic to try and turn his stunt actor into Radagast." "The challenge being that his stunt actor is played by Tim Wong." "Sylvester is an aging, uh, Caucasian man." "And we decided that we needed to create a likeness makeup for him." "WONG:" "I sit down on the chair and the first thing they do is lay this one-piece silicone prosthetic on my face." "It's just one whole piece. it's like:" "Phht!" " Goodbye." "MAN:" "Bye, Tim." "WONG: it is literally like what you see on Mission: impossible when the guy just peels it off and unveils what you look like." "The transformation is now complete." "Ta-da!" "Poor man, he's got to wander around looking like me." "People keep throwing things at him." "Tripping up." "And asking for money that I owe them." "WONG:" "As I walked on, literally, the whole of Second Unit once they found out who I was, their jaw just dropped." "MAN:" "Camera rolling!" "And the very first take was very, very interesting." "It's like a football field long I'm sitting at the back, and they count me down in three, two, one." "[AIR HORN BLASTS]" "WONG:" "Boom, you're away." "The initial acceleration is such that you have to hold on quite hard." "And over jumps we go, under trees, through bushes." "And then they have to button off at exactly the right time towards the end of the run, otherwise, the sleigh just keeps on going." "So we're going more with the manual switch." "Start the winch with a button wind up the speed and then wind it down manually with just" " With the eye." "WONG:" "They normally have a whole lot of stunt nets for me to crash into, things like that." "We just did that all morning." "Fortunately enough, it was just a fake tree." " Maybe it will make the bloopers, we'll see." " I love the sleigh jumps." "We had a couple of good ones where the lower angle was looking up." "Really seeing it come full frame and get some air." "[YELLS]" "He's done extraordinary stunts, and I've got to recreate them." "WOMAN:" "Shooting." "Quiet please." "Yes, well, you see, I do my own stunts." "Well, at least close-ups." "With my eyebrows, you see." "If they don't" " Can't find a stuntman that's got stunt eyebrows." "MAN:" "Can you do a wave with those?" "[MAN LAUGHS]" "MCCOY:" "A killer just doing close-ups." "I used to think, "Oh, let the stuntman do all the stunts and all that physical stuff."" "When it comes to the close-ups you sit there and wink and nod and nudge and smile and, you know, that's it." "But no, when it comes to close-ups, you know I'm doing all this stuff all over the place." "I need a stuntman to do the close-ups." "JACKSON:" "How you doing, Sylvester?" "Do you wanna cut for a minute, get your breath back?" " That's all right." "JACKSON:" "Yeah." "You can keep up?" "Heh." "Three, two, one." "Pull." "Dol Guldur." "JACKSON:" "That looked good." "We'll just review, but that looked very good." " Thank you so much." " Yep." "Yep." "Good one." " See you in November." " November, sometime." " You've done great." " Thank you." "WOMAN:" "Thank you." "All done." "All finished for the first block." "JACKSON:" "it's their favorite wizard." " Bye-bye." "WOMAN:" "Bye-bye." "Time for a pastry." "Ooh." "ELROND:" "You are not the only guardian to stand watch over Middle-earth." "It really feels like a reunion when everybody that was in The Lord of the Rings that we needed for The Hobbit returned." "Welcome to Rivendell." "It's been great to be back here." "Great to meet up with lots of people that were all working on Lord of the Rings." "Ah, the ring." "Elrond has one of the three Elven rings." "WOMAN 1:" "Do you remember that?" "WEAVING:" "That's the one." "I do." "[WEAVING HUMMING]" "[LAUGHING]" "Look at you." "You look fantastic." " Got any other poses?" " No." "[LAUGHS]" "This could be you." "It's gonna be so grim." "Look at that." "Hello." "We have a winner." "I'm serious." "You have not aged a single day." "I think I look younger, actually." " You do, actually." "MAN:" "I think so too." "You are not the only guardian to stand watch over Middle-earth." " I remember it now." " Yeah." "Really." "But, oof, later on..." "Oof!" "I didn't have a script until I got here." "But that's part of the nature of working with Pete anyway." "New lines in." "So I kind of knew that that's what would be the situation." "Did you have another meeting outside of that one?" "No, in the meeting we had this morning..." " Just learnt those lines." "JACKSON:" "This is a result of the meeting." "Quick!" "Let's film it now." "WOMAN:" "Action!" "These runes were written on a Midsummer's Eve by the light of a crescent moon nearly 200 years ago." "I remember that day's filming in particular as I with Hugo Weaving one of the most congenial members of the original cast." "And to meet up again with him was lovely." "Oh, yes." "And we always laugh together, Hugo and I." "I was kind of in awe of him initially but he's an incredibly fun person to be with just on a day-to-day basis." "McKELLEN:" "Our background is very similar working in the classical theater." "WOMAN:" "Action!" "These runes were written on a Midsummer's Eve..." "Suddenly, we have a prominence in the film industry, which amuses us." "[BABBLING]" "Because I think we both basically think that where we belong is with our feet firmly planted on a stage somewhere." "WOMAN:" "Three, two, one, action!" "WEAVING:" "I mean, it's always interesting when Ian and I are off set doing all those characters, heh, heh, heh." "I don't know that I can explain it." "It was very bizarre." "So all the scale doubles, large and small, were required for a wide shot." "Which meant that none of the actors in the scene were actually there." "So it was kind of slightly weird sitting in a couple of chairs reading this radio play while watching these smaller and larger people acting it out." " We still have time." " For what?" "Well, to find this entrance, we'll have to be standing in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time." "We're alert to the ridiculousness of it all." "What do you mean?" "You are not the only guardian to stand watch over Middle-earth." "But I think we can behave when necessary." "[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]" "JACKSON:" "Well, we've had a few..." "We got rid of this." "Bret will come down the stairs and do a wonderful bit of Elvish reading for us." "And you'll, you'll cry, and..." "I was completely thrilled to be asked to come back on the film for any part." "He had played a very beautiful elf in Lord of the Rings." "So beautiful that he'd drawn attention away from more important characters..." "...on the screen." " My lady!" "McKELLEN:" "Got his nickname, an acronym from "Frodo is great," F-I-G." ""Who is that?" Referring to Bret." "FIGWIT." "And Peter asked him back and he very gamely came along with a name now, Lindir, and a line or two." "My Lord Elrond, the Dwarves, they've gone." " Resetting." " Do you like it?" " Ha, ha, ha." " I'm going back to my unit now." "WOMAN:" "Caro is very pleased to hear that." "JACKSON:" "Keep going." "All right." "It's like you're always" " In a way, the Elves are always prepared to welcome Gandalf, and that's no big deal." "When he brings these bastards in, it's like a cultural shift." " Mithrandir." "GANDALF:" "Lindir." "Working with Ian McKellen was a total career highlight." "I was sort of nervous and, you know, intimidated." "Mithrandir." "He's incredible to watch on-screen and then to get to watch him up close." "Where is he?" "He's a very good actor." "Lindir." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "I mean, I can handle one sentence quite well, like "Mithrandir"..." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "Got it." "Got that one down, right?" "But this one about the Dwarves using all the wine up." "I mean..." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "It was a complete mind flip." "Uh, uh..." "The Creative team decided, over lunch, that they wanted him to do an Elvish scene that afternoon." "Bret, you've got some Elvish." "He says, "You're joking."" "I said, "No." "And it's three lines." "And it's going to be shot in one shot."" ""So we can't cut in and out of it." And he went a bit pale." "WOMAN:" "We'll shoot that?" " Straight up." "First up." "JACKSON:" "First up." "One take." "Get it perfect." "No pressure." "Oh." "So stressful." "Yeah." "Because being on set is a very stressful atmosphere even when you're speaking English." "Now, if you can start your line, Bret, before you're even here, so you're..." "Fran and Philippa write the lines in English then those lines are sent to David Salo." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "McKENZIE:" "The Elvish specialist." "And then he translates the English into Elvish and then Róisín then shows me the words." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "And then I can't say them." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "And so I was walking around the set trying to remember this nonsense." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "All right." "It always sounds good on the rehearsal, never when the camera rolls." " First rule of filmmaking." "WOMAN:" "Here we go." "And action." "[LINDIR SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "[LAUGHING]" "JACKSON:" "Okay, let's have take two then." "[LINDIR SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "Something." "Sorry." "Hey, Pete." "[JACKSON MIMICKING ELVISH]" "What?" "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "MAN:" "Yeah." "What?" "I got my Elvish right." " Yes." " What was it?" "McPHERSON:" "He and Hugo had a fantastic rapport as well and so they kind of helped them-- Helped each other through a particular level of panic that I don't think, heh, everybody thrives on." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "And I just, just got it right, barely." "JACKSON:" "Very good." "Let's give Bret a shot of Scotch." " Say it perfectly again for the camera now." " What did you say?" "[IN ELVISH]" "[IN ENGLISH] Something or other." " You're forgetting already." "It's gone." "You see it's slipping away." "Slipping away." " Ah." "So we're shooting in Rivendell and this is the courtyard for the arrival of the company." "Arriving in Rivendell was difficult because we had all our bags and sacks." "We had the full kit." "Most of us could barely stand up." "It's pretty tough." "You can see them suffering in between each take." "Ah." "Here we go again!" "Oh, yes." "The Dwarves, they travel light." "I think there was a communication problem with the packs." "I don't know whether they said, "Let's see how much these guys can carry."" "[GROANS]" "When it was put on me, I couldn't believe it." "And I couldn't believe Jed's weight." "BROPHY:" "I don't feel I've got enough stuff." "MAN:" "I know." "Can you give me some more stuff?" "HUNTER:" "There was nearly 50 kgs worth of weight that was put on us." "See, that's more like it." "Got my toilet in there, my tent, matches, got food, some tin fruit." "I've actually been hiding over there to delay putting this on as long as possible." " Where's Ori?" "Ori?" "MAN:" "Taking off that big load." "Yeah." "Ori?" " Stay there." "I'll just go on my soap box." "MAN:" "Thanks, Peter." "So, hey, guys, what we're gonna do, we're just gonna do like, three shots in one." "And we're gonna get a bit of the beginning where Ian walks through the gates and then Ian will retire because the real shot's gonna be with Paul leading you guys." "MAN:" "And charge!" "[SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]" "And circle." "The Dwarves will be, sometimes, our real actors but they were far too big for horses." "We're also going to be using our scale doubles who will bravely stand their ground as horses thunder towards them." "We hope." "We'll have to see." "And we'll find out in a couple of hours how brave they really are." "The scales are vitally important." "And yeah, you build up a relationship with your scale because he's watching you on the screens all the time you're doing your stuff, and he's in costume and wearing a face mask." "Wearing a mask that is a mold of your own face with similar facial hair, coloring, everything, but with a stern look." "He's walking around with this look on him this evil look the entire time." "You go, "All right, Rob." He goes, "How's it going?" What?" "MAN:" "They're on here too tight." " Yeah." "And this kind of voice comes out, and you kind of go:" ""Shit." "This is weird." "I wish he'd take off his mask right now." Heh, heh." "And so it's quite disconcerting. it's quite weird to have them walking around." "I mean, it's uncanny how close some of them look some of them more than others." "And horse charge!" "Horse charge!" "[YELLS]" "And around." "And around." "Very good." "It was a great way of seeing the whole process of being a scale double..." "[IN ELVISH]" "What is he saying?" "Does he offer us insult?" "GANDALF:" "No, Master Gloin, he's offering us food." " I just pop one in." "It's like" " Yeah." "Okay." "And I think I would need a napkin." " Is this the napkin?" "WOMAN:" "Yes." "This is the napkin." "MAN:" "Yes." "Yes." " Heh, heh." "Could I have the proper size one?" "[LAUGHING]" " This is clearly the small scale." " Yeah." "I've done a terrible job." "[IN ENGLISH] What did I tell you about the large napkins?" "Right." "Rolling resets this time, guys." "The way that we try and get through this as quickly as possible is to keep the cameras rolling and just do take after take after take." "There's only one thing for it." "JACKSON:" "And reset!" "WOMAN:" "Resetting!" "And as soon as we were done with a take, I'd say, "Okay." "Reset." "Let's go again."" " We call them rolling resets." "MAN:" "Reset." " And reset." "One last one for that. it's cut." "WOMAN:" "Resetting." "Because as soon as I said "cut" you'd literally have 30, 40 people sweeping in around the Dwarves." "There's someone to look after their hair, their makeup, their costumes." "Every time you say "cut" it's like 20 minutes gone." "Every time." "They're running, something falls off, sweating, cooling them down." " Twenty minutes gone." "JACKSON:" "And it was that sort of thing." "You need to have the patience of an ox." " Should we shoot?" "WOMAN:" "Let's clear everybody off the set." " They're just going to take that." " I need to see some rolling resets." "We're able to do that because we're not shooting film." "When we're shooting film, obviously, it's very expensive." "Digital cameras, you put a little card in, you can shoot for like 15 minutes and you can just download that footage and you can reuse the card." "The whole thing is a bit cheaper." "So I kind of realized that the best thing I could do to speed along the day was not to yell "cut." MAN:" "And reset!" "That's the way I love working and I think a lot of actors love working like that because you stay in the moment, there's energy and you build on the energy." "One take builds on the next." "But it was also a great way to kind of keep the Dwarf contingent at bay so I could get through four or five takes in a reasonably quick time." "[CHEERING AND LAUGHING]" "We'll have to cut and call it a day..." "MAN:" "Yay!" "Hey." "How are you?" " Okay." "Thank you." " Great." "Thank you." " That was fun." " Yeah. it was great." "Thanks, Adam." "You're all done." "Peter, we'll leave you in that for a while." " Oh, yeah?" " No, no." "You're done too." "Ha, ha, ha." " Bastard!" "Ah, ha, ha." " I wanted to get that look in your eye." "Naughty Dwarves." "Badly behaved." "[PEOPLE LAUGHING]" "Thank you very much, everybody, for that very long day." "We needed to get Martin away from our fair shores." "Yep." "That was fantastic." "Thanks, everybody." "We lose Martin today so we will have finished the first six weeks of shooting with Martin then he's got to go back to the UK to do another season of Sherlock." " The game is afoot, Watson." " I'm gonna take a nap for six hours." " Don't want to see any of this in Sherlock." " Or any of this." " Oh, well, you can take them." " The game is afoot." "And while he's away, we're going to be shooting more Elvish stuff with Elrond Gandalf and Galadriel." " Ooh, it's all coming back to me." "It's coming back to you?" "It's an amazing thing to be able to return to something that was begun 12 years ago." " Oh." "Here she is!" " Here she is, like you'll never exist again." "Welcome." " Little elf kiss." " Yeah." " Welcome." " Thank you." "It was a little bit like returning to summer camp." " Very well." "McKELLEN:" "Very nice to see you." "WOMAN:" "And action!" "Lady Galadriel." "GALADRIEL:" "Show me." "I suppose it's this thing about whether it raises the stakes for this thing to suddenly be produced in terms of the outward meeting." "McKELLEN:" "Cate Blanchett has played some of the great classic roles in theater." "And you can't do that unless you're alert to all the possibilities for your character and discuss them openly with your colleagues and that's how we go about preparing." "Maybe it's what stops me is the psychic speech of you're carrying something." "JACKSON:" "Yes." "There's something going on with him and I'm trying to work out what it is." "And that sort of preparation is not usual in films." "In films, the actors are cast because of their known qualities and they turn up on set and they're expected to deliver on the first day of shooting with very little preparation." "But in this case, we did all sit around." "You know, I'm perfectly fine to just sit down with the cast and send everyone away for a cup of tea for half an hour give us the set quietly to ourselves and just work the scene up and change it and we either have, you know, Philippa or Fran there." " Hello, darling?" "WALSH [OVER PHONE]:" "Hello?" " Hello, I'm just here with Cate and Ian." " Yep." "And quite a few other people, but never mind." "Um, heh..." "We were just talking about this scene." "To be on a set with one of the greatest living actors, Sir Ian McKellen and one of the greatest living directors, that's a gift anyway." "But then to have such a key scene in a way that it sets up..." "Mithrandir." "...the journey that Gandalf is going on." "Why the Half ling?" "It's a very, very beautiful speech." "I do not know." "In Ian's hands, there's not a trace of sentiment, there's just a well of feeling." ""Why the Half ling?" I do not know, but I'll think about it." ""I have found it is the small things." Where is he going with this?" ""The everyday deeds of ordinary folk that can keep darkness at bay."" "What he's coming round to is he doesn't know I don't know how to put it into words but Bilbo Baggins somehow gives me courage to carry on." "WALSH:" "That's it." "You're trying to understand it yourself inside of it." " That's right." " The sentence." "You're figuring it out as you go, not understanding it or knowing it..." "...before you say the word." " That's it." "That's it." " That's it." " Yeah." "And he makes the great confession, which needed Galadriel to bring out of him and thinking about these things, to say "I am afraid."" " That's wonderful." "Which is wonderful." " Which has to come at the end." "Yes." "I mean, we've been reading each other's minds in the previous scene." "Part of the function of the scene is to say: "Something's troubling you."" "Mm-hm." "Trying to draw it out of you, trying to get to this moment you know, of naming the fact that you're frightened, okay, would" "But I'll also tell you what's at the heart of this." "What's at the heart of the speech is this ties into the speech in the Mines of Moria, in the second film, when you say it was the pity of Bilbo that stayed his hand." "GANDALF:" "My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill before this is over." "[GOLLUM MUMBLES]" "The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many." "So there's something you play here that you don't understand." "McKELLEN:" "That's right." "It has something to do with the essence of a Hobbit that somehow you can have armies, you can have might, you can have force you can do everything in a sensible kind of rational way but there's something that you haven't discovered yet that you haven't been able to rationalize that's telling you the end of the story has something to do with this little guy and you, yourself, don't know that journey yet." " Something like that." " But Elves have problems with what we think of as human emotion, don't they?" " They don't cry or laugh." "BLANCHETT:" "No." "Do you understand what he's talking about?" "Well, I think there's something that I say in the next film:" "Even the smallest person can change the course of the future." "I don't know." "Maybe I've strangely learnt from you." "McKELLEN:" "Yeah." " Hmm." "I think Elves would laugh at a good fartjoke." "Wouldn't they?" "I mean, everybody does." "But they only happen once every thousand years." " Heh, heh." "That's right." "Yeah." "Their diet." " Heh, heh, heh." "Who wouldn't want to sit around with Cate Blanchett and talk about almost anything in the world?" "BLANCHETT:" "Elf wear." " If Kim Kardashian can bring out some..." "WOMAN:" "I know." "...platform sneakers, I think Galadriel should have them on." "Don't you?" "JACKSON:" "Well, yes, I think that's very good." "I think the platforms were about-- Yeah, they were" " No, they're about that." "WOMAN 1:" "Have you got your disco boots?" "Yeah." "You've got the disco boots." "You've got them on." "WOMAN 2:" "Or the ankle breakers." "WOMAN 1:" "She can move in them." "Wow." "BLANCHETT:" "Disco platforms, because, of course, Elves are very tall." "I was always relieved when we got to sit down and put the UGG boots on." "But somehow you couldn't perform Galadriel in UGG boots." "I think I always needed the height." "Don't stop now." "Tell us what the woodsmen say." "Christopher Lee was not sitting around the table with the rest of us." "His contribution to the scene was filmed in London." "JACKSON:" "Yeah." "[SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]" "Yes, the wardrobe was always a little bit tricky, wasn't it?" "I seem to remember you tripped up on that a couple of times." "LEE:" "And you were very cold about it." " I wasn't cold about it." " I said, "I can't get up these bloody steps."" " No, I remember." "Yeah." "No, you said "goddamn steps."" "LEE:" "I'm sorry." "I cannot get up these goddamn steps smoothly." "I can't do it, Peter." "I'm sorry." "Because every time I try, I step on the thing." ""I can't get up these goddamn steps."" " And you said, "You did it this morning."" "[LAUGHING]" "And then you said the great line, "This wardrobe is a menace."" " Yes, you did." " Did I?" "LEE:" "These clothes are a menace." "For me, that was the signature line of the entire series." "This Necromancer is nothing more than a mortal man." "I couldn't do the trip to New Zealand." "I shot those scenes here with ordinary people standing there giving me the lines and the eye line." "So you do have to use your imagination quite a bit." "You've been busy of late, my friend." "The scene had already been shot in New Zealand with a double." "And by the magic of film, it all comes together and it looks as if we're in the same place." "You've been busy of late, my friend." "JACKSON:" "And just watch the eyebrows on" " During that..." "Here we go." "Here we go." "Here we go." "Ten years." "Eyebrow acting." "[CHUCKLING]" "I have a habit of doing this...you know." "A lot of people do." "You used to say to me, "There you go again."" " All that eyebrow acting." " Well, yeah, you know..." "Because I was always doing this:" "Just give