Special effects of The Lord of the Rings film series

The Lord of the Rings film series used many groundbreaking practical and digital visual effects. The first film has around 540 effects shots, the second 799, and the third 1488 (2730 in total). The total moves up to 3420 with the extended cuts. Two hundred and sixty visual effects artists worked on the trilogy, and the number would double by The Two Towers. The crew, led by Jim Rygiel and Randy Cook, would work long and hard hours overnight to produce special effects within a short space of time, especially with Jackson's active imagination. For example, they produced several major shots of Helm's Deep within the last six weeks of post-production of The Two Towers, and the same number of shots for The Two Towers within the last six weeks on The Return of the King. Despite Weta Workshop being the major stylistic force behind the films, a single scene where Arwen confronts the Black Riders in The Fellowship of the Ring was done by Digital Domain.

Production was complicated by the use of scale doubles and forced perspective (on a level never seen before in the film industry). Elijah Wood is 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m) tall in real life, but the character of Frodo Baggins is 3 ft 6 in (1.07 m) in height. Large and small scale doubles were used in certain scenes, while entire duplicates of certain sets (including Bag End in Hobbiton) were built at two different scales, so that the characters would appear to be the appropriate size. At one point in the film, Frodo runs along a corridor in Bag End, followed by Gandalf (played by Ian McKellen). Wood and McKellen were filmed in separate versions of the same corridor, built at two different scales; then these two separate shots are combined to create a shot of both actors appearing to be in the same corridor.

Forced perspective was also employed, so that it would look as though the short Hobbits were interacting with taller Men and Elves. Surprising the makers of the film, the simple use of kneeling down was used to great effect. Some actors also wore oversized costumes to make average sized actors look small, and there were numerous scale doubles, who were disguised with costumes, and an avoidance of close-ups and numerous back shots, and even latex faces for the Hobbit doubles.

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