Behind the Scenes

JosefK writes: "Film & Video is running an interesting and fairly in-depth article on the technology that's been used by Peter Jackson's crew and WETA for the production of the Lord of the Rings. From satellite video feeds for overseeing remote shoots, to the development of WETA's Massive program for depicting large scale battle scenes with tens and hundreds of thousands of "agents" (and it runs on Linux!), the article covers the gamut of the interesting things Peter Jackson's been doing Down Under." And Salon is running a lengthy article on the increasing use of Linux in the special effects industry.

Special Effects

[Unknown Bovine Group]

But as (Dungeons & Dragons) we all know (Dungeons & Dragons), special effects alone (Dungeons & Dragons) without good characters and (Dungeons & Dragons) plot development (Dungeons & Dragons) is (Dungeons & Dragons) crap.

(Dungeons & Dragons)

Once again Quake to the rescue

[PeterMiller]

From the Salon Article:
"At Dreamworks, Leonard laments that the thing that drove graphics card performance on Linux in the early days of the migration was the first-person shooter computer game Quake. Gamers who were fans of Linux and Quake hacked on Linux until Quake ran smoothly."

This once agian proves that the Quake engine was the primary driver of technology over the last 7 years.

What will take us to the next level of computing? Why, Quake 4 of course.

RTS-Game!

[Ch_Omega]

Imagine using that setup and those machines for an ultra-realistic realtime strategygame based on LOTR!

Okay, I just shut up now..

Weather

[Levine]

He said that the shoot turned out to be one of the worst of Jackson's career. "We had horrendous weather and all kinds of problems in the production... At one point, production had to be stopped when they were shooting in Queenstown, because there was so much torrential rainfall that the entire crew had to help sandbag the town so that it wouldn't be washed away."

I'd think the ruins of a town washed away would make an excellent set, but hey. Whatever works.

Cheers,
levine

I didn't realize

[wiredog]

that a PBS station [weta.org] was involved in the production of LoTR. Does this mean that I'll stop hearing them beg for money twice a year?

Re:Special Effects

[Anonymous Coward]

Lord of the Rings is boring. There is a distinct lack of giant robots in it. Good movies have giant robots, bad movies don't.

Re:No Balrog in book 1

[typical geek]

The more important question is "Do Balrogs have fuzzy pink slippers?"

Re:Special Effects

[sharkey]

The only thing that could've ruined this movie is if they placed Leo DeCaprio as Frodo.

Or cast N'Sync as Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin and Fatty, with Britney as Eowyn and Christina as Arwen Evenstar. Throw in Clooney as Strider and Stallone as Boromir, and you open the way for Jim Carrey and Gary Busey to steal the show as Legolas and Gimli. With Travolta as fearless leader Gandalf the Thetan, LOTR would have rivalled the Batman movie starring Adam West and Burt Ward for space in moviegoer's hearts.

Software created battle scenes

[dxkelly]

Does this mean if we look close we'll see stupid bots trying to run through walls due to bad waypoints?