us a little bit." "Just give us a little sliver of it." "Well?" "Don't stop now." "Tell us what the woodsmen say." "Graham and I went to Pinewood." "We weren't filming there, but we went to London." "Christopher is such a character." "It was such an honor to meet him and listen to his stories." "The most extraordinary thing that happened to me in the war was a time when I was in charge of an Australian squadron and, you know, the Aussies were, in those days, not very easy to control." "They're still not." "We've got a bunch of them on the crew." "Caro Cunningham, our first AD and producer I think she dreads the moment that Christopher and I get on a set together because it's her job to keep everything moving to shoot a shot, set up, shoot the next one." "That's what she's there for, to do, and she's very, very good at doing it." "And yet Christopher loves telling stories that are of Lord of the Rings length in their epic scope." " We went to Hong Kong." " Yeah." " And then to Macau." " Yeah." "And to Bangkok." "Boy, that guy's had a life." "He's had a life." "You go up and you meet a man like that and you have to take the time to realize what's happening." " You know that famous shot of the car?" " Yes." "Yeah." "The corkscrew." "Car." "Nobody believed it, you know." "I remember Guy Hamilton saying:" ""God," he said, "That was absolutely wonderful." "Would you do another?"" "He said, "That's the first f-ing time I've done it." "I'm not f-ing doing it again."" "[CHUCKLING]" "It was always" " A part of spending time with Christopher are his stories and his ability to recall detail." "[IN FRENCH ACCENT] He spoke like a very high, squeaky voice with a French accent." "Yeah." "You're right." "I tend to be happy to sit there with the crew standing around and listen to Christopher's stories." "[IN NORMAL VOICE] Took me about two years to get that book back to her." "I could just see Caro looking at her watch in the background a little concerned about how long it was taking." "But we got there in the end." "It was the Australian Aborigine who bought himself a new boomerang and spent the rest of his life trying to get rid of the old one." "[LAUGHING]" "He is one of my heroes, and he lived up to it all." "Oh, I should crouch, of course I should." "No, don't kneel for me." "No, he is Sir Christopher, so kneeling is appropriate." "Well, you had to kneel, didn't you?" "JACKSON:" "In front of you?" " No." "No." "Well, I always kneel in front of you." "Well, I mean, I wasn't going to bring that up but..." "[LAUGHING]" "He's awesome." "He was great." "He's unstoppable." " Thank you." "Thank you very much." " Oh, please." "Don't forget the photograph." "Yes." "No, we will do a photograph." "The return to Bag End, it was actually kind of incredible because the, you know, there were parts of Bag End in London that they'd brought with them." "MAN:" "There we go." " There we go." "And action." "We had Ian Holm in the study." "We took certain parts of Bag End with us, so Ian could be in there." "You can't ship this massive set that took up all of B Stage." "And so it had to be very planned as to what was going to be needed." "We plotted out the layout of Bag End then Peter went through, worked out which parts we would need to take with us." "We break it in small-enough pieces to fit inside an air freight container and then ship it to London." "YORKE:" "Put it together at the other end." "It was like a kitset Bag End." "GARSIDE:" "We also took with us a green-screen version because I wanted to use the effects of the window patterns." "So we built the set in plywood, but with the windows cut out." "So if I put light through them, I'd still get exactly the same window patterns." "I think originally it was just that Peter and Caro were gonna go but as per normal, more people got added who conveniently happened to be in the UK at that time." "It's cool. it's really cool." "To have a chance to return, pop the wig on and the feet on all those things are part of my DNA, in a way. it's so familiar." "WOOD:" "I love that there's actually leg now." "MAN:" "Yeah, I know. it's impressive." " It's not just the feet." " I know. it's much better." "The advances in Hobbit feet, I think, are going to make certain Hobbits upset." "[LAUGHING]" "The old Hobbit feet were molded to our feet." "Then we were glued into them." "It took about an hour and a half." "Now they're slip-ons." "The entire thing is a slip-on." "This is great!" "MAN:" "People run in these." " This is a bit, yeah." "Can we get this film cut?" " Could we just do this one?" " Why was it so easy before?" " I don't know." "MAN:" "There you go." "Now pull that bit up." "Don't let it go." "Don't let it go." " Oh, my God!" "Sorry, Elijah." " No, it's fine." "[LAUGHING]" "Sagging foot." "I love it." "MAN:" "Tie him to the chair." "Tie him to the chair." "WOMAN:" "All right." "Once we get that heel in..." "Yes!" "MAN:" "Stand" " You stand back there and do nails." "[LAUGHING]" " You guys are properly hot." "WOMAN 2:" "I know, I'm getting a... it actually felt oddly normal." "Heh, heh, literally." "And in some ways that felt stranger to me." "Like, it just feels so normal, it doesn't even feel surreal, in a way." "WOMAN:" "No, but I mean that foot may be a little longer than this." "WOMAN:" "Two Hobbits, one director." "[WOOD CHUCKLES]" "WOOD:" "A very, very cool feeling, and wonderful to work with Ian." "I mean, I hadn't seen Ian in probably eight, nine years." "JACKSON:" "Action." "They seem to think you have tunnels packed with chests of gold." "It was one small chest, hardly overflowing." "And it still smells of Troll." "[LAUGHING]" "JACKSON:" "Great." "Good." "Let's get one more of those. it was great." "That's good." "Looking around at the landscape, enjoying the sunshine." "And this nice big smoke ring now." "Lovely." "We can cut that." "[BOTH CHUCKLING]" "Looking good." "One, two, three..." "There we go." "Thank you." "MAN:" "Thanks, everybody." "[SINGING] The road goes ever on and on" "Down from the door where it began" "Tolkien always referred to himself as a composer of words." "[SINGING IN ELVISH]" "FRODO:" "Who is she?" "This woman you sing of." "ADAMS:" "I always think he used songs as a third voice." "You have dialogue:" "NARRATOR:" ""Yes, it is Elves," said Frodo." "Wood-elves." "ADAMS:" "You have a narrator:" "NARRATOR:" "The singing drew nearer." "ADAMS:" "And you have these songs that sort of give you another window into that world." "[ELVES SINGING IN ELVISH]" "EDEN:" "What we're seeing in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit is that music and songs are infused throughout." "[SINGING] To heal my heart and drown my woe" "Rain may fall and wind may blow" "But there still be" "Many miles to go" "So this time around, when we were doing The Hobbit, Philippa, Fran and I just said:" ""Well, maybe because it is a little bit more of a 'children's story' maybe we can get some more songs from the book."" "BILBO [SINGING]:" "The road goes ever on and on" "Down from the door" "Until our next meeting." "BOYENS:" "When we were writing the scripts, we had a sense that we probably wanted to use some of those great songs that are in there." "And it becomes hard to imagine telling the scene of 13 Dwarves squashed into Bilbo's little dining room without doing "Blunt the Knives."" "Then he said, "Did you hear that, ladsies?" "He says we'll blunt the knives."" "ADAMS:" "Tolkien is showing you your first glimpse of Dwarvish culture and he's also showing you how well they work as a unit." "[NARRATOR READING ON-SCREEN TEXT]" "[SINGING] Blunt the knives, bend the forks" "Smash the bottles and burn the corks" "Then they start literally frisbee-ing plates down the corridor." "And they're sort of really taking the mick out of Bilbo, they start to wind him up a bit." "[SINGING] That's what Bilbo Baggins hates" "But in the end, Tolkien uses this song to show that they know how to be civilized." "Bilbo notices that even though they made a huge mess, they cleaned up the place." "[DWARVES LAUGHING]" "To come up with the music for "Blunt the Knives" we turned to Steve Gallagher, who's one of our music editors but is also a wonderful composer himself." "Their instructions were that it was to be a rambunctious almost like a pub sing-along." "[SINGING] Send them down the hall to roll" "One of the things that Fran suggested to me when I started writing "Blunt the Knives" was that I should definitely pay respect to Tolkien's words." "She said, "Try rearranging some of them if you find them hard to scan or hard to place beats on."" "[SINGING] Blunt the knives, bend the forks" "Smash the bottles and burn the corks" "GALLAGHER:" "In the first verse here, Tolkien started with:" "[GALLAGHER READING ON-SCREEN TEXT]" "We just swapped the two lines around so they read:" "[GALLAGHER READING ON-SCREEN TEXT]" "We left that in as that unison cry of the Dwarves taunting him." "[SINGING] That's what Bilbo Baggins hates initially, in the "Blunt the Knives" demo, there was an instrumental part." "EDEN:" "In the book, each of the Dwarves when they enter Bilbo's house, have an instrument." "So it shows you that the Dwarves are very musical people." "In the film version, we only have two." "And at the time, I thought, "Well, I'll have to hire some musicians to play this."" "And Fran pulled me aside and said:" ""You should ask Jimmy Nesbitt to play the tin flute solo."" "And Jimmy sort of thought for a minute and he said:" ""Well, I'm not very good." "I'll bring my flute in and we'll try it out."" "[SINGING] Send them down the hall to roll" "[FLUTE PLAYING]" "He just pulled it out of the bag and my jaw dropped open and went:" ""Fantastic." "You're hired."" "[FLUTE PLAYING]" "I didn't know I was gonna play the tin whistle and that's still in there." "So that was exciting." "GALLAGHER:" "One of the challenges was making the sounds of Dwalin's fiddle." "JACKSON: it's like a little Dwarf ukulele." "MAN 1:" "Yeah." "MAN 2:" "it's something he could carry in his pants." "JACKSON:" "Does it work?" " No." "And I couldn't play anyways." "JACKSON:" "Can you give us a tune?" "Oh, rubbish." "GALLAGHER:" "I sort of did some research into Nordic music and the sounds of the Hardanger, which is like a medieval violin and it has a lower tuning than your standard concert violin." "I couldn't find any of these instruments in New Zealand but I decided that to make the fiddle sound it would be nice to sort of combine some elements of two instruments." "So we had a bowed banjo and this quite low-tuned violin." "And we layered that up with the bowed banjo and that's what you hear in the film." "DWARVES [SINGING]:" "Splash the wine on every door" "[HUMMING]" "It's almost like a music video actually, this routine." "WOMAN:" "And roll!" "[SINGING] Dump the crocks in a boiling bowl" "Pound them up with a thumping pole" "I guess I can just mark this off as I've been in a semi-musical and then call it a day." "[FLUTE PLAYING]" "One thing that Peter and Fran asked for was that the song was supported by the Dwarves making rhythms and incorporating these sounds and then the rhythm of these sounds into the piece." "And so we went into the Foley room and we had four of us standing there, stomping away trying to lock everything in time to that rhythm." "Whether it was a plate ting or a cutlery hit." "We had a lot of fun just trying to make the sound effects really meld into that music." "[SINGING] That's what Bilbo Baggins hates" "[LAUGHING]" "[DOORBELL RINGS]" "GANDALF:" "He is here." "ADAMS:" "And then Thorin shows up and the mood changes." "So the filmmakers really use these songs to introduce character as well as culture." "NARRATOR:" "And suddenly, first one and then another began to sing as they played deep-throated singing of the Dwarves in the deep places of their ancient homes." "[DWARVES HUMMING]" "ARMITAGE:" "I always believed that it would be a song that had been passed on generation after generation so that you didn't forget what happened there." "[SINGING] Far over" "The misty mountains cold" "I think the "Misty Mountain" song is their history encapsulated." "When I first heard it, I immediately brought to my mind these are medieval Icelandic Dwarves." "The Dwarves that Tolkien had in his mind that influenced him early on in his career." "In fact, the names of the Dwarves Tolkien took directly from The Poetic Edda, which is a group of medieval Norse sagas." "And when we cut, a little bit later, and the Dwarves are gathered staring at the fire, and Thorin begins to sing in a low voice." "[SINGING] Far over the Misty Mountains cold" "To dungeons deep" "And caverns old" "We must away" "'Ere break of day" "To find our long-forgotten gold" "In The Hobbit, we were shooting the movie a long time before Howard Shore worked on the score and we needed the actors on the set to be able to sing these songs and so we turned to Plan 9 a wonderful group of musicians here in New Zealand." "And we've often turned to Plan 9 to provide practical music that we need on set..." "[MUSICIANS PLAYING FOLK MUSIC]" "If we have a party scene and we need dancing we need singing in a pub." "[SINGING] But the only brew for the brave and true" "Comes from the Green Dragon" "And they came up with the "Misty Mountains" tune." "We knew that the Dwarven culture was one that they were great singers, you know." "RODDICK:" "Something that everybody in the culture would do." "I can imagine the "Misty Mountain" song, then, sort of sung in a cavern." "You know, they're miners, and that song being sung in a large space would be beautiful." "So it needed to have that simple shape." "Quite a simple folk song, you know, like with sort of three or four chords." "So we had a few different versions of that." "How many demos did we have of "Misty Mountain"?" " Six or eight." " I think we did eight." "[SINGING] Far over the Misty Mountains cold" "CHORUS [SINGING]:" "To dungeons deep" "And caverns old" "There was one that goes:" "[SINGING] Far over the Misty Mountains cold" "Where caverns deep and canyons old" "CHORUS:" "We must away" "'Ere break of day" "To find our long-forgotten gold" " We didn't know which one they would want." " No." "That's really interesting." "You sort of send them off and you go:" "CHORUS:" "The pines were roaring on the height" "The winds were moaning in the night" "The fire was red, it flaming spread" "The trees like torches blazed with light" "I think what David Long and Plan 9 did with the "Misty Mountain" song is combined the two tones that Howard Shore in Lord of the Rings set out as the paradigms of Dwarvish culture, musically speaking." "[ORCHESTRA PLAYING]" "You have the sound of these very minor, regretful harmonies in parts of "Dwarrowdelf."" "And you have the male voices, which were associated with Moria." "[SINGING IN DWARVISH]" "The chorus is the Dwarf chorus and they're singing in this ancient Dwarvish language." "[CHOIR SINGING AND ORCHESTRA PLAYING]" "ADAMS:" "Combining those two tones is largely what results in the "Misty Mountain" song." "You have a very minor moded tune with male voices." "[SINGING] To find our long-forgotten gold" "We were doing Richard Armitage's audition and he was just about to leave and I was looking down at some of my notes and I suddenly go, "Oh, yeah, of course. 'Misty Mountains."'" "And I said to him, "Can you sing?"" "And he sort of went, "Well, yeah."" "Which was really funny because that-- Boy, can that guy sing." "[SINGING] Far over" "The misty mountains cold" "Far over" "Wow, it comes out of nowhere." "It's just" " What a beautiful voice." "I hate him." "There is something religious about the sound but it needed to be right from the gut, right from the core not too much of a performance." "It's very personal how these voices are blending." "[SINGING] Far over" "The misty mountains cold" "To dungeons deep" "And caverns old it turns out that as an ensemble we have a beautiful, kind of resonant choir within." "'Ere break of day" "To find our long-forgotten gold" "JACKSON:" "So is everyone good to shoot?" "MAN:" "Yeah." "Good." "Towards the end of the song, I think it's good if Richard turns around and connects with you guys and then just as the song reaches its finale you know, in the last verse or something, you can start to look up at Richard and that might draw the last couple of you to your feet." " All right, well, let's give it a go, eh?" "Shoot?" " Yeah." " Set." "WOMAN:" "And playback." "DWARVES [SINGING]:" "The pines were roaring" "On the height" "You really did feel that coming-together feeling while we were shooting that scene." "It really sums up the atmosphere of what's about to happen and where we're gonna go on our journey." "[SINGING] The trees like torches" "Blazed with light" "And then, I guess, it made sense that that song would become the theme of their quest." "ADAMS:" "You actually get a lot of the "Misty Mountain" song in Howard Shore's score of the film." "And I like the fact that the score shows you these variations in that theme and gives you the sense that maybe what we hear in Bag End isn't the only way the song is ever sung." "BOTH [SINGING]:" "Far over the misty mountains cold" "[IMITATING ELECTRIC GUITAR]" "HUNTER:" "To dungeons deep" "And caverns old" "[IMITATING ELECTRIC GUITAR AND DRUMS]" "[NARRATOR READING ON-SCREEN TEXT]" "Change the tune, why don't you?" "I feel like I'm at a funeral." "Bofur's song at Rivendell is there for a purpose in the story." "[CLEARS THROAT]" "[SINGING] There's" "An" "Inn, there's an inn There's a merry old inn" "Beneath an old gray hill" "We wanted something that was an opportunity for the Dwarves to really thumb their nose at the Elves, you know, to be disrespectful." "And having one of the Dwarves jump up on the sacred plinth..." "Oh ...which is the same plinth that the One Ring is put on, heh later in the Lord of the Rings, and starts singing a pub song." "The Man in the Moon Himself came down one night" "To drink his fill" "We just thought that's a great, you know, device to show how the Dwarves don't really have any respect whatsoever for the Elves." "So we then thought, "Okay, what can he sing?"" "And it was a bit naughty of us." "What we ended up doing was taking a song that Frodo sings when he's in the Prancing Pony and we never got to use it in the Lord of the Rings." "NARRATOR:" "For a moment, Frodo stood gaping." "Then in desperation, he began a ridiculous song that Bilbo had been rather fond of, and indeed, rather proud of for he had made up the words himself." "Tolkien was very interested in how songs and stories survived and how they might have been in previous cultures." "So the "Man in the Moon" is Tolkien's pre-history of the "Hey, Diddle, Diddle" nursery rhyme." "BOFUR [SINGING]:" "So the cat on the fiddle" "Played hey-diddle-diddle A drink that'll wake the dead it gives you a sense that maybe there's a link between modern-day real world and the history of Middle-earth." "It's interesting that in this particular version of The Hobbit we have Bofur, the Dwarf, singing it on a table similar to Frodo in the Lord of the Rings." "Now purring low" "Now sawing in the middle" "BOYENS:" "So either Bilbo learned it off Bofur or Bilbo had written it on the journey to Rivendell and taught it to Bofur." "You decide." "MAN:" "Lovely." " So you're gonna be chorus master." "Why, it's not" " Well" " Yeah." "It's good because he knows the words really well." "Jimmy came up with that tune himself." "He did it all himself." "Fran invited Jimmy to come over to our house and to work up a tune." "So anyway, I went home and I thought, "What the hell am I gonna do?"" "You know, I'm not a songwriter, you know." "But I showed it to Peggy, my eldest and I said, "I think it's kind of like a drinking-type song."" "She looked at the words and she said:" ""You should have a kind of a 'unh-unh-unh' beat in your head."" "And then it sort of came together." "I just sort of looked at it and I went:" "[SINGING] There's an inn, there's an inn There's a merry old inn" "Beneath an old gray hill" "Then that naturally goes:" "And there they brew a beer so brown" "The Man in the Moon Himself came down one night" "To drink his fill" "I remember having to play it to Peter on a Sunday." "I went into Peter's bedroom, he was drinking tea and watching Rugby whilst reading the Economist." "There you have Peter Jackson." "And there they brew a beer so brown" "What makes a good pub song is something that people can join in with." "[HUMMING]" "[SINGING] The man in the moon himself Came down one night" "To drink his fill" "Oh" "And there they brew a beer so brown" "Beneath the old gray hill" "Totally out of tune." "It's not even close to the tune." " Well-- - it's just rubbish." "[SINGING] While the landlord shook The Man in the Moon" ""It's after three!" he said it would be great if Dwalin just yelled the whole thing." "MAN:" "Yep." " So the cat..." "McTAVISH:" "Oh!" "[IN GRUFF VOICE] The ostler had a tipsy cat!" "They sort of just let you go with things." "That's what was weird about it." "This massive, massive, you know, thing but also they say, "Oh, you can write that song."" "Or "if you come up with a tune, we'll record it." Heh." "[SINGING] They all went back to bed" "Hey!" "That's music." "[HORN BLOWS]" "ADAMS:" "The fact that the villains have a song too says something about the pervasiveness of music in Middle-earth." "[NARRATOR READING ON-SCREEN TEXT]" "The "Down, Down in Goblin-town" song really gives you, right away, a peek into the identity of this people and so we hear that the Goblins like to crack and snap bones." "ADAMS:" "In the book, you hear it before you meet the Great Goblin." "In the film, it's really the Great Goblin introducing himself." "I feel a song coming on." "I'm very happy to say that my character has a song in this movie." "[SINGING] Pound, pound Far underground" "Catchy, isn't it?" "It's one of my own compositions." "It's a hate-filled number which I think children will enjoy and senior citizens will appreciate." "GREAT GOBLIN [SINGING]:" "Clap, snap The black crack" "HUMPHRIES:" "it's entirely about destruction death and torture." "But I try to do it in a sympathetic way." "[SINGING] Down, down to Goblin-town" ""Down, down, down to Goblin-town" was the catch phrase so it's a great, great line and really lended itself quite well to sort of musical adaptation." "They did play a recording of the composer singing it." "GALLAGHER [SINGING]:" "Clap, snap The black crack" "Grip, grab Pinch and nab" "He looked at it, listened to it, then he looked up and he said, "This is all wrong."" "My character is tone deaf and so I had to do what is an extremely difficult thing for a person like me who sings beautifully." "I had to sing it badly." "[SINGING] Pound, pound Far underground" "He went through the lines and said, "I don't think the Goblin King would sing it like that." "I think he'd sing it like this." He was right." "Flatterer." "GALLAGHER:" "The song is kind of reversed engineered in a sense." "His performance was the starting point." "Yeah!" "GALLAGHER:" "And we based all of the instrumentation and all harmony around his performance." "Hmm. it's metal, it dings it shall be Goblin." "The sound designer, Dave Whitehead, and I set up a percussion orchestra in the ADR room at Park Road Post." "WHITEHEAD:" "Peter said that the Goblins were scavengers and that they would gather bits and pieces from the world above." "GALLAGHER:" "They're taking this junk that maybe other cultures would throw away and they're using it for actual useful, and in this case, musical ends." "Some of the things we recorded were actually unlistenable." "They were so sort of, um, abrasive." "WHITEHEAD:" "I do think you have to become a Goblin to make Goblin sounds." "That's mine." "WHITEHEAD:" "So once we got the percussion into a really good shape we actually played it to Peter and he said that he would like to have horns." "[BLOWING]" "Dave Whitehead has made some amazing horns from a combination of different things." "And so we have a modified didgeridoo modified with the classic rubber glove and a children's noisemaker." "[BLOWING]" "When we work on a film, we have to look at the space that the scene is set in." "The Goblin-town is in a huge cave and, obviously, the set wasn't a huge cave and so we had a team go out to Waitomo Caves which is in the middle of the North island." "You know, it's the classic dripping cave with the stalactites and stalagmites." "Four of the crew went up there to record what we call impulse responses of the cave." "The sound that goes:" "[HUMS]" "From low up to high." "[BEEPS]" "This is pretty much taking like a sound photograph of the echoes and reverbs of a room." "And so then we can take this sound photograph put it in our software, have Barry Humphries sing and it sounds like he is singing in Waitomo Caves." "[SINGING] Down, down, down in Goblin-town" "Down, down, down in Goblin-town" "I'm convinced that the song will be a huge hit." "It could even go platinum." "Heh, heh." "[GROWLING]" "BOYENS:" "We weren't sure there was gonna be an end song." "We were pretty rushed." "Initially we wondered about reprising the Dwarves singing "Misty Mountains." We did." "We tried it." "[OVER SPEAKERS] Far over the misty mountains cold it was way too slow." "Then we were thinking about "Maybe someone else could sing it."" "And Fran and I were in my car, the radio was on and Neil Finn was singing." "Fran was like, "Well, he could do it."" "And I said, "He really could." "Do you think he would?"" "So I rang him." "He was in England." "I got a call, only a matter of two weeks ago and now I'm working on some music which will occupy a place at the end of the movie." "[SINGING] Far over the Misty Mountains cold" "My brief was a reprise of "Misty Mountain."" "I just explored the melody as much as I could and tried to find my own voice for it." "I brought it up in key a little." "To find our long-forgotten gold" "BOYENS:" "Neil Finn was incredible." "He understood the flavor and the feel of what we were going for but he needed to make it his own." "It couldn't just be a reprise of the Dwarves' "Misty Mountains."" "So he came up with the lyrics, and we loved them." "FINN:" "I think the lyrics ended up being quite specifically about that moment in the story where they're perched on the rock looking with some hope towards their ancient homeland." "Our home." "Was long ago" "When lanterns burned" "But every day" "Our hearts have yearned" "The first sign of the Dwarven influence was drums turning up." "It would be good to put..." " ...some "ba-rums" into the chorus." " Yeah." "FINN:" "Above the stony hill" "The leaves of wind" "The addition of big manly percussion that would give a certain rousing Dwarvish quality to it." "[NEIL FINN'S "SONG OF THE LONELY MOUNTAIN" PLAYING OVER SPEAKERS]" "Anvil was just obvious." "They're a mining folk, those Dwarves." "Within Erebor, there would have been the sound of mighty anvils being struck." "God bless the anvil." "[MAN GROANS]" "MAN:" "Three, two, one!" "[CROWD CHEERS]" "FINN:" "We were delighted to be asked to play the song in front of the assembled throng in Wellington for the premiere." "This is for Peter, Fran and Philippa." "Thank you." "I think it had great heart and great spirit on the day." "[SINGING] Far over" "The misty mountains rise" "Leave us standing" "Upon the height" "What was before" "We'll see once more" "Is our kingdom a distant light" "FINN:" "it was an epic day." "People from all over the world who were just nuts for Middle-earth." "YORKE:" "So many people turned out." "It was such an amazing experience." "Surrounded by the people that you've worked with for the last three years." "We'll be there soon" "I actually never thought that we would ever be lucky enough to get to work in Middle-earth again." "SERKIS:" "I don't think this is the end." "I can't imagine there won't be another thing that we'll come back to do." "And all who find us will know the tune" "HADLOW:" "What a journey." "Let me do it again." "Can we start again now?" "I think I will miss the camaraderie the most..." "McTAVISH:" "I think that's a measure of what this experience has been like for people." "You can have truly life-changing moments while you're here for that amount of time." "This is absolutely unbelievable." "Everybody that's come to help us celebrate this film." "You know, The Lord of the Rings was such a great experience and now we've been able to take The Hobbit and it seems like fate's meant for us to be here." "FINN [SINGING]:" "Until we get our long-forgotten gold" "Far away" "The misty mountains cold" "Thank you." "Hello, and welcome to Middle-earth." "For those of you that have seen The Lord of the Rings special editions it should be "Welcome back to Middle-earth."" "And for those of you who are new we'll walk you through what you can expect to see in these appendices which we actually began back with The Lord of the Rings films." "Now, Professor Tolkien had appendices in the back of The Lord of the Rings and like his appendices, these are our back stories and supporting material." "MAN:" "Action." " Oh, okay." "Good." "JACKSON:" "And this is our chance to finally present them to you." " Did you get that?" "Ha-ha-ha." "MAN:" "Yeah, I did." "JACKSON:" "Now, The Lord of the Rings had six appendices spread over the three movies." "This is actually Appendices Number 7 and Number 8." "If you're keeping track." "Now, Appendices Number 7 is called "A Long-Expected Journey."" "And that's a chronological experience of shooting An Unexpected Journey the first Hobbit movie." "Beginning with pre-production in late 2010 through to the wrapping of pick-ups in the middle of 2012." "And also, this disc includes the realms of Middle-earth..." " This is a great spot." "WOMAN:" "Yeah, it's fantastic." "JACKSON:" "...and the songs." "ALL [SINGING]:" "That's what Bilbo Baggins hates" "JACKSON:" "And Appendices Number 8 is entitled "The Return to Middle-earth."" "And this section is comprised of various pieces documenting the realization of the characters..." "Hello, everybody!" "JACKSON: ...the casting..." " Why did it come to me?" "JACKSON:" "...and the creatures." "[GRUNTS]" "Now, all of the features and documentaries can be watched individually or in various play-all configurations." "And we will continue this behind-the-scenes journey over the next couple of years on films 2 and 3." "ALL:" "Aah!" "But for now, there's about 9 hours of documentary material to enjoy on this special edition." "So please sit back and I hope you enjoy this look at the making of The Hobbit:" "An Unexpected Journey." "JACKSON:" "I thought, "I'm never going to make three films back-to-back again."" "Never such a long shoot." "I never realized that 10 years later we were doing it all over again." "BLANCHETT:" "if anyone can keep the spirit of the book it's Peter and Fran and Philippa and the gang." "BOYENS:" "In the scramble to get a movie made sometimes you don't really know where you are at any one time but I remember the day when I knew we were back in Middle-earth." "[ALL LAUGHING]" "WOOD:" "it's a mixture of nostalgia and surrealism and I didn't know how to, ha, ha, process it." "FREEMAN:" "That was probably what Pete was, rightfully, mindful of is like, what happens when a load of people descend on a small space?" "The Lonely Mountain." "FREEMAN:" "Lots of men, lots of testosterone all acting the hell out of each other." "You know what I mean?" "SERKIS:" "I took a bashing over those two weeks." "I took a real bashing." "And the thought of sitting in front of a monitor watching 3D with glasses on I thought, "Bring it on, bring it on."" "MAN 1:" "The process of making this film is one where everybody is just trying to keep up and deal with things that are happening on the day and sometimes they're quite major." "MAN 2:" "Everyone went, "Okay, if we can achieve that in that much time then we can make this movie." "We can get it done."" "TAYLOR:" "it's rare that a challenge will be so great that myself or our team are sort of hitting our heads against a wall." "But I think we were close to it." "McKELLEN:" "I've felt miserable, and thought, perhaps, "Has the time come for me to stop acting altogether if I can't cope with these difficulties?"" "[MEN CHATTERING AND McKELLEN LAUGHS]" "MAN 3:" "I think, in a previous life, quite a few of our construction and design people were part of some medieval torture kind of world, I don't know." "HENNAH:" "We put the same effort and ethic into this and Lord of the Rings but it just got bigger and it got more extensive on The Hobbit." "MAN 4:" "The was one of the things Peter told us very early on:" ""Don't think small." "Think big, think wide."" "[ALL SHOUTING]" "ARMITAGE:" "He has a big picture for the character that I can't quite see yet." "So even though there's stuff here I don't know if I can do it I just know that he'll take me there." "JACKSON:" "The making of the movie was almost walking step by step, stride by stride with our company, as they were on their own journey." "This is a very complicated movie times three, all at once." "This is going to be the hardest thing I ever do in my life, and I will never" "I've actually had enough of these complicated things." "My next movie is going to be really simple." "Whatever it is, it will be simple as hell." "When we made The Lord of the Rings, I was absolutely sure that was going to be a once in a lifetime experience." "Just run forward and give him a big hug." "And, you know, I thought, "it's done."" "it was an amazing experience." "Finished." "Then, you know, time carries on and post Rings he gets into the world of King Kong and then there starts to be these rumblings of:" ""What's going to happen with The Hobbit?"" "After The Lord of the Rings finished, all of us are, of course, anxious." "When is The Hobbit going to happen?" "CROWD [CHANTING]:" "Hobbit!" "Hobbit!" "Hobbit!" "JACKSON:" "Let's not shut TheOneRing.net down just yet." "[CROWD CHEERING]" "FALCONER:" "And there was all this fan build up and excitement about trying to get it made." ""Let The Hobbit happen," I think, was the campaign." "The idea of doing The Hobbit was always there in terms of the fact that The Lord of the Rings trilogy had been successful." "The studio was keen to do it, but there were rights issues involved which were quite complicated." "Primarily, because Warner Bros. didn't own all the rights." "They were shared between Warner Bros. and MGM." "A historical situation, I think, that goes right back to the '60s, actually when Tolkien originally sold the film rights." "And around 2008 there was a real will to sort out the rights issue." "But Peter had made the decision, "I don't need to direct this."" "The first time I ever mentioned it, or asked Pete if The Hobbit was ever something he would consider we were on location on Rings somewhere in a forest and we had a bit of downtime, and I just kind of:" ""Would you ever think about making The Hobbit after this is all done now that you've spent the time establishing the world of Middle-earth?"" "And he was quick to answer with, "No, not interested in that."" "I was always unsure whether I should direct The Hobbit." "I didn't really want to end up in a position where I was thinking back to what I did in The Lord of the Rings." "Feeling like I was competing with myself." "But on the other hand we kind of feel a sentimental attachment, a sort of ownership to the Middle-earth that's been put on the screen." "So the concept was that we would produce it and Fran and Philippa and I would be involved in the script as writers, possibly with somebody else and we'd have another director come on board." "He had a very strong inkling of who he wanted to direct it very early on." "JACKSON:" "Guillermo del Toro was one of our favorite filmmakers and he was very enthusiastic about doing it." "In our mind he was a director that would do an interesting version of The Hobbit." "I am exploding with the desire to just, argh, showing everything." "It's fun, but it's challenging, and it requires you to have your stuff together." "You know, you have to do your homework every day." "I really trust that we're in good shape." "BOYENS:" "We began writing with Guillermo and that was wonderful." "But, unfortunately, we had no green-light." "Literally, the movies weren't green-lit." "However, during that time, Warner Bros. were still funding the preproduction so Guillermo was able to do a lot of the work the director would do in that year and a half before you start rolling the camera." " That's great." "That's my favorite." " Okay." "LEE:" "Like Peter, Guillermo is really passionate about design." "DEL TORO:" "That's great." "It's a very intense and enjoyable period." "JACKSON:" "We had a workshop, we're building maquettes and I think they're even starting to build armor." "There was a lot of money being spent." "And yet, there was no deal between MGM and Warner Bros." "And when a deal was getting close when it felt like there was a deal, then MGM got into some financial problems." "That got to the state that each of our proposed start dates with Guillermo got pushed." "Delayed, delayed, delayed." "We got to the point where it really was difficult to maintain the drive that you need to make a film when you're in this suspended state." "And so it became a question of whether Guillermo waited for the next 6-month delay or does he move on and jump on board one of the other projects he was developing." "That's ultimately what happened around May and June in 2010." "HOWE:" "I remember the meeting where he announced that he had to leave." "And was very clearly heartbroken." "MULLANE:" "I saw Peter's face, which was gray." "And I thought the whole thing had just folded, to be honest." "It was a horrible moment." "We understood why he needed to move on." "Respected that decision." "But it did leave us with the issue of, "Okay, so, what now?"" "Peter didn't immediately, like, pick up the reins, either." "I think a lot of people think that." "That as soon as Guillermo left, Peter was in." "That was not the case." "I think Peter kind of struggled with it." "At the point that Guillermo left a substantial amount of money had been spent and a huge amount of work had been done." "And we talked about it and said:" ""Do we now find somebody else who would like to make The Hobbit?"" "And essentially start that journey again." "Or do we help the studio in a very difficult situation and do I step in and do it?" "MULLANE:" "I was in a tricky position with agents trying to start doing deals with people that we were wanting." "And agents were going, "Hang on a minute." "You don't have a director." "So, you know, we can't." "And you're not actually green-lit completely."" "And I spoke with Carol, producer, and said, "I'm completely stuck now."" "And she went, "Right." "Let's go and see Peter."" "And we went and saw him." "And I said, "I can't really go any further because nobody can take it seriously." "They need to know if there's some certainty here, because there is none."" "And I'll never forget." "He went, "You're absolutely right."" "Picked up the phone." "I think he was calling Ken Kamins, Peter's manager and he went, "Ken, we can't move ahead until this is confirmed." "So we need to confirm this." "And it was like, "Excellent." "All right." "Um." "Good." Heh." "It might be interesting to see Gandalf in something like this." "You think:" ""Oh, my God, Gandalfs gotten trapped."" "BOYENS:" "By this stage, I think, Peter had fallen in love with the story." "We'd spent 18 months writing it." "We had a lot of ideas." "It took us a few weeks after Guillermo left to really make up our mind to do it." "And then we still didn't have the green-light." "I mean, that's what is easy to forget now." "That after Guillermo left, it was another four months, maybe five months, before MGM did sort out its financial problems and we knew we were making the film." "Just sort of pick Bag End out as being the focus." "FALCONER:" "When we heard that Peter was going to step in and direct it it was like coming home, because he was there leading the charge for us on those first three films, and it's hard to imagine those happening without Pete." "Put the front entrance there, the main entrance there and put Dale" " Kind of cheat Dale down there a little bit..." "At the point that we got the green-light and everyone wanted to make these films I suddenly looked up and found myself with very little time to prepare." "On The Lord of the Rings I had two and a half years to prepare for three movies." "And on The Hobbit, I had about five months to prepare." "Valentine's Day, the 14th of February, was our original start to shooting." "The first question we all had was:" ""What's going to change and what's staying the same?"" "In terms of Guillermo's designs I looked at it and I thought, "This would be an amazing Guillermo del Toro film."" "But I can't do that." "I can't suddenly step in and impersonate another filmmaker." "All the ones I've identified as the current favorite. it would be good to do our layout." "What I thought I had to do at that point was to say, "Okay, you're the guy that made The Lord of the Rings." "Get back into that zone." "Get back into that headspace."" "TAYLOR:" "For me and our team at the design studio, we began a process of redesign because, of course, Peter is a director of his own vision and he therefore needed to remodel the work to suit the way he wanted to visualize the world." "We were able to start casting the film, to see people in particular roles." "It gave us the energy of, "We're doing this, it's going to happen."" "There was quite a long period in the years between The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit." "And Fran and I just took the attitude, "Well, if we end up doing The Hobbit it'll be because that's where fate has pushed us."" "So now, 10 years after The Lord of the Rings, we find ourselves back on set with essentially, the same crew." "So I've sort of done the once in a lifetime experience twice in my lifetime." "But not a third time." "There won't be a third time." "Whatever the best plan that's laid, sometimes you can never predict the humps on the road that will throw you off." "And we were ultimately left with just a matter of a few months before we started shooting." "At that point in time we were ramping up at record numbers of people." "We were trying to find crew from all over the world to come and facilitate Dwarven prosthetics, Dwarven hands, weapons." "Pretty much crafts and skill basis from all over the world." "The first thing to do is probably just to bog up a few of those and also then make a few that are more crooked." "HENNAH:" "We were going to be building over a hundred sets in four studios and I can't say we actually panicked but we started to develop strategies to make that happen." "I mean, one of them was we started to work out how to utilize our spaces and our facilities better." "And one of the ways we did that was put on a night art director a night team who could be very effective." "And so we basically got our studios working 24 hours a day, seven days a week." "The pressure was on." "Designs still needed to be locked off manufacturing was going guns." "We were casting hot metal, we were machining, we were forging we were molding and casting with urethanes and polyesters." "We've got 11 of the 13 Dwarves here, and this is final approval on the prosthetics sculpt before I take it and show the director tomorrow." "We were starting to come up with some beard and hair designs and some early concept passes." "Alan and John were furiously working into it, the Costuming Department. it was crazy." "So it's the excitement and buzz, but it's also quite a challenge to produce something so quickly." "The Camera Department had already started because that was quite a massive undertaking." "We had to turn over cameras within a couple of weeks of actually getting the equipment out of the boxes, out of the crates." "At one point we had A Stage itself, which was quite a large stage." "We had almost like a factory going with the rigs and various accessories and people building boxes with networking systems and sync pulse generators and wireless systems." "And we were very much learning the ropes at that point." "So there were many, many things that still had to be solved:" "Mechanical things, electronic things." "We had to basically hook it up and get it to run very quickly." "This balcony thing is a little bit too tall." "The railing, I think it should come down about two-thirds that height." "We had constant reviews of sets we were building key props we were introducing." "It's a scramble, you know?" "It's January, the actors are turning up." "I had no concept of what was ahead." "None whatsoever." "We were wondering, thinking, "What's it all going to be like?" "What's the makeup going to be like?" "What costumes?" "Where are we going to go?"" "Because we hadn't even really read the script." "Then we had our first taste of what it was going to be like." "We were given a tour of the studio." "Go on." "Go on, kiss it." "[CHATTERING]" "[INDISTINCT DIALOGUE]" "MAN 1: it's just amazing." " No way." "Oh, my God." "MAN 1:" "it's just extraordinary." "MAN 2:" "Look at that." "I am so impressed." "BROWN:" "it kind of felt like it was really happening." "This wasn't a surreal dream." "I was actually on this journey with these guys." "And then suddenly, the Dwarf Boot Camp happened." "[INDISTINCT DIALOGUE]" "[GRUNTING]" "Hey!" "Whoa!" "[ALL HUMMING]" "The boot camp was essentially a training period." "During which we were introduced to various aspects of what we would be required to do through the production." "Once you're on set shooting the movie, there's very little time to actually train." "So it allows the actor to look like they were born doing this." "And they've been doing it for, in the case of a Dwarf, a hundred years." "They're not just somebody, whoa, doing it nervous and doing it for the first time." "You want that confidence, you want that sense of:" ""Okay, this is who I am and this is what I do."" "And that only comes with quite prolonged training." "Roll and pop yourself back up, okay?" "BOSWELL:" "Tim Wong, who was on my team would put all the Dwarf actors through a routine to ascertain their fitness, basically." "You had people like Graham McTavish who'd been training for months leading up to this role and then had other people who hadn't done as much training and preparation for the physical side, anyway." "BROWN:" "Yeah, I'd never done any exercise prior to this in my whole life." "Heh, heh, heh." "Everybody then was beginning at varying levels of ability because you've got John Callen, 65." "I'm quite sure I was very frustrating for a number of other people who are so much more agile than me." "You know, you had some guys who'd never done a forward roll since they were 7 or 8 or 9 years old." "Can I do a forward roll?" "Who can't?" "I can't." "Those of us who maybe let ourselves go in recent years had to confront some challenges about aerobic fitness and weight." "WONG:" "Five." "Six." "FREEMAN:" "You were invited to do as much as you wanted to do." "Given that, if you want to be fit to do this job you'd probably be quite wise to get fit, you know what I mean?" "WONG:" "Three." "WONG:" "Martin joined us, I think, a week or two later." "Because of his character and the way Bilbo is in his ability he probably didn't have to be there." "But he told us that he wanted to be there." "WONG:" "Eight." "We did a lot of time with Tim Wong when we first started." "Our basic sword movements." "WONG:" "Six." "Seven." "It is muscle memory, and it is-- You're doing it so often that you don't have to think about it." "And that's the way it works." "[GRUNTING]" "We've been really chucked into the deep end, but all this we've been doing it as the 14 of us." "Not only do we have the actors to deal with, we had all the scale Dwarves to deal with." "We call them scalies, actually." "The scale doubles." "They ranged from 5' 2" down to about 4 foot." "We had some people return from The Lord of the Rings who'd been scale doubles." "There was Kiran Shah and Trevor and Brett." "And it was really good to have them back doing the work." "One hundred and two, 103, 104..." "All the scale doubles were put through the stunt training because we knew we were going to fight, we were going to fall we were going to do a lot of things." "They were probably going to be doing as much fighting and falling as the stunt guys." "So we had to try to make them as skillful and believable as the stunt guys." "[GRUNTING]" "We actually had a whole liege people training them because they had so many specific skills that they needed for their performance." "Nathan and Nick, in particular, were there for their acting." "Initially, we had the scale doubles and we trained them separately from the actors." "That was because we really wanted them to feel they were at a really good level before going to the actors." "WOMAN:" "Okay." "Rehearsing." "Sometimes they would be playing a scene opposite Sir Ian McKellen." "So you don't want to put kind of chops up there to work with them." "When you hear the word "noise," look, see where that white cross is?" "That's where you're looking, and then you can react to Gandalfs line." "In a perfect world, there would've been the perfect sized actors with the same credentials and qualities that our actors had, but there isn't." "BLAKE:" "What we needed were people who were just small people." "We needed their proportions to be very, very similar to the actors whose roles they were doubling." "So, for us, it didn't matter, male, female." "It was all about height, body type, and attitude." "MEISTER:" "So we had a gas fitter, we had a mom who was going to swap out with her husband." "He was going to be the at-home dad." "I don't think they quite believe that Mum's been sword fighting and wrestling." "Ha, ha, ha." "It's awesome." "MEISTER:" "We had a recovery nurse, we also had a former police detective." "Argh!" "And a young woman straight out of high school who wasn't anything yet in terms of career." "So we kind of had to teach them the film industry." "We had to teach them some of the things that they had to be required to do." "Nathan and I both have a lot of experience teaching acting." "So what we really developed was like an intensive first-year drama school course." "I would like you all to cast your eyes over the script from the top and identify what you think is the first beat in this scene." "In a hole, in the ground, there lived a Hobbit not a nasty, dirty, wet hole full of worms and oozy smells." "This was a Hobbit hole and that means good food, a warm hearth, and all the comforts of home." "During our rehearsal period, our boot camp period we were called to the read-through for the first film." "Have you seen the state of my kitchen?" "They've pillaged my pantry, there's mud trod into the carpet." "And I'm not going to tell you what they've done to the bathroom." " They've all but destroyed the plumbing." "MEN:" "Ha, ha, ha." "We were so nervous about that read-through, because they film that, of course." "It'll melt the flesh off your bones in the blink of an eye." "A flash of light and then poof." "You're nothing more than a pile of ash." "[MEN LAUGHING]" "Even though everybody says, "Relax, it's okay." "Nobody's judging you."" "Everybody's judging you." "Everybody." "Down to the guy bringing in the tea." "Yeah, that first read-through, that was really nerve-wracking for me because I definitely didn't have Thorin's voice at that point." "I am telling you, we act now or we lose what is rightfully ours." "And I was experimenting with vocal tone, and pitch and sound and at the same time you're nervous because you're thinking that Pete, Fran and Philippa are sitting there wondering why they cast this British actor who's not quite old enough, so I had all my reservations." "MAN:" "Must've come down from the Ettenmoors." "They cannot move in daylight." "MAN:" "No." " So they must have a cave nearby." "Just hearing the read-through was extraordinary." "Thinking about what was ahead was neat." "Really, it was for them to hear the story, to hear those characters evolving." "And it was interesting. it's always good to hear the script off the page." "It allows you to feel the pace of the film." "It's been foretold when the ravens of Erebor return to the Mountain, the reign of the beast will end." "At the first script read-through, the true realization of the journey we were about to embark on suddenly came to life." "It's all going swimmingly well, and I'm excited." "FREEMAN:" "Well written, folks." " Yeah, it's well written." "BOYENS:" "We were in the most critical part of pre-production." "And I remember getting a phone call saying Peter had been rushed to the hospital because he had an ulcer and it had perforated." "[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING]" "Award-winning, Kiwi filmmaker, Sir Peter Jackson had a health scare and filming of The Hobbit will be delayed while he recovers from surgery for a bleeding ulcer." "Sir Peter was admitted to Wellington Hospital last night after suffering from stomach pains." "So we got all the heads of departments got them all up in the cafeteria and let them know that Peter was quite sick." "I've said to our team here there's a few things in your life that you always visualize as completely solid." "It's like when you were a young child you never can imagine your dad falling unwell or being frightened of anything." "And to a certain degree it was like that with Peter." "He's always been this solid rock of a person soldiering through any storm." "It was not the most pleasant experience, I can tell you and the world, to go through but I was sitting there recuperating and storyboarding and actually working with Phil and Fran from my sickbed, as it were." "Of course, the immediate thought is, "Well, we'll go into some sort of hiatus." "Everything will stop for a while." But that wasn't to be the case." "In fact, we were going to carry on." "The camera guys all stayed on." "They kept testing." "All right, here we go." "This is the 3ality rig, straight handheld, no back brace." "We were able to just push out so many kinks in the system between, you know, what they were doing on set what was happening down at Park Road Post." "A huge amount of problem-solving." "The actors were here when that happened so they got a slightly extended training period." "I think their boot camp lasted a bit longer." "We got an extra month training together which was good, because we got to work out our characters and we got to spend time with all the other Dwarves." "We got to know each other, we got to socialize quite a bit. it was great." "I love it, I love it..." "How's my beautiful Molly?" "What a beautiful girl." "She's such a good girl." "Monday morning around here." "Can't get any better really, can it?" "This is Popeye." "This is Ori" " Oh, hello." "This is Ori's horse." "Beautiful." "We share beards." "This is Gypsy." "Gypsophila." "She's a beautiful mare." "As if I wasn't lucky enough, we get to go horse riding." "We have horse riding because we do actually ride horses in the film and we have to have competence so that you can actually sit on a horse on set." "Safety both for us and for the other people on set but also just to make it look like we actually know what we're doing." "HADLOW:" "Our riding instructors are just incredible." "The whole feeling of that and that's another thing that comes with it." "This wonderful feeling of camaraderie when we're out there on the horses." "[HUMMING]" "Good girl, good girl." "Yes." "I do quite like riding and we've done a lot of riding training." "So I was determined that Thorin wasn't going to be a poor rider." "But you know what?" "I really got it and, God, I love that horse, Shaman." "We got on so well." "I love horses." "I was brought up with horses as a kid." "It's just magical." "And again, that's part of our training." "The rest of my day:" "a bit of sword training, the gym and then an early start for me because I've got a 4:00 call tomorrow morning, so ah." "Getting into your ready." "Go!" "CALLEN:" "Terry Notary was our movement instructor." "He worked in the Cirque du Soleil troupe and before that was a United States representative gymnast." "I mean, he's just amazing." "He has an incredible ability to create movements for, you know any type of creature that you could possibly imagine." "[GROWLING]" "Let's start just moving the weight side to side." "Feel that weight distribution." "Terry took us through a long period of learning how to move as Dwarves." "Because they wanted it to be a signature movement that is unique to them rather than a human style of moving." "Dwarves have a deep foundation in their core and they leave a large footprint." "And they're gut-driven, so they lead with their gut." "We were spending lots of days with our stomachs pushed out kind of walking around this room in a very different way than humans do." "Excellent." "Excellent." "The walks were the trickiest thing." "It's getting the sort of lollop out of the walk." "Humans rise as they walk whereas a Dwarf is low and it just moves like a tank." "That's it." "That's it." "There it is." "You feel that?" "That's it." "Right there." "They're not characters that are light and that bounce or jump." "They're characters that when they move, their feet stay connected to the ground." "They are people of the earth." "That's it." "That's it." "Yes." "You concentrate on the center of you and you move accordingly." "Demonstrate Dwarf movement to you very easily." "So that's me at 5' 7" and a half." "So I just go down to that." "So it's like-- it's deep. it's down." "As Terry says, "Get down." "Get down, guy."" "Get it down." "Get it down." "Shake it down." ""You've gotta get down."" "Get it down." "Get it down." ""Just keep down."" " Keep down." "Keep down." "One of the most important things is how you move." "And the shoes make a hell of a difference." "McTAVISH:" "Oh, yeah, the boots." "Oh, boy." "Yeah." "Those boots, the first day, they brought them in." "And they just looked so big." "We pulled on these big boots and started walking around in them." "And everybody's thinking, "Oh, my God, this is so peculiar."" "My shoe is about this size." "And lifting your leg off the floor is about as much as you can do." "Ha, ha." "As soon as you got those boots on, there was really only one way to move which was exactly what Terry had been aiming for." "When you first put them on you feel like you've just suddenly wrapped your feet in concrete." "And then, "Please run now."" ""Please fight."" "Yeah, you can't imagine how you're gonna do it." "Left leg forward." "And then we did a lot of gestures, gesture exercises where they would come up with different gestures than from our culture but still have a recollection of meaning to us, you know, as viewer." " Brother." " Brother." "And this is people who know each other very well." "[ALL LAUGHING]" "[CHATTERING]" "WOMAN:" "Thank you for coming down to New Zealand." "Just a quick question." "We take our Hobbits pretty seriously down here." "How important to you guys was it that The Hobbit was shot down in New Zealand?" "It does feel like home." "We've all settled in quite easily." "And the weather's so fantastic and it's freezing cold back home." "This is the closest thing to summer camp I think I'm ever gonna get, really." " So I'm loving it." "ACTORS:" "Ha, ha, ha." "It is genuinely lovely and the people are bending over backwards to look after us and they're really appreciative of the fact that those of us who've left family behind and are starting new families here..." "ACTORS:" "Ha, ha, ha." "...they're being very mindful of that." "WOMAN:" "Richard, we haven't heard from you yet." "Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role?" "I just think it's a really amazing opportunity to take a character from a book that I was brought to as a child and that I was" "I mean, my first experience on stage was in a production of The Hobbit." " Really?" " Really?" "At the Alex Theatre in Birmingham." "And I played an Elf." "And Gollum was a little papier-mâché puppet with a man offstage on a microphone." "MAN:" "There's a lot of singing in The Hobbit." "Is anyone not gonna do their own singing?" "We'll all be doing our own singing and some of us will be singing for everybody else at the same time as well." "[ACTORS LAUGHING]" "[ALL MAKING NOISES]" "[ALL MAKING NOISES]" "As part of our Dwarf boot camp, we had Dwarf singing lessons." "[ALL HUMMING]" "Well, I've got a fantastic vocal warm-up, and I made them all do it." "Vi-va-vi-va-vi-va-vi..." "ALL:" "Vi-va-vi-va-vi-va-vi..." "That was wonderful." "I mean, everyone was joking and fooling around all the time." "There was" " Oh, I mean, it was just insane." " There's ******* Bilbo Baggins." "ACTORS:" "Ha, ha, ha." "Let's get him!" " Kill him!" " Kill him!" "I definitely think the actors were enjoying themselves." " They got a great sense of humor." " We took it seriously though." "Don't get the idea we're just out there to have fun." "We were working." "FREEMAN:" "I was just gonna come in and watch and listen, if that's all right." "MAN:" "This works out wonderfully." "All the actors at this point were sort of in their workshop phase." "So part of that was all sort of, you know, being together and going through these experiences together as a group." "Can we make a circle?" "[CHATTERING]" "It was actually fantastic to have Martin in the rehearsal room because he became the focus, and then all the Dwarves looked to him and were taunting him and could focus everything at Martin." "And he was great." "He was great to have around." "[ACTORS SINGING]" "[ALL LAUGHING]" "[ALL SPEAKING IN DWARVISH]" "That's it." "That's it." "And it's" " Just watch it's not Khazad." "Like, Khazad-dûm." "BROWN:" "Khaza." " Yeah, that's it." "We have Dwarvish lessons as part of our dialect coaching." "Absolutely fascinating." "And hearing Roisin and Leith do it and helping us learn was absolutely extraordinary." "It was a fantastic time getting to know and work with the actors in terms of the language work, introducing them to Khuzdul, to Dwarvish." "So what we want with the K-H, as in "Khazad-dûm" we've been going "Khazad."" " Bring it forward, so it's more "Khazad."" " Khazad" "Khazad-dûm." "Khuzdul has a very different feel to any of the other languages, I think." "It has a roughness to it as well." "[SPEAKING IN DWARVISH]" "So it's that feeling of, you know, just clearing something away." "It's harsh and it has those harsh tones." "[SPEAKING IN DWARVISH]" "McPHERSON:" "Yeah, so the K..." "[GRUNTS]" "There's a raspy sound." "There's a heavy sound." "It kind of really matches how the Dwarves move." "So let's try "Iron Hills," which is Urâd Zirnul." " Urâd Zirnul McPHERSON:" "That's exactly right." " So it just kind of becomes" " Do it exactly right again, John." " No, it won't happen ever again." "McPHERSON:" "Ha, ha, ha." " Certainly not when the cameras are rolling." "McPHERSON:" "No." "It's a very in-house, very private thing to talk Dwarvish." "Their language is secret." "They have a secret name." "We believe that if you say your name, you're giving your power away to someone and they can steal it and use it." "That gives you an ownership." "That gives you a particular connection to your character that I think is unique." "Show them how much Dwarf language you've learned." "[MUTTERING]" " Paying attention, weren't you?" " Yeah." "[SPEAKS IN DWARVISH]" "That means, "Not fit for a fight."" "William Kircher has a very particular kind of connection to Dwarvish because his character can only speak Dwarvish is not capable of speaking in the common tongue." "The entire interview is gonna have to be in Khuzdul because that's all I respond to so, please, fire away." "Heh, heh." "[SPEAKS IN DWARVISH]" "Like he said, never trust an Elf." "I hope you're all happy." "The things I do to get an extra few weeks of prep." "[ALL LAUGHING]" "It was the only plan I could think of." "YORKE:" "it was nice to have Peter back in charge and making decisions and stuff like that in person." "He recovered." "He had his energy back and his color back and is the same Peter again." "I remember the original Conan the Barbarian, you know, the first Conan film where he had that great big, bronze sword sort of hand and a half or two-handed sword." "You know, he made that fighting look incredibly heavy." "You knew that that sword had got real weight." "So within the boot camp as well, we had weapons training." "I mean, to really sell the weight, I think you also probably need to have to almost" "The weapon's almost gonna pull you off balance and you need to sort of use your foot to catch your balance a couple of times." "I think the good thing with Pete is not only can he tell you what he wants a lot of the times he can actually show you what he wants." "It's making sure that when you do it, it's not too kind of quick." "It should be, you know, if you're leaning back, it should be:" "MAN:" "Yup." "You know, it's almost like you've got to kind of fight against the weight of it but then you gotta...and sort of drag the thing forward." "It's getting that kind of feeling that you're as much fighting the weight of the weapon that you're gonna use and harness all that momentum." "So, what we did was we supplemented with heavy sledge hammers and they would swing them around to get the idea and feel of what a heavy weapon should feel like." "[GRUNTING]" "We worked with sledge hammers, learning how to get that really powerful swing because I have to use the Orcrist sword, which is really heavy and really long and it's quite a hard sword to balance, so I've had to work on my forearm strength so that I can actually wield the sword." "I'm gonna drop it forward and put the blade behind, point it down..." "Steve, the sword master, just takes you through it and by the end, we were zooming about, taking on five guys at once." "[GRUNTS]" "[ALL GRUNTING]" "McTavish just scares the bejesus out of me." "That Scottish man coming at 100 miles going, "Eeh!" "Argh!"" "And even Adam Brown, who's supposed to be my younger brother is scary as hell." "[BOTH GRUNTING]" "I mean, I don't know what's happened." "They're becoming these fervent angry little Dwarves." "[GRUNTS]" "[LAUGHING]" " What are you trying to do to me?" " I'm so sorry." "I think all the Dwarves all loved the fight-training side of things." "Should I be screaming like a baby?" "WONG:" "So the scale doubles had exactly the same weapons as the actors and the stunt doubles so all it would be was that their weapons were a little bit smaller." "[GRUNTING]" "As you can see, everything I have to do, Amy has to do." " So it's Dori, Dori and Dori." " Yeah." "So the aim is to make stunt double Jeremy expendable." " Yeah." " Dori number one, Dori number two..." "Ain't no room for a stunt boy." " Shit!" "My shoes coming off!" "ALL:" "Ha, ha, ha." "I think he's hitting a little hard." "You're gonna get some people who are just a lot more enthusiastic about swinging the weapons around compared to others." "Argh!" "Ah!" "Ah!" "CALLEN:" "Watch out!" "Ah!" "[LAUGHING]" "WONG:" "it's all about control." "Oh, Mum." "It's like being a kid on the playground." "Playing Cowboys and Indians." "Every boy's dream." "It's basically Cowboys and Indians with a paycheck." "It's basically what it is." "I've just been doing archery training." "I would pay to learn how to do archery." "McTAVISH:" "Yes!" "Doing a lot of archery stuff, yeah, yeah." "Kili, he's quite a skillful bowman." "Dwarves shoot their bow horizontally and low-slung." "And we had to do this obstacle course where we had to, like, fire from the hip, turn around and run and fire, and..." "Yes, varying degrees of success." "MAN:" "Ha, ha, ha." " Elegant." "Some people were really not that great." "Well, dare I use the word "shit."" " Oh, ****." "MEN:" "Ha, ha, ha." "Where's the ******* arrow gone?" "Oh, shut your face." "[MEN LAUGHING]" "[MEN LAUGHING]" "Yeah, but you totally forget that you're doing this as part of your job." "Looking back on it now, I think getting us together out in New Zealand all the Dwarves, for boot camp, was vital." "We ended up, I guess, being essentially three months of training." "And apart from getting us fit, we got to bond very, very much as a group." "So that period was invaluable in bringing us all together." "We've all really enjoyed it." "Yeah, I mean, I think that it's pretty commendable to say what these guys went through and what they did was hard work for them." "But I am now very, very fit." "I am." "Heh, heh." "What was achieved in that last two months before the first day of shoot actually defies human endeavor at some level and a real tribute to the teams across all departments that rallied around and got the work done." "When it's actually in pre-production and we haven't actually started to shoot our first scene yet, you can feel the anxiety." "Is this gonna get done in time?" "Is that gonna get done in time?" "You're looking at 18 months ahead and the enormity of the job is kind of almost overwhelming." "But you know what?" "I'm of the feeling that you could, you know add another two or three months to that process and that feeling would sort of still be there." "It would never really go away." "But once you start shooting, you're actually only looking a day or two or a week ahead." "You're just taking it one day at a time." "The beginning of the shoot has a calming influence on the entire company." "One of the things we wanted to do to mark the start of shooting was to do a pöwhiri ceremony." "Pöwhiri is a traditional Mäori welcoming ceremony." "So when you have visitors from away coming to participate in a project we introduce ourselves to one another of the two groups." "A ceremony like that means everything to New Zealanders, all forms." "So it was absolutely the right way for us to start." "[HORN TOOTING]" "Up until the pöwhiri and that morning there was a little bit of foreboding kind of hanging over the whole Hobbitfilm." "And to open it in a very special way put a whole lot of hope into everybody." "[GRUNTING]" "And the pöwhiri is really saying, "We're here." "This is our place." "If you come with peace, then welcome home."" "[GRUNTING]" "And there was a challenge where a feather or a part of a tree is put on the ground and if you come in peace, then you, holding eye contact, have to pick it up." "[GRUNTS]" "And I remember everyone being up in this lovely sort of early-morning lights just waiting to go in." "[GRUNTING]" "FREEMAN:" "We weren't exactly sure what it was gonna be like, you know?" "We'd kind of been prepped for, you know" "Someone had come to talk to us about 20 minutes." "He was saying, "You know, it's a very traditional, age-old Mäori custom." "A sort of greeting and a kind of warning." "So I said, "Presumably, you know, people are gonna be wearing traditional gear, right?" "He said, "Yeah." So I said, "So I suppose it would be nice for us to make an effort."" "Went, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."" "So I arrived basically looking like Dr. Livingstone." "I must have looked ridiculous, know what I mean?" "Because this is New Zealand after all." "And so when someone had told me, "Yeah, make an effort" they meant you wear special all-black shorts and your special jandles." "Give them a shine." "So that's what I think of when I see photographs of it." "Just me looking way overdressed." "[ALL SINGING AND CHANTING IN MÄORI]" "That was really, really emotional, that first day that we came on for the pöwhiri." "That was really special." "I really enjoyed that day." "And my family could come as well." "My girls came, and so you know, they were part of that and they'd never seen that before." "[MÄORI SINGING AND CHANTING]" "I would like to give thanks on behalf of everyone here as visitors for this ceremony, for this celebration for the blessing of the soundstage and for the welcome that you've offered to us." "We're all deeply honored to be here." "And to everyone that has waited so long for this day to begin this extraordinary journey filming The Hobbit I would like to wish them good luck good health and good harmony." "[APPLAUSE]" "[SINGING] Far over the misty mountains cold" "To dungeons deep" "And caverns old" "We must away" "'Ere break of day" "To find our long-forgotten gold" "Each group sings a song." "The song is a vehicle for making sure that the words that were spoken travel to the places where they're supposed to be." "And that kind of puts you a little bit closer to the spirit realm and that's sort of where that tradition comes from." "ACTORS [SINGING]:" "it flaming spread" "The trees like torches" "Blazed with light" "[SINGING IN MÄORI]" "To actually have that traditional ceremony and the feeling of tradition and to bless the production and to start the wheels rolling of this massive machine was an incredible start." "[ALL SINGING IN MÄORI]" "You know, for a long time, I thought that going back to the amazing experience of Lord of the Rings wouldn't be a good idea." "But really, you know, now I've come completely around because films are stressful and they're hard to make but ultimately what makes them fun is the people that you work with." "And the fact that, you know, we're gonna be working with a lot of the old gang with a lot of friends, and obviously making some new friends is really the point of being here so I'm extremely thrilled." "But you know, if somebody came up to me today and said we can carry on pre-production for another six weeks, I'd say:" ""No, no." "Hell no." "Let's just start shooting."" "Finally, this was the day we were starting." "You felt that at that moment." "You've got a huge boulder at the top of a hill and it's just there." "And then you push that boulder." "And then it just develops this life of its own." "And that's kind of what it felt like when we started." "It's like, "Where's this gonna go?"" "BILBO:" "Why don't we have a game of riddles?" "GOLLUM:" "Too many bones, precious." "Not enough flesh!" "JACKSON:" "What you generally try to do at the beginning of a shoot, in your first few days or the first week or so is you try to shoot something that is-- I don't wanna say relatively simple, ha, ha because nothing is ever simple, but something that's sort of contained because we just thought, strategically it would be great to start shooting with Gollum and Bilbo just those two, and it would effectively give all the departments another week or week and a half to finish the work on the Dwarves." "Hey, Andy, how are you?" "All right?" "Love you." "JACKSON:" "it was also good for Andy Serkis who I had only a few weeks earlier invited to be the 2nd unit director." "I got an e-mail from Fran saying:" ""Pete would like you to be a 2nd unit director."" "And I..." "I mean, I must have appeared like some sort of crazy madman because I was looking at it and I was just going:" "it gave Andy a chance to just come to New Zealand, focus on that and get that part of his job done on this film and then his other job which was 2nd unit director, could begin a week or two after that and he was done with the Gollum part." "So that, in hindsight, that worked out really well." "You said, "Ask me a question," and that is my question." "What have I got in my pocket?" "SERKIS: it must give us three guesses, precious. it must give us three." "Very well, three guesses." "Guess away." "FREEMAN: it was really nice to do a little chamber piece first." "It was just two people hammering it out and it was really nice." "[CHATTERING]" "JACKSON:" "Maybe the first thing to do is for you guys to run it and do what you feel like doing, and we'll just see what happens." "We rehearsed it really well because at that time we had the time to rehearse it." " I don't know what your game is." " Games?" "Ha!" "JACKSON:" "Yeah, good, good." "SERKIS:" "Games?" "I love games." "We literally had a couple of days to block it through and Pete just sat back and said:" ""Look, just go where you feel right."" "[PANTING]" "Curse us and splash us." "That's a meaty mouthful." "It made a lot of sense, I think, starting there, for everyone for Martin particularly." "I think if Martin had been faced, for instance, with the scene with the 13 Dwarves it would have been a big thing for him to deal with." "And we use this rock and, like, Sméagol appears at one side of the rock and Gollum appears out of the other." "I think dealing with one..." "Is he lost?" "Well, two personalities, I should say." "We knows." "We knows the way out." "SERKIS:" "That was probably a good place to start." "And Andy is very good, he's very straightforward." "He's not at all precious." "He's, um..." "Precious." "Did we say so, precious?" "FREEMAN:" "He's the ideal actor you wanna be doing that stuff with." "What has it got in its pocketses?" "And, yeah, it was kind of weird just hearing Andy make that voice you know, and sort of suddenly do:" "[FREEMAN THEN SERKIS GASPING AND GURGLING]" "I" " I don't want any trouble, do you understand?" "FREEMAN:" "Because it's something you're so familiar with in pop culture but then you're seeing the creator of it and it's not a joke. it's not an impression." " Is it juicy?" "FREEMAN:" "Keep your distance!" "It's like, "No, this is who I'm playing the scene opposite."" "Let's finish him off now." "Finish him." "[RETCHING]" "No, no." "Wait." "I wanna play." "I kind of felt like anybody could do it, really." "Anybody can play Gollum." "There are so many good impersonators that, you know, would" " Really, anyone can go and do this voice now." "[IMITATING GOLLUM] Bless us and splash us, my precious." "A tasty morsel, yes." "[IMITATING GOLLUM] Gives us a chance, my precious." "Gives us a chance." "While we were in preproduction on the movie before we had the actors arriving in New Zealand I wanted to try to get a head start on some of the early scenes." "WOMAN:" "Action." "FREEMAN:" "A box without hinges, key or lid yet golden treasure inside is hid." "JACKSON:" "I got a couple of actors, Jed Brophy was actually one I got him to come in and perform Gollum." "This is nice, precious." "This is crunchable." "JACKSON:" "I spent a day or two shooting a form of previs with, like a virtual camera." "So it's really the system we built for Tintin." "You come away not with a prototype of the scene but you come away with a good idea here, a good idea there and you just put those in the back of your mind and so eventually several months down the track when you block it with the actors, get other ideas it becomes an amalgam of ideas from different times, different places." " String or nothing." " That's two guesses at once, both wrong." "You lose." "MAN:" "Good morning." " Morning." "SERKIS:" "Yeah, yeah, that's what I need." "Yeah." "So I'm officially the first person in the makeup chair on The Hobbit." " Officially." "Ha-ha-ha!" " That's amazing." "That's something, isn't it?" "[SINGING MAORI FOLK SONG]" "We missed it." "We were actually in the studio but what we were doing at the time of the celebration was we were at the back of stage, actually, dressing the actor a guy called Ravi, who was one of the scale doubles." "We ultimately ended up with 13 days to build this character." "Needed to be fully animatronic on an actor for the first day of shoot." "Ha, ha." "I got a little bit of sleep this morning, but some of them are 48 hours in now." "Dressed Ravi into his outfit, took him on set laid him down and they started filming." "WOMAN:" "You're on now, please." "MAN:" "Your first shot." "The first shot always feels like you are literally standing at the foot of a very, very tall mountain, and you cannot imagine a day when you are gonna be finished shooting this film." "It just feels like it's gonna be the rest of your life." "MAN:" "Action, Andy." "[SERKIS GASPING]" "Yes." "Yes." "Yes." "[SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]" "Unfortunately, an overzealous Andy Serkis bashed him over the rock and managed to smash most of the animatronics within the first hour." "So we had yet another long evening ahead of us getting him fixed for the next day." "Heh, so..." "But it was great." "It was great to be there on the first day." "Very, very challenging, but very rewarding all the same." "WOMAN:" "Coming through." "Thank you, Ravi." "You're wrapped." "Whole thing." "MAN:" "Action." "JACKSON:" "That's it, that's it." "That's great." "That's great." "Thank you." "Perfect." "And action." "GOLLUM:" "The cold, hard lands They bites our hands" "They gnaws our feet" "The rocks and stones They're like old bones" "All bare of meat" "[GOLLUM YELLS]" "Shh!" "Martin is the sort of actor who thrives on the situation being and feeling real." "Bless us and splash us." "That's a meaty mouthful." "Gollum." "Gollum, back." "SERKIS:" "And apart from getting over the fact that he was looking at someone in a crazy suit with dots all over his face and a head-mounted camera you know, once we locked eyes and got on with the scene I think he forgot about all that very quickly." "I think it worried him." "He was entering into this whole other realm of acting in an environment that he hadn't spent much time in." "I'm not used to going into a studio and just seeing banks of computer people." "It's like going into NASA or something." "It's not like going on to a film set for me." "It is now because I know this is the film set." "But at that time it was like, "Why are all these people on computers?" You know." "But then after that you're just in a scene." "You don't see any of that." "You just see Andy giving you this mad creature." "And if he loses, what then?" "Curse us and splash us, my precious is lost!" "We knew our gear were safe, but you throw water..." "There was one scene, and they went crazy, and our facial camera we enter the water, came up and they went: "Zzt!"" "Mustn't ask us!" "Not its business!" "And we were like: "Ooh." Heh, heh." "That's not good." "We had to check to the first AD:" ""You know, cameras aren't really good in water, they don't last."" "She was like, "Well, okay." "We'll have to talk to Pete." We talked to Pete." "Pete said, "How many cameras do you have?"" ""Well, we've got about three more." "You better order some more." Heh, heh." "I think that was day one." "So we did." "We did order some more cameras." "Peter did not want to pull back on Andy's performance." "He stole it." "JACKSON:" "Remember yesterday we did a thing where you lowered the sword and then bring it up again when he makes the threatening move." " If we could go back to that." " Yeah, cool." "Great." "Thank you." "All right, shall we give it a go?" " And action." " Go." "BILBO:" "I'm warning you, don't come any closer." "It's got an Elfish blade." "But it's not an Elfs." "It's about a 12-, 13-minute scene." "And we treated it like a piece of theater." "[SERKIS YELLS]" "MAN:" "Reset." "Reset." "SERKIS:" "We just kept resetting and doing it over and over again." "Let's have another one." "Oh, come on." "Do it again." "Do it again." "Let's do another one, but it was terrific." "SERKIS:" "Pete must have shot it over the course of 10 days and we shot the scene from beginning to end every single time, pretty much." "What have I got in my pocket?" "Not fair." "Not fair." "It is against the rules." " Ask us another one." " You said, "Ask me a question."" "That is my question." "What have I got in my pocket?" "Three guesses." "It must give us three, precious." "Three guesses." "Very well then, guess away." "FREEMAN:" "We did that scene a lot of times uncut, and it was lovely." "I could do that all day." "SERKIS:" "He stole it!" "[GRUNTING]" "And cut it." "Thank you, that's terrific." "I think we can check the gate on that." "MAN:" "You all right, Andy?" " Yeah." "It really taxed me, really taxed me." "Unh!" "Getting back into those positions and crawling over those rocks took a real bashing over those two weeks." "JACKSON:" "Reset." "Although, I like to think nothing has changed in the last 12 years my knees would like to disagree with that." "When we started doing this 10 years ago, we weren't even sure if it was gonna work as a potential tool to bring Gollum to life." "It was set in a very strange place, a very freakish sort of activity that happened in a tin shed away from everyone." "For a long time it was not even considered, you know, proper acting." "You know, I mean, it's crazy, but it hasn't been in the past." "Whereas, I think, now people are realizing that it is just another way of recording an actor's performance." "First, they champ Then they stamp" "Then they stand still" "Teeth?" "Teeth." "Ha-ha-ha!" "Oh, yes, my precious." "But we" " We only have nine." "[GROWLS]" "Our turn." "With head-mounted cameras and being able to shoot live on set meaning that there's no disconnect whatsoever." "as nobody sees?" "SERKIS:" "The performance that's caught on the day between Martin and I there's no going back and repeating that." "So there's much more of an emotional connection." "It was exciting. it was intimidating to see some of the shots. it was like:" ""Oh, wow, how are we gonna get Gollum to do that?"" "Like when he's trying to find an answer to a riddle or he's getting really angry." "He was pulling expressions that we'd never seen him do before." "Eggses!" "One thing we really wanted to push was performance capture." "We wanted to be able to literally channel Andy Serkis through Gollum, as best we can." "Every decision we make with Gollum we always look to Andy whether it's his skin textures or the wateriness of his eyes or the redness of his eyes." "He stole it." "As lighters and compositors, our goal is to make that look like Andy as much as we can, you know." "CLAYTON:" "The sliding of his skin as well, all those little extra details in CG that's what makes it feel real and compelling." "What we did is we got Andy." "He's a great friend." "So he came in and we did a face cast on him and we got his skin scans and so we were able to use Andy's skin scan." "So his pores-- And put them on the digital Gollum." "So there's a lot more of Andy into the new Gollum than there was in the old one." "I find myself laughing so many times when we're watching the reviews." "We know safe path for Hobbitses." "It's so Andy." "I mean, it's almost more Andy than Andy." " I didn't say anything." " We wasn't talking to you." "I mean, in the design of Gollum, you know, he's not so scarred." "I actually think he looks pretty hot, actually." "He's far more attractive than he was in Rings." "[YELLS]" "ACEVEDO:" "We had to take the scars off of his back because back on Lord of the Rings, he was captured and tortured by Sauron." "So this is before all that, so we had to take all that kind of stuff away." "We actually physically build the anatomy." "The muscles are attached to the skeleton." "So everything going on under the skin is true to the science that's there." "All those details go into giving you a sense that when you see this on the screen, visually, you're perceiving a weight and an organic quality to the character that feels real." "A box without hinges Key or lid" "We brought it into line with our facial system which we developed on Avatar and have been using ever since." "Like, you wouldn't animate his smile, you'd animate his lip-corner puller." "And you wouldn't do angry, you'd do brow lowerer, nose wrinkler maybe some squint." "You know, you're activating all the muscle groups." "So it's a really great structure to set up your facial puppet." "Yes." "Yes, just us." "The thing we spent a lot of time doing was actually working on his eyes." "Since Gollum is primarily big eyes, ha, ha, huge eyes, in fact." "With the new eye system in place, it gives it a lot more depth to the eyes." "So we're actually, you know, shading." "We're getting the light scattering through all the different layers of the eyes to properly shade and shadow and provide caustics and depth beyond a simple sphere with a texture on it." "Animation helped in certain things that you couldn't physically do." "For example, when he would go from being sort of a Sméagol-esque character to his Gollum-esque character." "Do it again, ask us." "No." "They did some really cool tricks in animation where they give him kind of a shiver or a quiver." "And his pupils would dilate between transitions so those beautiful little subtleties are wonderful." "Oh." "Oh!" "We knows." "We knows." "Shut up." "With all the new technology, not just with our textures but with animation and with shading and with the Creatures Department to get all the facial animation and the movements and things it's unbelievable." "I mean, it's still my favorite part of the film." "Getting to work on Gollum again in his final cinematic scene is pretty cool." "Curse it and crush it!" "We hates it forever!" "[HISSING]" "[GASPS]" "WOMAN:" "Thank you, everybody, for another long, hard day." "Bag End tomorrow and forever." "Very good, Andy." "Thank you so much." "Fantastic." "Man, you just went into Gollum like you'd never stopped." "Strangely, he wasn't that far from me." "Ha-ha-ha." "Strangely." "BILBO:" "I am a Baggins of Bag End." " Good morning." "MAN:" "Good morning." "JACKSON:" "When you're dealing with a huge, long movie that's 266 days of shooting, you've got to be as prepared as you possibly can." "We had sets built, we rehearsed, we had actors coming in, we blocked." "Dwalin, at your service." "JACKSON:" "I had Andrew Lesnie, our DP, there." "Oh, it's very good, this." "Any more?" "JACKSON:" "We planned the camera angles." "[ALL GRUNTING]" "MAN 1:" "Ha-ha-ha." " You might wanna be getting this fixed." "MAN 2:" "Oh." "Hello, Gandalf." "Ori down next to Bombur." "Dori and then Nori." "I really worried that we weren't gonna fit." "Seriously." "When we went in there in rehearsal, out of costume we could barely fit." "It was a dark and dangerous place, rank with festering evil." "Rumors have begun to spread." "The dragon, Smaug, has not been seen for 60 years." "Is he gone?" "Is he dead?" "Or is he merely sleeping?" "God, this is gonna be crowded, isn't it though?" " It's gonna be hot." " I'm already hot now." "We had this period of a few days where we could actually get our act together." "But it was for the first two weeks of the shoot." "The first 10 days of the shoot." "After that we had no preparation at all." "It's the weird thing about moviemaking you get hugely prepared for that first week or two and then you kind of just wing it after that." "MAN 1:" "Yeah, thank you, Graham." "MAN 2:" "Come." "Look at the freak show." "I remember the first person I filmed in there with was Graham McTavish who plays Dwalin." "When you rub his thighs they're particularly strong, I found." "[WOMAN LAUGHING]" "FREEMAN:" "And yeah, it was nice." "It was quite relaxed actually." "It was quite relaxed." "I love scenes where there's fewer people in because I get more screen time." "Shoot me." "I was very sort of pathetically proud of that moment." "MAN:" "Ready now, and action." "McTAVISH:" "When the door opened for the first time and there was a Dwarf." "Dwalin, at your service." "JACKSON:" "The way a first shot ought to be." "MAN:" "Aha!" "Yes, yes." "That was probably what Pete was rightfully mindful of is, like, what happens when it's the explosion of pent-up energy in a small space." "Bring me another Dwarf." "Lots of men, lots of testosterone, all acting the hell out of each other." "You know what I mean?" "I want another Dwarf here right now." "Oh, very good." "Well, you look great, Mark." "And thanks very much." " Thanks very much." " You can" " You can go back down." "Ori, old bean." "Hello, Adam." "I was like, "Oh, my gosh." "This is my first day on the set and it's in Bag End."" "JACKSON:" "Looking very good." "MAN:" "Yes." "We're gonna plug a Dwarf in here." "We've got a lovely little Dwarf socket for a Dwarf." "WOMAN:" "Action." "The constant factor of being Gandalf in the film is that you have to be taller than most of the other characters." "Certainly than the Dwarves or the Hobbits." "Now, this was achieved on Lord of the Rings by putting me the larger character, closer to the camera." "Your eye tricks your brain and you kind of think that these two people are side by side." "Now, of course, that trick is no good when you're dealing with 3D because 3D tells you exactly how far away they are and you can see that the whole thing's a big cheat." "So we had to devise a different way of creating this size difference." "Since we have Dwarves and Gandalf, who are actually the same height we need to make Gandalf 25 percent bigger than the Dwarves so that they're in the correct scale." "The only way we can make a person bigger is to put the camera closer to him." "So effectively, we have a camera that looks at the Dwarves and Bilbo in a set that's built to their scale and a camera that looks at Gandalf on a green screen which is 25 percent closer, which makes him that much bigger." "Now, these cameras are locked together so whatever one camera does over here on the live set with Bilbo and the Dwarves, the other camera on the green set does exactly the same thing except scaled down." "So effectively you're creating two different worlds that are in different scale but they're matched in terms of position." "So that when we take out the green screen, make a composite and put Gandalf in, suddenly he's 25 percent bigger." "A little glass of red wine is requested." "This slave motion-control system we'd been developing for a couple of months leading into our shoot." "And there was a couple of days of test shooting which we wanted to do as a proof of concept for ourselves and also something to show the actors so they could actually have some confidence that this rather bizarre system was going to end up working." "MAN:" "Gandalf." " Great to be back." "What a good-- it's good to see you." "Have a look around." " You've been busy." " I have." "You're right, I have." "I'll show you." "Marvelous." "Hey, Gandalf, this is Fili." "Fili is staying with me for a couple of days." " Yeah, I get a bit lonely, you see." " Yeah, I understand." "[ALL LAUGHING]" " Cheers." " Cheers." " Cheers." " Cheers." " Cheers." " Cheers." " Cheers." " Cheers." "[ALL LAUGHING]" "Whose table is Gandalfs left hand on?" "So Gandalfs on the green screen and all the props are scaled down." " So he's on a slightly" " But how come his hand is on--?" "Oh, dear." " I didn't know where your throat was." " I didn't know." "Well, I didn't even know where you were." "I couldn't see anything." "We did a series of tests and demonstrations to show to Peter where one of our crew guys would walk in, let's say carrying an apple and hand it to the other guy." "The other guy would go and get a basket and he'd bring it over and give it to the first guy." "So essentially we were handing things off across the scale line." "And those were just done very roughly, just to demonstrate the process." "Okay, here we go." "Rehearsal." "We rehearsed in costume and makeup with me with the 13 Dwarves." "All right." "Does that make sense?" "You look a little bit bewildered." " I'm over there, aren't I?" " Yeah, yeah." "You are." " But thanks for filling me in." " Yes." "Okay." "Okay." "McKELLEN:" "I then had to leave them for the filming and go into a set that was smaller than this set, in which I would look tall." "The problems for us were that they can't hear each other from that distance away." "So they had to work off ear pieces." "He would wear an ear piece and hear the Dwarves and Bilbo on the Hobbit set and vice versa." "As soon as you hear them say "mark," there's no mark at the door and you'll have an ear piece." "So you'll take your cue off Martin and then you close it." "If someone has to get up, walk somewhere they tend to do it off a dialogue cue." "There's no mark on my door." "Da-da-da-da-da." "So if the sound didn't work, the shot didn't work." "WOMAN:" "Is it going to work, Colin?" "COLIN:" "Oh, I sincerely hope so." "I wouldn't have found it at all had it not been for that mark on the door." "BILBO:" "Mark?" "There's no mark on that door." "It was painted a week ago." "There is a mark." "I put it there myself." "And that means immediately on the monitors we are interacting with Gandalf as a much bigger person at precisely the same time." "And that has actually never been done before like that." "[ALL CHEERING]" "[BELL RINGING AND CHEERING STOPS]" "That's all very well and it looks very good but when you're actually doing it, it means that you the Gandalf actor, are on your own when you're filming." "You can't see the faces of the other actors you're working with who can all see each other in the adjacent set." "McKELLEN:" "This is not what they promised." "ALL:" "Ha-ha-ha." "McKELLEN:" "I get to be choosy." " Yeah." "McKELLEN:" "Middle-earth?" "It's hard for Ian." "A lot of his acting is on the green screen." "He was coming in to see all these Dwarves whittling around him and running everywhere and taking food and he had to name all the Dwarves." " Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dori, Nori." "BILBO:" "Not my prizewinners, thank you." "GANDALF:" "Ori!" "We get to the end of it and we've all got ear pieces on and we can hear Pete go:" ""That's almost it, but Adam, you went through Gandalf with your arm."" "I'm like, "Oh, no, I'm sorry." "I'm sorry." "Let's do it again."" "[ALL LAUGHING]" "MAN:" "That's it. it's about time." "JACKSON:" "Okay." "Very good." "It was very tricky and took a long time." "GANDALF:" "A little red wine, I think, for me." "WOMAN:" "Cut." "Finally Pete comes over the cans going, "I think we've got it." "I think we've got it."" "And it was like, "Yes." "Thank goodness, we've done it."" "[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]" "WOMAN:" "Thank heavens, we did it!" "MAN:" "Yeah!" "[ALL CHEERING]" "Confusticate and bebother these Dwarves!" "My dear Bilbo, what on earth is the matter?" "The main problem with Ian was he's a big guy on a little set." "When you're lighting him you have to light him exactly the same way for both sets." "If he's walking from one part of a set to another you've actually got to put shadows in areas where there should be shadows." "Because he has actually got to be real-time matched with the other people he's interacting with." "But what shall I do with my plate?" "GARSIDE:" "And also we had to give him the correct eye lines." "So we gave the AD a dimmer board where they could switch lights on and off so Ian could actually see who he was talking to on the other set." "JACKSON:" "What you should have is you" " You should only have their eyes glowing." "SERKIS:" "Ha-ha-ha." "It's, like, something to do with:" "[MAKES BLEEPING NOISE]" "And they were all put in at the right ratio position and the right ratio height." "So his eye lines were correct to the other set." "ORI:" "Now I understand." "That's why we need a burglar." "BILBO:" "Oh, yeah, a good one too." " An expert, I'd have thought." "GLOIN:" "And are you?" "You might think, acting to a tennis ball, what's the difference if you know where it is." "But suddenly that person doesn't react or that tennis ball doesn't smile or doesn't do anything." "It means what you do is affected by that." "You need to have a pre-planned idea of the way you're gonna say things the way you'll receive dialogue from people and that's quite difficult." "GANDALF:" "The answer lies somewhere hidden in this map." "I do not have the skill to read it, but there are others in Middle-earth who do." "For me, that's the most difficult thing because I really like to be able to look into the character's eyes that I'm talking to." "It puts much more importance on the rehearsal because you have to give the rehearsal everything as if it's a performance." "Because what you're doing, you're programming their memory to what they'll be getting when we come for a take." "Yes, thank you." "I was saying, Bofur the task I have in mind will require a great deal..." "Oh, gosh." "I got absolutely miserable and had a little cry to myself." "But I didn't realize that the microphone I was wearing was open so everybody could hear me muttering to myself about how I wanted to go home and so on." "[SNIFFLING]" "To put someone in what is-- it's not even sensory deprivation." "It's like sensory torture." "May be too strong a word." "But for some actors, it looked like torture to put them in that situation." "And then to ask for those natural acting instincts to just be there and the expectation of actors upon themselves is, "Well, this is my job." "I should be able to do this."" "Yeah." "For Ian, especially, he found it particularly challenging at the start." "I'm sorry, everybody." "MAN 1:" "No." "MAN 2: ignore it." "MAN 3:" "Don't be silly." "MAN 4: it's impossibly difficult." " When I say sorry, I mean sorry." "ALL:" "Ha-ha-ha." "It was so distressing and off-putting and difficult that I thought, "I don't want to make this film if this is what I'm gonna have to do."" "it's not what I do for a living." "I act with other people." "I don't act on my own." "I can't just get it." "He truly had such a miserable time on the first day or two of the shoot." "We felt sorry for him, being just dumped in green screen land." "We wanted to make him feel a little bit better." "We wanted to make him feel loved." "So Zane Weiner, our producer, had a great idea of giving Martin and Ian a surprise." "We should do something special for Ian." "Do you think we could sort of do up his little tent where he relaxes?" "We knew about it the day before because this was a surprise." "[GIGGLING]" "We wait until the crew had finished for the day to go in and dress these things." " The actors are all gone." " Great." "And they're just moving his tent." "So they'll be side by side, which works so we can make it funny." "Add some Elven fabric onto this La-Z-Boy, it'll be gorgeous." "It was kind of obvious to us what we should be doing for Ian." "He was making his return to Middle-earth and they had to have a bit of a Middle-earth theme." "Beautiful relic from the Lothlórien group of Elves." "Definitely Ian McKellen." " My God, this is Alan's curtain." "Ha, ha." " Is it?" " We've got our stuff out." " Yes." " Is it?" "It's okay." "VINCENT:" "Floor mat." "We dressed up his room in a kind of '60s eclectic mix of stuff." "It was a little bit retro." "I discovered that Martin was right into his music." "The Commodores, Diana." "Little bit of Stevie Wonder." "Awesome. if I had a place to chill this would be my music." "Well, that night I felt pretty miserable and thought, perhaps, has the time come for me to stop acting altogether if I can't cope with these difficulties?" "Ian e-mailed me a couple of days into this Bag End stuff and he just says, "Listen, I'm struggling." "You know, I feel really depressed."" "it was quite a sad e-mail and I had actually kind of already written him an e-mail." "Which crossed with one from him saying, "Don't worry, it was all fine today." "We've got some good stuff." "You'll be very pleased with it."" "I'm seeing this scene come together really great." "And I just wanted Ian to know that it was all okay." "Everything was gonna be fine." ""It's lovely to have you back and well done."" "Me having felt that I'd absolutely failed." "I guess we could leave them set up like this the whole time they're in Bag End." "Yeah." "McKELLEN:" "Oh." "Who's done all this?" "Who's done all this?" "How beautiful." "Who does this?" "It's an Appreciate Gandalf Day today." "And we do appreciate" "[BOTH LAUGHING]" "As another, not pat on the back but arm round the shoulder, in my little makeup tent it had all been decorated with bits of old scenery from Rivendell." "Look, and fruit." "Oh, just gorgeous." "[ALL CHEERING AND APPLAUDING]" "Well, you're all very, very welcome to come and visit me." "[ALL LAUGHING]" "He stepped into his tent and he was sort of into this really weird retro 1960s world." "[LAUGHS]" "FREEMAN:" "I love that." "That's very good." "We thought it'd be a little Martin Appreciation Day today." "WOMAN:" "Oh, look at you." "FREEMAN: it's really lovely." "It's beautiful." "I'm back." "JACKSON:" "And you've learnt" " You've learnt your lines?" " We'll see about that." " We'll see about that, right?" "I was made to feel, as so often happens when you're working with Peter Jackson and his colleagues, that you belong and they want you to feel at ease and happy and at home." "However, once the flowers faded, I noted they weren't replaced." "I think I was meant then to get on with the job." "Ha-ha-ha." "WOMAN:" "About 20 minutes remain and then we'll..." "Thirteen, including Bilbo and Gandalf, were cramped around the dining room table." "And the Bag End set is quite small anyway." "You can do the newsreader thing where you don't have to wear your trousers or boots for the scene." "MAN:" "Yeah." "I beg your pardon." "BROWN:" "So underneath we had fans blowing up our bottoms." "Don't think Mark Hadlow had any trousers on underneath the table." "To work in the space was hot, uncomfortable and a little bit perspiry." "It's so hot." "We were told it would be hot." "It was gonna be crammed and difficult." "Oh, dear." "Heh, heh. it was very cramped." "Thanks, darling." "We have electrolytes standing by." "We have water." "Constantly having to drink loads of water." "Loads of electrolytes." "Bag End was a bit of an oven at times." " Ready?" "One, two, three." " Oh, yes." "HAMBLETON:" "We're lucky enough to step out and the whole team of people that are devoted to our comfort making sure we have water and cool air blowing on us, helped us get through." "[CHATTERING]" "WOMAN:" "Nice and quiet now, thanks, and roll camera, please." "MAN:" "Shooting." "Shooting." "Ian was the very first actor that I worked with as second unit director." "The very first shot, in fact of the second unit was Gandalfs eye appearing at the window at Bag End." "Which was an incredibly technically-difficult shot because it was a beveled window." "And the precision with which we needed to kind of execute the shot and the positioning of his eye, you know, for it to read." "To your right." "Stop." "McKELLEN:" "Oh, bugger." " And out." "WOMAN:" "Stand by!" "It's great having second unit with us filming finally." "It was their first real day of shooting today." "What happens if you're on the same stage is they have to stop every time we're starting." "The main unit gets priority." "WOMAN 1:" "Action." "WOMAN 2:" "Action." "SERKIS:" "So we've had to down tilt or stop while shooting's been going on or turn over very quietly." " And this is reset." "MAN 1:" "Still rolling." "MAN 2:" "Shooting!" "WOMAN:" "Rolling!" "[SERKIS WHISPERING INDISTINCTLY]" "McKELLEN:" "Why are you whispering?" " They're rolling next door." "JACKSON:" "Cut." "Lovely." "That's excellent." "We've got that." "WOMAN:" "Here we go now." "[SERKIS WHISPERING INDISTINCTLY]" "WOMAN:" "And action." "It was great because Pete was able to then come over and chat, and it was just fantastic to have his input." "It's quite good to see there's a nail on it because you get it and when Bilbo hears a scratch it's like you're sort of knowing something's coming." "SERKIS:" "Okay, all right." "No, it's okay." "Yeah, no, no, it's cool. it's great." "That is the best thing about being 15 feet away from the director, basically." "But I think it might be the first and last time." "Most of the time the idea with second unit is you don't actually share the same stage." "You shoot on different stages so there won't be a problem." "Like tomorrow, they're in Bag End and we're out of Bag End." "So we've been in here for, I don't know, how long is it?" "About 12 days or something?" "DWARVES [SINGING]:" "Blunt the knives bend The forks, smash the bottles, burn the corks" "Chip the glasses and crack the plates" "That's what Bilbo Baggins hates" "[DWARVES LAUGHING]" "Thirteen, fourteen days?" "I don't know." "It seems like a long time." "[JACKSON LAUGHING]" "It's fun." "I like Bag End." "[LAUGHS]" "Yeah, it's:" "MAN:" "And then it's the feet one." " Ha, ha." "Yeah." "There's juggling." "And I think the more chaotic it got, the more Peter liked it in the end." "DWARVES [SINGING]:" "That's what Bilbo Baggins hates" "JACKSON:" "And cut." "MAN: it's great." "[SINGING] Just a little lighting tweak Enough to make Caro weep" "Put the schedule right to sleep" "That's what Cunningham hates" "That is the truth, that's Caro." "JACKSON:" "That's lovely." "[CHATTERING AND LAUGHING]" "JACKSON:" "Thank you." "So after Pete had finished shooting a lot of the early scenes in Bag End then we moved in." "And it was really lovely being able to work with them and for them to individually get a chance to work on their character." "WOMAN:" "And action!" "SERKIS:" "Just experiment and play around and have fun, actually." "We had a lot of fun." "Being given a free hand by the director was wonderful." "And salute Bilbo." "Go "cheers."" " Bilbo Baggins!" "ALL:" "Bilbo!" "We really went for it." "I was pouring beer down John Callen's ear trumpet." "I thought, "Crikey, what am I gonna do with that?"" "So I just blew into the end that fits in my ear and out comes all the liquid." "DWARVES:" "Ha-ha-ha." "It's what I spent most of my teens doing so I have plenty of training for it." "[ALL LAUGHING]" "Probably the most memorable moment is Bombur crawling along the table to grab the big mutton hock and pull it down the table." "[LAUGHING]" "Stephen Hunter is an animal." " He's choking!" "He's choking!" " Great hard one, Nori!" "He's so enthusiastic." "He's so up for anything." "I was truly worried." "Ha, ha." "And I had to throw this egg and have it land in Bombur's mouth." "First egg we threw?" "Nailed it." "Couldn't hit it again after that." "[LAUGHING]" "I think one night I must have eaten about 13 boiled eggs." "Because I chose to actually eat them properly on the first take." "But then after that I really just had to roll with it." "Just stuffing them in his face." "I mean, it was literally like recreating Cool Hand Luke in Bag End." "I had basically two half of eggs in my mouth." "And then Andy goes, "Now put a whole one in."" "SERKIS:" "Put the whole egg in your mouth." "Just put the whole egg in your mouth." "HUNTER:" "Mm-hm." "And luckily about three takes later, he said cut." "SERKIS:" "Cut." "And I fronted up, like, two days later I had eggs for breakfast so, you know, so no worries." "MAN:" "Action." "[ALL GRUNTING]" "They set up the scene in Bag End with the food and it looks amazing." "And everything is in place and it looks really delicious." "Fresh thing of food at least seven or eight times on that table." "And we're just told, "Okay, listen, just wreck it."" "And it would just get destroyed." "[ALL SHOUTING]" "We trashed the place, good God, on a daily basis." "[ALL LAUGHING]" "Towards the end, he said, "Just go nuts," and it was chaotic." "Because that's what it's like." "We're just, you know just a pack of rowdy boys, really." "We love to eat, but then when we're full, it's just food fight." "I was aiming for Ken Stott." "Because he couldn't take it." "The dude can't handle an orange to the head." "Hit him with a leg of lamb when he's not looking." "I mean, vicious stuff." "Nothing playful about this at all." "I never told him this." "Surely he's gonna hear about it now." "But I was hitting him hard." "I think I nearly took his nose off." "Yeah, for goodness sake." "That dining table was kind of pretty rank actually." "It was kind of filled with the smell of 13 Dwarves pretty quick." "Ian's been on beans all lunch, and he's still here." " He should have some pretty good wind too." "ALL:" "Ha-ha-ha." "MAN 1:" "Enough!" "MAN 2:" "This is what it is." "MAN 3:" "A wizard's wind is not to be scoffed at." "Looking back on Bag End, it's like we're just so innocent." "We were all so happy as characters in that place about to begin this journey." "And that's absolutely how it was for the actors as well as the characters." " Thank you, Dori." "MAN 1:" "Yes." " Thank you, Doris." "Dori." "MAN 2: "Doris." Ha-ha-ha." "Now, Bag End was a good laugh actually." "It was a really good laugh." "We were all there together." "And whatever nerves people had, I think they kind of just worked themselves out." " This is a Dwarf waltz." " A "Dwaltz."" "[ALL LAUGHING]" "We were all just, "Okay." "Great, we've started work now."" " More Hobbit gold." " Some of my best work there." "Some of my exquisite work." "WILLIAM:" "What are you, then?" "An oversized squirrel?" "Trollshaw was the defining moment as an actor for me to go, "Wow, this-- it is this big."" "Great to just see a big set." "I think we're on the K Stage, you know, which is one of the bigger sets in Stone Street." "I'm hoping Bilbo can sort of get himself up, and go, "Wait, wait, wait."" " And then" " So the Trolls all kind of turn." "MAN:" "Yes." " So we'll obviously be up high." "MAN:" "Yup." "TURNER:" "And I just remember it being huge." "I remember thinking, "I finally made it." "I'm finally in a big movie."" "Daisy and Bungo are missing." "Massive big trees, you know." "Awesome set." "Turf grass." "Tons and tons and tons of dirt." "There was an old ruin farmhouse that had taken three or four days to put in there." "A lot to coat." "JACKSON:" "As big as a film like this is, it's always wonderful when you can be flexible, adapt on the spot." "There was one day of shooting in Trollshaw Forest where we were shooting a sequence with Bilbo and a couple of the Dwarves." "And when we were blocking the scene I wasn't happy with the way the scene was blocking." "And I wanted to shoot it in slightly more continuous shots and not, you know, break it up into a lot of different angles." "And in order to do that, the set that was built wasn't really gonna work for us." "It was interesting because he then came up to me and basically said we need to clear the stage and get the next part of the Trollshaw Forest in there." "We had to change the set and there was nowhere else to go." "None of the other sets were ready because it was a last minute thing." "Our task was to change the edge of the Trollshaw Forest into the Trollshaw lab." "Heh, and so this huge task which is, you know, really days of work Peter was going back to his office and would come back to shoot some more when we had finished." "The crew could see that the eight of us on-set team would be rather pushed to get this set out and turn around by lunchtime to shoot something else that day." "And suddenly, I looked up and there was 200 shooting crew out there throwing sandbags, rolling up turf, helping our guys." "That's one of the marvelous things about New Zealand film technicians is that everyone went:" ""Right." "This is a huge job." "Let's all get together and let's get this done."" "So every department, and I mean every department, was in there." "Here in New Zealand, we take Easter egg hunts seriously, all right." "Hello again." "Just this ferocious effort by the crew." " Quick." " A major reset like this involves as many people as we've got, as many as we could find." "To go as quick as we can." "The last thing we wanna do is hold up any shooting crew." "The world's fastest set change." "I think we did it in about a couple of hours." "Which given" " There were tons of dirt." "Took up half of Kong stage." "It was really sort of a bonding moment." "And it was very early on in the shoot and every department realized the importance of doing this thing for Peter." "MAN:" "Easy does it." "And that was pretty hard work at the time, but looking back, you're pretty proud of it." "[ALL CHEERING]" "You don't get that every movie." "You don't get that." "I think it was actually a turning point in the morale of the whole crew as well." "Like, everyone went, "Okay, if we can achieve that in that much time we can make this movie." "We can get it done."" "WILLIAM [ON RECORDING]:" "Quit your griping." "These ain't sheep." "These is fresh nags." "Leathery old farmer." "All skin and bone, he was." "I'm still picking bits of him out of me teeth." "Hello, Mum." "HAMBLETON:" "Three of us Dwarves, Mark myself and William are portraying the Trolls as well." "There's more where that came from." "That involves, uh, mocap, motion capture which is a whole other world." "So there I was minding my own business as Dori, being a Dwarf and suddenly, I'm flung in to the volume to become a Troll." "We love it." "I actually thought of John Rhys-Davies doing Treebeard because I knew that he played a different character." "Treebeard is my name." "According to some..." "I thought I would love to have a go at auditioning for one of those characters." "We had done some stuff as Trolls in some of the readings of the script and it just seem to fit." "What are you, then?" "An oversized squirrel?" "Shut your trap." "You'll eat what I give you." " Right." "Just trembling?" " Peter is not" " Just only a moment." "Just sit there for a bit because we just wanna now send the signal through, and make sure you're all set." "First thing to do is to make sure you're sitting where you need to be set sitting there." "We really wanted to have something on set for Peter to use for framing of the cameras." "So we had some idea what the final composition of the shots were gonna be." "They were there working on a wee little volume on the side of the film set." "So we could comp the Trolls in real time." "So that Andrew Lesnie and his team could be framing up of what space in those frames the Trolls would be occupying." "The camera operator and Peter could really see how big the Trolls were for framing." "Here we go." "MAN 1:" "Action!" "MAN 2:" "Action." "SAINDON:" "So that when we panned off Martin, went to the Trolls he could get the right scale, get the right proportions." "So that when we get it back into the digital realm everything fits better because the cameras really work for the scale of the Trolls." "[YELLING]" "WOMAN:" "Action!" "[ALL YELLING]" "Trollshaw was quite a challenge." "Uh, it's the first time that we've really fought properly." "We've got a particularly dangerous fight with a bunch of very nasty Trolls." "I think you charge in with your hammer already cocked back ready to go, you know." "Yeah." "Yeah, that's gonna be fine." "The Dwarves are getting used to their weapons." "It was the first time they're holding their ax." ""Do I use two axes or do I use my sword?"" "You know, really learning the tools of their character." "JACKSON:" "That's good." "Yeah." "Good, good, good." "MAN:" "Hold there." "Hold." " Good." "Good timing." "WOMAN:" "And three, two, one!" "Action!" "[ALL YELLING]" "Fighting big plastic legs which would then be Trolls, which was quite amusing." "We were working with Troll legs, you know, manfully operated by the stunt guys who wore full combat outfit." "You know, crash helmets and-- it was like the riot police, basically." "We're the Trolls' legs." "So they can hit us or the leg." "So that gave the physical presence on set." "And also too, if we actually-- When the leg's hit one of the actors or stunt guys that actually would look like an impact." "So when they put CG character in it, it's gonna be more believable because of the interaction with the physical world." "SERKIS:" "They just took a beating, those guys." "They had to stand there and puppeteer these great big, huge weight bags." "MAN:" "And cut." "Cut, cut, cut." "That's great, guys." "That's terrific." "I think we're good." "NESBITT:" "Take a look up to a Troll-- WOMAN:" "That's right, Jimmy." "It's tennis balls and sticks." "You're told, "This is a Troll, what he looks like."" "You see a little figure Weta brings over." "You see, "Okay, brilliant." "Okay, that doesn't help me at all."" "You're looking at these tennis balls going, "Holy mother of God."" "it's gonna be a wee bit hard to look at that there and not that." "WOMAN:" "Swipe!" "And fight!" "[BOTH YELLING]" "But then you look at this playback, yeah, and it shows the Troll moving." "And with you in mind." "It completely makes sense, then you kind of go, "Oh, right."" "You know, relatively speaking, the size." "They're always way bigger than you think they are, even on the set." " So one Troll there." "WOMAN:" "That's funny then." "Really..." "Okay." "We should run a rehearsal." "[ALL YELLING]" "We were playing Dwarves attacking ourselves as Trolls." "[CHUCKLES]" "So there was a scene where Bifur ends up clutching onto my leg as Tom the Troll." "So my character Dori gives my character Bert a shot in the pills with bollocks." "[SHREIKS THEN GRUNTS]" "Ouch!" "[GRUNTS]" "I smashed out one of the Troll's teeth." "And I just remember the first time I did it swinging the hammer, and everybody standing off camera flinching." "Because they thought I was gonna let go." "As if." "[YELLS]" "MCTAVISH:" "if I'd let go, it would've been bad." "WOMAN:" "We're a cut, thank you." "We're cut." "Very nice." "It's a sight for sore eyes, yeah?" "This is the best place to have you two be-- if I could get my hands to you now..." "Yes, yes." "Lucky, you guys." "Count yourselves lucky." "Some of them were lucky enough to just be lying in bags." "But some of us were put on this spit." "I think in a previous life, our Construction and Design people were part of some medieval torture kind of world, I don't know." "MAN:" "Nice." "We're gonna have six of the Dwarves on a spit." "And very tight fit, I might add." "Everything's gotta be really fast and efficient." "So that's why we built plates onto the harness they already have on before they actually get their wardrobe on." "Brackets that get bolted to the actual log." "MAN:" "How are you doing?" "Ahem, this is actually the most comfortable position." "All right, guys, let's go." "One minute." "Time is gonna start." "Vinny, you're on first." "This a test to make sure that we can, uh, put six Dwarves on a spit." "One of the main factors here is how long it takes to do that." "I'm just sort of timing this at the moment." "You've gotta put them on, get your shot, get them off of the thing." "So this is all practice." "We ended up being like a Formula 1 kind of team." "People with pneumatic drills and getting them on and off." "It was like, "Bzz, bzz."" "MAN:" "Done." "WONG:" "One Dwarf on, "Bzz, bzz."" "One Dwarf on." "Once they're all on, they go, "Clear."" "Everyone steps back, started filming." "[ALL CHATTERING]" "I hadn't realized we were gonna be in a spit." "I thought it would be our stunt doubles." "The hardest thing was the waiting because you could only be put up one at a time and bolted on to it." "[ELECTRIC DRILL WHIRRING]" "We had to get a few guys on then we're gonna rotate the spit so the guys are on their side put some more actors on, rotate the spit so we had to do that to get them all on." "And they said, "Look, you'll be on there for half an hour, tops."" "Then I saw what was gonna happen." "We were being layered on top of one another. it was brilliant." " All right, Mark." "How's that feel, Mark?" "HADLOW:" "Peter, it's fabulous." " Pete, this is known as Jackson's revenge." " Ha, ha, ha." "Well, I drew the short straw in that I was the first on and the last off." "MAN:" "Okay." "MCTAVISH:" "Oh, mother." "Oh, no." "[NESBITT LAUGHING]" "MCTAVISH:" "Who's laughing?" "Who's laughing?" "[MCTAVISH GROANING]" "MAN:" "Look at their faces." "Seeing the guys on the spit, the Dwarf kebab, was quite enjoyable." "Watching Jimmy Nesbitt spinning round on a Dwarf kebab." "Hello." "I made a special visit just to see that." "I couldn't stay away for that, could I?" "MAN:" "B marker." "JACKSON:" "And action." "As we came around towards camera, we were trying to do a line if we weren't feeling sick." "Heh, heh, heh." "This isn't good for my hemorrhoids." "I didn't realize how fast it was gonna go round." " If you let us go now" " Have we got this--?" "It was great until about three-quarters the way through." "We were starting to get nauseous as it got faster and faster." "It became then getting through to the end without being the first one to heave." "Everyone, blow!" "Blow!" "I don't do rides at the amusement park well at all." "In fact, I'll come off the ride, and it: "Uh-oh, I'm gonna vom:"" "[RETCHES]" "And there's vom." "So I don't go on the rides." "Now, I had completely and utterly forgotten about this sort of thing." "And we got on the spit which goes round and round and round." "It gets faster." "So we were going round really fast but also looking up to see where Trolls were." "And looking at the fire and screaming and shouting." "MAN:" "Caro's enjoying it." "Aren't you?" " We are all enjoying it." "What's funny about is" " Because you're doing it and Peter's giving direction and he wasn't in the tent for that, he was outside watching us." "And you can't help as you're going around seeing him laughing but not sort of necessarily at what we're doing." "He's just laughing at the kind of uncomfortability" "At the world he's put us into." "Okay, guys, stills." "Rotate them around, guys, so we get some bunch of stills." "MAN:" "That's it." "Light her up, yeah." "All right?" "Okay, all right, get them down." "Hey, that was great work, guys." "Fantastic." "HADLOW:" "I did think my spleen was gonna come up at one point there." "My head was spinning after it." "Everyone should do it." "Mark was getting pretty sick." " A bit dizzy." "MAN:" "Yeah, yeah." " Very close to vomiting." "MAN:" "Yeah." "I said, "I need the bucket." I didn't vom, but it was the closest I've come." ""I'm gonna vom, I need the bucket." "I need to vom."" "Poor little Adam did, my little brother." "So I was over there, sort of, "Are you okay?"" "Then, "Whoo."" "Yeah." "Just a little bit of sick, maybe." "Heh." "In his hands." "He won't mind me mentioning it." "MAN 1:" "You all right?" "MAN 2:" "You all right?" "Turning." "Some got more ill than others, but we all-- You got off, suddenly you felt queasy and you sort of think, "Get me a bucket."" "I nearly did the vom." "And that would have been very embarrassing." "They all" " Peter thought I had." "I never heard the end of it for the next three or four days." " Who threw up on the spit?" " Well, no one actually threw up." "I nearly came close to it. it was terrible." "That was terrible, wasn't it?" "That's not what I heard." "Ha, ha, Peter, that's terribly unfair." " Is this me here?" "WOMAN:" "That is you." "Dean O'Gorman joined us near the end of block one." "Um, he was cast as Fili." "O'GORMAN:" "And I came to it three or four months after everyone had started." "It had its challenges because there was this thing that was happening." "I was like, "What's going on?" "What do they do?" "What's happening with prosthetics?"" "And I was sort of walking around like a deer in the headlights." "Hm." "[BOTH CHUCKLE]" "MAN:" "He'll be all right." " That's fine." "[GROANS THEN LAUGHS]" "Dean just had to arrive and get in there basically." "Ha, ha!" "I never had two swords in my hands, obviously." "Why would I have two swords in my hands?" "So I had to get the coordination of that going." "Which was challenging in the beginning." "But actually, once I got it, it was really fun." "Hoo, ha-ha!" "That's good. it's fun. it's kind of like what you dream of doing when you're a kid." "JACKSON:" "Not only did he just join and obviously carry on shooting the scenes that we have been doing we were able to go back into scenes we had not had Fili around for and pick up some shots of Dean." " Hello." "SERKIS:" "Come and have a look at this." "My first shot, my first day on a green screen standing on Aidan's shoulders in a wire harness trying to catch an ax and then hit a Troll in the face with an ax." "Well, that's my first shot." "And Peter came up to me, just before the shot, and went:" ""We got some good ball-crushing scenes for you in this one."" "Because I was wearing this harness, and it's kind of strangling the lads." "And I was like, "Oh, my God." "This is my first scene, my first shot in The Hobbit."" "And Pete came up and went:" "I thought it was pretty funny." "Oh, all right." "If you're in the harness for too long, it cuts off the circulation in your legs, and you go:" "And I was like, "Please, don't let me faint."" "I thought, I'm supposed to be playing this guy that's like, you know, a little bit of a young warrior a bit cocky, you know, sure of himself." "And I thought if I fainted I fainted on the first shot, first day, it would be so embarrassing." "WOMAN:" "Action!" "Gloin." "[GRUNTING]" "But I manned up and I got through it." "[CHUCKLES]" "MAN:" "And cut." "It was good to get the first day, you know." "Now I feel like I'm on my way." "Now I'm gonna home and take off my nose." "Ha, ha, ha!" "GANDALF:" "He keeps a watchful eye over the vast forest lands to the east." "And a good thing too." "[PEOPLE CHATTERING]" "So this could be like a shot of the kitchen when we pull the other wall out." "Look, we tilt up and he turns, and we see a POV of the hedgehogs." "WOMAN:" "Rolling." "When do I--?" "If you could say "action" for me." "WOMAN:" "Action." " Action?" "Oh, okay, good." "Maybe he comes over here." "And tilt it down to the hedgehog." " Hey, how's that?" "MAN:" "Yeah." "That sort of thing's good." "JACKSON:" "All right." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "This will be-- This is a good day to start with actually." "WOMAN:" "Have you met everybody, Sylvester?" "MCCOY:" "No." "JACKSON:" "Careful" " Hello, everybody." "WOMAN:" "This is Sylvester." "Our Radagast." " We've met." "We wanted that very, you know, forgetful professor or forgetful wizard, in this case." "And Sylvester McCoy is a genius at doing that." "[SNEEZES]" "JACKSON:" "That is a persona that he does so well." "And the mice can sort of scurry up here and just go into there and scurry up here and sort of burrow into there, so:" ""Whoo, whoo!"" "And sort of armpit" " So touch the" "Peter, you know, he's a good bloke, you know." "And he's just" " He's a bloke, really." "He hasn't any airs or graces." "He's so relaxing." "He brings a lovely atmosphere to the set." "JACKSON:" "So this shot, Sylvester, is gonna be-- if you would just stay there cradling the hedgehog." "MCCOY:" "But he does work and work and work and work." "And he lives and breathes the whole thing." "You're trying to concentrate on what you're doing as the attack is underway." "Three, two, one, action." "Crates, knees." "Spiders." "Go, go, go." "Go, go, go." "And look behind." "The windows behind you." "The camera up here too." "Lovely, and cut." "WOMAN 1:" "Cut." "WOMAN 2:" "Cut." "We're happy we got that." "That's terrific." "Thanks, Sylvester." "[BIRD TWITTERING]" "The old fortress?" "Show me." "I can't remember quite how it happened, but I just came up with an image of a sleigh towed by rabbits." "The large rabbits, they are towing the, uh, sleigh." "I think it was the first preproduction meeting." "He sort of took us all by surprise by saying:" ""Of course, Radagast's sled will be pulled by large rabbits."" "The rabbits are, you know, will probably be reasonably large rabbits." "HENNAH:" "I" " Personally, I thought he was joking." "What do you mean, large rabbits?" "That's crazy." "[ALL CHUCKLE]" "Yeah, that's crazy." "What?" "JACKSON:" "We need to find the biggest rabbit in the country and see how big they are." "At the back of my mind, "I don't buy this."" "But I mean little, small, normal sized ones all look a bit silly." "And I saw this thing on the internet, where they actually have rabbits that size." "Giant Norwegian rabbits." "And there's some photos of people with their giant pet rabbits." "Yes." "That's the bastard there." "God." "What a" " Look." " They're-- WOMAN:" "Oh, my God." "JACKSON:" "That's the German guy." "And there's a photo of this guy holding this rabbit up." "And they're literally the size of big dogs." " Those are the rabbits." " Oh, my God!" "[ALL LAUGHING AND CHATTERING]" "They're all gonna be CGI, every single rabbit shot." "They were one of the first things we got turned over to us." "And Pete had this idea of really feral rabbits." "You know, they were gonna have mangy fur." "These had to be natural rabbits, but large, you know." "And certainly not anything domestic about them at all." "But they had to be big enough to believably be able to pull Radagast through the forest." "Some fantastic animation." "All key frame animation, obviously." "We're not gonna motion-capture rabbits." "You build walk cycles, run cycles for the rabbits." "Knowing that you're gonna have a lot of chase scenes." "You do rabbit tests and finding some nice footage of rabbits." "There was an animal trainer out in the hut who has all these big, enormous rabbits." "So we were able to kind of go and take detailed photographs of them." "And also we recorded video stuff of how they moved." "There's only a couple of scenes where we see them just not running at full speed." "There's rabbits laying there on their back." "There's rabbits, like, just itching their ears." "We even had it where the one rabbit stands up and starts tapping his foot as a warning to the other rabbits." "I'm not entirely sure that's a real thing to do." "I think we referenced Bambi." "Heh, heh." "That's shorthand for-- That's how rabbits warn everybody." "Heh." "But we still had to make a sled." "A practical sled that you would believe could be pulled by rabbits." "And something like that." "But I do think it should have a curve at the front." "My first drawings of the sledge actually had the wheels on." "I was kind of cheating." "[CHUCKLES]" "There shouldn't be wheels on it." "It should skate along on logs." "I think wheels make it look like a chariot." "Pete was determined it should be a, a sledge." "A lightweight, wooden sapling framework." " Yee-ha!" " Wow!" "HENNAH:" "Lightweight aluminum frame with a rubber texture over it to look like branches." " It's great." "LEE:" "Not bad, huh?" "And it was good fun in the testing phase." "Mt." "Crawford is at the top of the hill behind Miramar." "We thought we'll do some testing at Mt." "Crawford with the stunt guys." "And before you knew it, it became into a full camera test." "You know, every man and his dog was there." "We needed a Radagast stunt double." "We did have other people within the team who were very similar to Sylvester's height but they were really busy." "So it kind of left me." "Yeah." "At first, we did think, "Well, Tim as Radagast, that's crazy."" "But he could come on, and, you know, he figured out how to steer it relatively quick." "WONG:" "There comes a time when you probably have to hang your hat up and retire from stunts officially." "I don't quite feel I'm there yet." "I have this ego in me that still says I can do stunts as well as everyone else." "You know, I still like to keep proving it to myself and challenging it." "I don't know who decided that Tim Wong should be the" "Would be the best candidate to be the stunt double for Radagast." "I mean, Sylvester McCoy and Tim Wong have nothing in common." "But I think it came down to height." " We're twins." "MCCOY:" "What?" " We're pretty much twins." "Yeah." "MCCOY:" "Yeah." "So that's Sylvester's face there, with an early nose study on it." "What we're doing right now is we're doing the prosthetic to try and turn his stunt actor into Radagast." "The challenge being that his stunt actor is played by Tim Wong." "Sylvester is an aging, uh, Caucasian man." "And we decided that we needed to create a likeness makeup for him." "WONG:" "I sit down on the chair and the first thing they do is lay this one-piece silicone prosthetic on my face." "It's just one whole piece. it's like:" "Phht!" " Goodbye." "MAN:" "Bye, Tim." "WONG: it is literally like what you see on Mission: impossible when the guy just peels it off and unveils what you look like." "The transformation is now complete." "Ta-da!" "Poor man, he's got to wander around looking like me." "People keep throwing things at him." "Tripping up." "And asking for money that I owe them." "WONG:" "As I walked on, literally, the whole of Second Unit once they found out who I was, their jaw just dropped." "MAN:" "Camera rolling!" "And the very first take was very, very interesting." "It's like a football field long I'm sitting at the back, and they count me down in three, two, one." "[AIR HORN BLASTS]" "WONG:" "Boom, you're away." "The initial acceleration is such that you have to hold on quite hard." "And over jumps we go, under trees, through bushes." "And then they have to button off at exactly the right time towards the end of the run, otherwise, the sleigh just keeps on going." "So we're going more with the manual switch." "Start the winch with a button wind up the speed and then wind it down manually with just" " With the eye." "WONG:" "They normally have a whole lot of stunt nets for me to crash into, things like that." "We just did that all morning." "Fortunately enough, it was just a fake tree." " Maybe it will make the bloopers, we'll see." " I love the sleigh jumps." "We had a couple of good ones where the lower angle was looking up." "Really seeing it come full frame and get some air." "[YELLS]" "He's done extraordinary stunts, and I've got to recreate them." "WOMAN:" "Shooting." "Quiet please." "Yes, well, you see, I do my own stunts." "Well, at least close-ups." "With my eyebrows, you see." "If they don't" " Can't find a stuntman that's got stunt eyebrows." "MAN:" "Can you do a wave with those?" "[MAN LAUGHS]" "MCCOY:" "A killer just doing close-ups." "I used to think, "Oh, let the stuntman do all the stunts and all that physical stuff."" "When it comes to the close-ups you sit there and wink and nod and nudge and smile and, you know, that's it." "But no, when it comes to close-ups, you know I'm doing all this stuff all over the place." "I need a stuntman to do the close-ups." "JACKSON:" "How you doing, Sylvester?" "Do you wanna cut for a minute, get your breath back?" " That's all right." "JACKSON:" "Yeah." "You can keep up?" "Heh." "Three, two, one." "Pull." "Dol Guldur." "JACKSON:" "That looked good." "We'll just review, but that looked very good." " Thank you so much." " Yep." "Yep." "Good one." " See you in November." " November, sometime." " You've done great." " Thank you." "WOMAN:" "Thank you." "All done." "All finished for the first block." "JACKSON:" "it's their favorite wizard." " Bye-bye." "WOMAN:" "Bye-bye." "Time for a pastry." "Ooh." "ELROND:" "You are not the only guardian to stand watch over Middle-earth." "It really feels like a reunion when everybody that was in The Lord of the Rings that we needed for The Hobbit returned." "Welcome to Rivendell." "It's been great to be back here." "Great to meet up with lots of people that were all working on Lord of the Rings." "Ah, the ring." "Elrond has one of the three Elven rings." "WOMAN 1:" "Do you remember that?" "WEAVING:" "That's the one." "I do." "[WEAVING HUMMING]" "[LAUGHING]" "Look at you." "You look fantastic." " Got any other poses?" " No." "[LAUGHS]" "This could be you." "It's gonna be so grim." "Look at that." "Hello." "We have a winner." "I'm serious." "You have not aged a single day." "I think I look younger, actually." " You do, actually." "MAN:" "I think so too." "You are not the only guardian to stand watch over Middle-earth." " I remember it now." " Yeah." "Really." "But, oof, later on..." "Oof!" "I didn't have a script until I got here." "But that's part of the nature of working with Pete anyway." "New lines in." "So I kind of knew that that's what would be the situation." "Did you have another meeting outside of that one?" "No, in the meeting we had this morning..." " Just learnt those lines." "JACKSON:" "This is a result of the meeting." "Quick!" "Let's film it now." "WOMAN:" "Action!" "These runes were written on a Midsummer's Eve by the light of a crescent moon nearly 200 years ago." "I remember that day's filming in particular as I with Hugo Weaving one of the most congenial members of the original cast." "And to meet up again with him was lovely." "Oh, yes." "And we always laugh together, Hugo and I." "I was kind of in awe of him initially but he's an incredibly fun person to be with just on a day-to-day basis." "McKELLEN:" "Our background is very similar working in the classical theater." "WOMAN:" "Action!" "These runes were written on a Midsummer's Eve..." "Suddenly, we have a prominence in the film industry, which amuses us." "[BABBLING]" "Because I think we both basically think that where we belong is with our feet firmly planted on a stage somewhere." "WOMAN:" "Three, two, one, action!" "WEAVING:" "I mean, it's always interesting when Ian and I are off set doing all those characters, heh, heh, heh." "I don't know that I can explain it." "It was very bizarre." "So all the scale doubles, large and small, were required for a wide shot." "Which meant that none of the actors in the scene were actually there." "So it was kind of slightly weird sitting in a couple of chairs reading this radio play while watching these smaller and larger people acting it out." " We still have time." " For what?" "Well, to find this entrance, we'll have to be standing in exactly the right spot at exactly the right time." "We're alert to the ridiculousness of it all." "What do you mean?" "You are not the only guardian to stand watch over Middle-earth." "But I think we can behave when necessary." "[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]" "JACKSON:" "Well, we've had a few..." "We got rid of this." "Bret will come down the stairs and do a wonderful bit of Elvish reading for us." "And you'll, you'll cry, and..." "I was completely thrilled to be asked to come back on the film for any part." "He had played a very beautiful elf in Lord of the Rings." "So beautiful that he'd drawn attention away from more important characters..." "...on the screen." " My lady!" "McKELLEN:" "Got his nickname, an acronym from "Frodo is great," F-I-G." ""Who is that?" Referring to Bret." "FIGWIT." "And Peter asked him back and he very gamely came along with a name now, Lindir, and a line or two." "My Lord Elrond, the Dwarves, they've gone." " Resetting." " Do you like it?" " Ha, ha, ha." " I'm going back to my unit now." "WOMAN:" "Caro is very pleased to hear that." "JACKSON:" "Keep going." "All right." "It's like you're always" " In a way, the Elves are always prepared to welcome Gandalf, and that's no big deal." "When he brings these bastards in, it's like a cultural shift." " Mithrandir." "GANDALF:" "Lindir." "Working with Ian McKellen was a total career highlight." "I was sort of nervous and, you know, intimidated." "Mithrandir." "He's incredible to watch on-screen and then to get to watch him up close." "Where is he?" "He's a very good actor." "Lindir." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "I mean, I can handle one sentence quite well, like "Mithrandir"..." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "Got it." "Got that one down, right?" "But this one about the Dwarves using all the wine up." "I mean..." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "It was a complete mind flip." "Uh, uh..." "The Creative team decided, over lunch, that they wanted him to do an Elvish scene that afternoon." "Bret, you've got some Elvish." "He says, "You're joking."" "I said, "No." "And it's three lines." "And it's going to be shot in one shot."" ""So we can't cut in and out of it." And he went a bit pale." "WOMAN:" "We'll shoot that?" " Straight up." "First up." "JACKSON:" "First up." "One take." "Get it perfect." "No pressure." "Oh." "So stressful." "Yeah." "Because being on set is a very stressful atmosphere even when you're speaking English." "Now, if you can start your line, Bret, before you're even here, so you're..." "Fran and Philippa write the lines in English then those lines are sent to David Salo." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "McKENZIE:" "The Elvish specialist." "And then he translates the English into Elvish and then Róisín then shows me the words." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "And then I can't say them." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "And so I was walking around the set trying to remember this nonsense." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "All right." "It always sounds good on the rehearsal, never when the camera rolls." " First rule of filmmaking." "WOMAN:" "Here we go." "And action." "[LINDIR SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "[LAUGHING]" "JACKSON:" "Okay, let's have take two then." "[LINDIR SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "Something." "Sorry." "Hey, Pete." "[JACKSON MIMICKING ELVISH]" "What?" "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "MAN:" "Yeah." "What?" "I got my Elvish right." " Yes." " What was it?" "McPHERSON:" "He and Hugo had a fantastic rapport as well and so they kind of helped them-- Helped each other through a particular level of panic that I don't think, heh, everybody thrives on." "[SPEAKING IN ELVISH]" "And I just, just got it right, barely." "JACKSON:" "Very good." "Let's give Bret a shot of Scotch." " Say it perfectly again for the camera now." " What did you say?" "[IN ELVISH]" "[IN ENGLISH] Something or other." " You're forgetting already." "It's gone." "You see it's slipping away." "Slipping away." " Ah." "So we're shooting in Rivendell and this is the courtyard for the arrival of the company." "Arriving in Rivendell was difficult because we had all our bags and sacks." "We had the full kit." "Most of us could barely stand up." "It's pretty tough." "You can see them suffering in between each take." "Ah." "Here we go again!" "Oh, yes." "The Dwarves, they travel light." "I think there was a communication problem with the packs." "I don't know whether they said, "Let's see how much these guys can carry."" "[GROANS]" "When it was put on me, I couldn't believe it." "And I couldn't believe Jed's weight." "BROPHY:" "I don't feel I've got enough stuff." "MAN:" "I know." "Can you give me some more stuff?" "HUNTER:" "There was nearly 50 kgs worth of weight that was put on us." "See, that's more like it." "Got my toilet in there, my tent, matches, got food, some tin fruit." "I've actually been hiding over there to delay putting this on as long as possible." " Where's Ori?" "Ori?" "MAN:" "Taking off that big load." "Yeah." "Ori?" " Stay there." "I'll just go on my soap box." "MAN:" "Thanks, Peter." "So, hey, guys, what we're gonna do, we're just gonna do like, three shots in one." "And we're gonna get a bit of the beginning where Ian walks through the gates and then Ian will retire because the real shot's gonna be with Paul leading you guys." "MAN:" "And charge!" "[SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]" "And circle." "The Dwarves will be, sometimes, our real actors but they were far too big for horses." "We're also going to be using our scale doubles who will bravely stand their ground as horses thunder towards them." "We hope." "We'll have to see." "And we'll find out in a couple of hours how brave they really are." "The scales are vitally important." "And yeah, you build up a relationship with your scale because he's watching you on the screens all the time you're doing your stuff, and he's in costume and wearing a face mask." "Wearing a mask that is a mold of your own face with similar facial hair, coloring, everything, but with a stern look." "He's walking around with this look on him this evil look the entire time." "You go, "All right, Rob." He goes, "How's it going?" What?" "MAN:" "They're on here too tight." " Yeah." "And this kind of voice comes out, and you kind of go:" ""Shit." "This is weird." "I wish he'd take off his mask right now." Heh, heh." "And so it's quite disconcerting. it's quite weird to have them walking around." "I mean, it's uncanny how close some of them look some of them more than others." "And horse charge!" "Horse charge!" "[YELLS]" "And around." "And around." "Very good." "It was a great way of seeing the whole process of being a scale double..." "[IN ELVISH]" "What is he saying?" "Does he offer us insult?" "GANDALF:" "No, Master Gloin, he's offering us food." " I just pop one in." "It's like" " Yeah." "Okay." "And I think I would need a napkin." " Is this the napkin?" "WOMAN:" "Yes." "This is the napkin." "MAN:" "Yes." "Yes." " Heh, heh." "Could I have the proper size one?" "[LAUGHING]" " This is clearly the small scale." " Yeah." "I've done a terrible job." "[IN ENGLISH] What did I tell you about the large napkins?" "Right." "Rolling resets this time, guys." "The way that we try and get through this as quickly as possible is to keep the cameras rolling and just do take after take after take." "There's only one thing for it." "JACKSON:" "And reset!" "WOMAN:" "Resetting!" "And as soon as we were done with a take, I'd say, "Okay." "Reset." "Let's go again."" " We call them rolling resets." "MAN:" "Reset." " And reset." "One last one for that. it's cut." "WOMAN:" "Resetting." "Because as soon as I said "cut" you'd literally have 30, 40 people sweeping in around the Dwarves." "There's someone to look after their hair, their makeup, their costumes." "Every time you say "cut" it's like 20 minutes gone." "Every time." "They're running, something falls off, sweating, cooling them down." " Twenty minutes gone." "JACKSON:" "And it was that sort of thing." "You need to have the patience of an ox." " Should we shoot?" "WOMAN:" "Let's clear everybody off the set." " They're just going to take that." " I need to see some rolling resets." "We're able to do that because we're not shooting film." "When we're shooting film, obviously, it's very expensive." "Digital cameras, you put a little card in, you can shoot for like 15 minutes and you can just download that footage and you can reuse the card." "The whole thing is a bit cheaper." "So I kind of realized that the best thing I could do to speed along the day was not to yell "cut." MAN:" "And reset!" "That's the way I love working and I think a lot of actors love working like that because you stay in the moment, there's energy and you build on the energy." "One take builds on the next." "But it was also a great way to kind of keep the Dwarf contingent at bay so I could get through four or five takes in a reasonably quick time." "[CHEERING AND LAUGHING]" "We'll have to cut and call it a day..." "MAN:" "Yay!" "Hey." "How are you?" " Okay." "Thank you." " Great." "Thank you." " That was fun." " Yeah. it was great." "Thanks, Adam." "You're all done." "Peter, we'll leave you in that for a while." " Oh, yeah?" " No, no." "You're done too." "Ha, ha, ha." " Bastard!" "Ah, ha, ha." " I wanted to get that look in your eye." "Naughty Dwarves." "Badly behaved." "[PEOPLE LAUGHING]" "Thank you very much, everybody, for that very long day." "We needed to get Martin away from our fair shores." "Yep." "That was fantastic." "Thanks, everybody." "We lose Martin today so we will have finished the first six weeks of shooting with Martin then he's got to go back to the UK to do another season of Sherlock." " The game is afoot, Watson." " I'm gonna take a nap for six hours." " Don't want to see any of this in Sherlock." " Or any of this." " Oh, well, you can take them." " The game is afoot." "And while he's away, we're going to be shooting more Elvish stuff with Elrond Gandalf and Galadriel." " Ooh, it's all coming back to me." "It's coming back to you?" "It's an amazing thing to be able to return to something that was begun 12 years ago." " Oh." "Here she is!" " Here she is, like you'll never exist again." "Welcome." " Little elf kiss." " Yeah." " Welcome." " Thank you." "It was a little bit like returning to summer camp." " Very well." "McKELLEN:" "Very nice to see you." "WOMAN:" "And action!" "Lady Galadriel." "GALADRIEL:" "Show me." "I suppose it's this thing about whether it raises the stakes for this thing to suddenly be produced in terms of the outward meeting." "McKELLEN:" "Cate Blanchett has played some of the great classic roles in theater." "And you can't do that unless you're alert to all the possibilities for your character and discuss them openly with your colleagues and that's how we go about preparing." "Maybe it's what stops me is the psychic speech of you're carrying something." "JACKSON:" "Yes." "There's something going on with him and I'm trying to work out what it is." "And that sort of preparation is not usual in films." "In films, the actors are cast because of their known qualities and they turn up on set and they're expected to deliver on the first day of shooting with very little preparation." "But in this case, we did all sit around." "You know, I'm perfectly fine to just sit down with the cast and send everyone away for a cup of tea for half an hour give us the set quietly to ourselves and just work the scene up and change it and we either have, you know, Philippa or Fran there." " Hello, darling?" "WALSH [OVER PHONE]:" "Hello?" " Hello, I'm just here with Cate and Ian." " Yep." "And quite a few other people, but never mind." "Um, heh..." "We were just talking about this scene." "To be on a set with one of the greatest living actors, Sir Ian McKellen and one of the greatest living directors, that's a gift anyway." "But then to have such a key scene in a way that it sets up..." "Mithrandir." "...the journey that Gandalf is going on." "Why the Half ling?" "It's a very, very beautiful speech." "I do not know." "In Ian's hands, there's not a trace of sentiment, there's just a well of feeling." ""Why the Half ling?" I do not know, but I'll think about it." ""I have found it is the small things." Where is he going with this?" ""The everyday deeds of ordinary folk that can keep darkness at bay."" "What he's coming round to is he doesn't know I don't know how to put it into words but Bilbo Baggins somehow gives me courage to carry on." "WALSH:" "That's it." "You're trying to understand it yourself inside of it." " That's right." " The sentence." "You're figuring it out as you go, not understanding it or knowing it..." "...before you say the word." " That's it." "That's it." " That's it." " Yeah." "And he makes the great confession, which needed Galadriel to bring out of him and thinking about these things, to say "I am afraid."" " That's wonderful." "Which is wonderful." " Which has to come at the end." "Yes." "I mean, we've been reading each other's minds in the previous scene." "Part of the function of the scene is to say: "Something's troubling you."" "Mm-hm." "Trying to draw it out of you, trying to get to this moment you know, of naming the fact that you're frightened, okay, would" "But I'll also tell you what's at the heart of this." "What's at the heart of the speech is this ties into the speech in the Mines of Moria, in the second film, when you say it was the pity of Bilbo that stayed his hand." "GANDALF:" "My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill before this is over." "[GOLLUM MUMBLES]" "The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many." "So there's something you play here that you don't understand." "McKELLEN:" "That's right." "It has something to do with the essence of a Hobbit that somehow you can have armies, you can have might, you can have force you can do everything in a sensible kind of rational way but there's something that you haven't discovered yet that you haven't been able to rationalize that's telling you the end of the story has something to do with this little guy and you, yourself, don't know that journey yet." " Something like that." " But Elves have problems with what we think of as human emotion, don't they?" " They don't cry or laugh." "BLANCHETT:" "No." "Do you understand what he's talking about?" "Well, I think there's something that I say in the next film:" "Even the smallest person can change the course of the future." "I don't know." "Maybe I've strangely learnt from you." "McKELLEN:" "Yeah." " Hmm." "I think Elves would laugh at a good fartjoke." "Wouldn't they?" "I mean, everybody does." "But they only happen once every thousand years." " Heh, heh." "That's right." "Yeah." "Their diet." " Heh, heh, heh." "Who wouldn't want to sit around with Cate Blanchett and talk about almost anything in the world?" "BLANCHETT:" "Elf wear." " If Kim Kardashian can bring out some..." "WOMAN:" "I know." "...platform sneakers, I think Galadriel should have them on." "Don't you?" "JACKSON:" "Well, yes, I think that's very good." "I think the platforms were about-- Yeah, they were" " No, they're about that." "WOMAN 1:" "Have you got your disco boots?" "Yeah." "You've got the disco boots." "You've got them on." "WOMAN 2:" "Or the ankle breakers." "WOMAN 1:" "She can move in them." "Wow." "BLANCHETT:" "Disco platforms, because, of course, Elves are very tall." "I was always relieved when we got to sit down and put the UGG boots on." "But somehow you couldn't perform Galadriel in UGG boots." "I think I always needed the height." "Don't stop now." "Tell us what the woodsmen say." "Christopher Lee was not sitting around the table with the rest of us." "His contribution to the scene was filmed in London." "JACKSON:" "Yeah." "[SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]" "Yes, the wardrobe was always a little bit tricky, wasn't it?" "I seem to remember you tripped up on that a couple of times." "LEE:" "And you were very cold about it." " I wasn't cold about it." " I said, "I can't get up these bloody steps."" " No, I remember." "Yeah." "No, you said "goddamn steps."" "LEE:" "I'm sorry." "I cannot get up these goddamn steps smoothly." "I can't do it, Peter." "I'm sorry." "Because every time I try, I step on the thing." " "I can't get up these goddamn steps."" " And you said, "You did it this morning."" "[LAUGHING]" "And then you said the great line, "This wardrobe is a menace."" " Yes, you did." " Did I?" "LEE:" "These clothes are a menace." "For me, that was the signature line of the entire series." "This Necromancer is nothing more than a mortal man." "I couldn't do the trip to New Zealand." "I shot those scenes here with ordinary people standing there giving me the lines and the eye line." "So you do have to use your imagination quite a bit." "You've been busy of late, my friend." "The scene had already been shot in New Zealand with a double." "And by the magic of film, it all comes together and it looks as if we're in the same place." "You've been busy of late, my friend." "JACKSON:" "And just watch the eyebrows on" " During that..." "Here we go." "Here we go." "Here we go." "Ten years." "Eyebrow acting." "[CHUCKLING]" "I have a habit of doing this...you know." "A lot of people do." "You used to say to me, "There you go again."" " All that eyebrow acting." " Well, yeah, you know..." "Because I was always doing this:" "Just give us a little bit." "Just give us a little sliver of it." "Well?" "Don't stop now." "Tell us what the woodsmen say." "Graham and I went to Pinewood." "We weren't filming there, but we went to London." "Christopher is such a character." "It was such an honor to meet him and listen to his stories." "The most extraordinary thing that happened to me in the war was a time when I was in charge of an Australian squadron and, you know, the Aussies were, in those days, not very easy to control." "They're still not." "We've got a bunch of them on the crew." "Caro Cunningham, our first AD and producer I think she dreads the moment that Christopher and I get on a set together because it's her job to keep everything moving to shoot a shot, set up, shoot the next one." "That's what she's there for, to do, and she's very, very good at doing it." "And yet Christopher loves telling stories that are of Lord of the Rings length in their epic scope." " We went to Hong Kong." " Yeah." " And then to Macau." " Yeah." "And to Bangkok." "Boy, that guy's had a life." "He's had a life." "You go up and you meet a man like that and you have to take the time to realize what's happening." " You know that famous shot of the car?" " Yes." "Yeah." "The corkscrew." "Car." "Nobody believed it, you know." "I remember Guy Hamilton saying:" ""God," he said, "That was absolutely wonderful." "Would you do another?"" "He said, "That's the first f-ing time I've done it." "I'm not f-ing doing it again."" "[CHUCKLING]" "It was always" " A part of spending time with Christopher are his stories and his ability to recall detail." "[IN FRENCH ACCENT] He spoke like a very high, squeaky voice with a French accent." "Yeah." "You're right." "I tend to be happy to sit there with the crew standing around and listen to Christopher's stories." "[IN NORMAL VOICE] Took me about two years to get that book back to her." "I could just see Caro looking at her watch in the background a little concerned about how long it was taking." "But we got there in the end." "It was the Australian Aborigine who bought himself a new boomerang and spent the rest of his life trying to get rid of the old one." "[LAUGHING]" "He is one of my heroes, and he lived up to it all." "Oh, I should crouch, of course I should." "No, don't kneel for me." "No, he is Sir Christopher, so kneeling is appropriate." "Well, you had to kneel, didn't you?" "JACKSON:" "In front of you?" " No." "No." "Well, I always kneel in front of you." "Well, I mean, I wasn't going to bring that up but..." "[LAUGHING]" "He's awesome." "He was great." "He's unstoppable." " Thank you." "Thank you very much." " Oh, please." "Don't forget the photograph." "Yes." "No, we will do a photograph." "The return to Bag End, it was actually kind of incredible because the, you know, there were parts of Bag End in London that they'd brought with them." "MAN:" "There we go." " There we go." "And action." "We had Ian Holm in the study." "We took certain parts of Bag End with us, so Ian could be in there." "You can't ship this massive set that took up all of B Stage." "And so it had to be very planned as to what was going to be needed." "We plotted out the layout of Bag End then Peter went through, worked out which parts we would need to take with us." "We break it in small-enough pieces to fit inside an air freight container and then ship it to London." "YORKE:" "Put it together at the other end." "It was like a kitset Bag End." "GARSIDE:" "We also took with us a green-screen version because I wanted to use the effects of the window patterns." "So we built the set in plywood, but with the windows cut out." "So if I put light through them, I'd still get exactly the same window patterns." "I think originally it was just that Peter and Caro were gonna go but as per normal, more people got added who conveniently happened to be in the UK at that time." "It's cool. it's really cool." "To have a chance to return, pop the wig on and the feet on all those things are part of my DNA, in a way. it's so familiar." "WOOD:" "I love that there's actually leg now." "MAN:" "Yeah, I know. it's impressive." " It's not just the feet." " I know. it's much better." "The advances in Hobbit feet, I think, are going to make certain Hobbits upset." "[LAUGHING]" "The old Hobbit feet were molded to our feet." "Then we were glued into them." "It took about an hour and a half." "Now they're slip-ons." "The entire thing is a slip-on." "This is great!" "MAN:" "People run in these." " This is a bit, yeah." "Can we get this film cut?" " Could we just do this one?" " Why was it so easy before?" " I don't know." "MAN:" "There you go." "Now pull that bit up." "Don't let it go." "Don't let it go." " Oh, my God!" "Sorry, Elijah." " No, it's fine." "[LAUGHING]" "Sagging foot." "I love it." "MAN:" "Tie him to the chair." "Tie him to the chair." "WOMAN:" "All right." "Once we get that heel in..." "Yes!" "MAN:" "Stand" " You stand back there and do nails." "[LAUGHING]" " You guys are properly hot." "WOMAN 2:" "I know, I'm getting a... it actually felt oddly normal." "Heh, heh, literally." "And in some ways that felt stranger to me." "Like, it just feels so normal, it doesn't even feel surreal, in a way." "WOMAN:" "No, but I mean that foot may be a little longer than this." "WOMAN:" "Two Hobbits, one director." "[WOOD CHUCKLES]" "WOOD:" "A very, very cool feeling, and wonderful to work with Ian." "I mean, I hadn't seen Ian in probably eight, nine years." "JACKSON:" "Action." "They seem to think you have tunnels packed with chests of gold." "It was one small chest, hardly overflowing." "And it still smells of Troll." "[LAUGHING]" "JACKSON:" "Great." "Good." "Let's get one more of those. it was great." "That's good." "Looking around at the landscape, enjoying the sunshine." "And this nice big smoke ring now." "Lovely." "We can cut that." "[BOTH CHUCKLING]" "Looking good." "One, two, three..." "There we go." "Thank you." "MAN:" "Thanks, everybody."