Wired's LOTR III Tech Breakdown 419
rjjm writes "Interesting little logistics piece in Wired about the technology WETA used for for The Return of the King." Ya know, now that the Matrix hype vanished into nowhere, I'm glad the LotR hype is gearing up. I think this one will earn it.
Nothing New Here (Score:1, Insightful)
earning it's hype (Score:5, Insightful)
Most likely ROTK will not live up to the hype until the extended edition comes out.
And I speak from the experience of two extended editions of the other two films that are both superior to the theatrical releases
I'm dissapointed.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a tiny list of vital stats. (that didn't seem to impress me somehow)
Blogzine.net [blogzine.net]
Fortress of Insanity [homeunix.org]
Or... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Will it really be good? (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one enjoyed TTT ALOT. Sure, there were deviations from the book, but they were necessary to keep the story going. You cannot make the movie 1:1 identical with the book.
Re:LOTR 3 = eye candy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Will it really be good? (Score:3, Insightful)
Book != film. Some things you can do in a book drop flaming turds on screen, and vice versa.
Re:LOTR Hype (Score:4, Insightful)
As a representative of the 95% of people who will see this movie that have not or will never read the books, who the hell are the Rangers of the North, what is the pass of the dead, and why are your firstly and secondly reasons that I will be dissapointed by this film?
Re:LOTR Hype (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know why people are so obsessed with it following the book perfectly. if you want what's in the book, then read the fucking book. I think the films are fantastic so far, but then I judge them by how much I enjoy watching them, not by how similar they are to something which has already existed for a very long time.
Re:LOTR Hype (Score:2, Insightful)
</sarcasm>
He's not rewriting the book. If you want your Rangers, you can pick up the damn book...I can assure you that they'll still be in there. I'll let you in on a little secret... Movies based on books generally serve as COMPANIONS to the books, not replacements.
It's one person's interpretation of the story. He's under no obligation to stay completely true to the books. The man has done an incredible job with cinematography and I've uttlerly enjoyed every second of the first two movies.
Re:LOTR 3 = eye candy (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, because an article is written about how something is made == whatever is made will obviously suck.
Lots of Raw film (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't remember the amounts but around the time #1 came out they talked about the fact that in a normal picture they shoot about twice or three times more material and then cut it down to what you see.
I LOTR they shot about ten times as much. That is for every minute of finished movie they've shot 10 minutes of film.
So sure there is a lot of CGI going on, but there is still plenty of old fashioned moviemaking involved.
But off course with gollum and a giant orc army (what 100.000 orcs?) they have to rely on CGI.
LOTR vs. Matrix Hype. (Score:4, Insightful)
The hype surronding the LOTR: ROTK is a different Hype than that of the Matrix. Everyone has read LOTR many times over and everyone knows that Peter Jackson just has to follow the storyline of the book and people will be generally happy. Your comparison to the Matrix hype was not a good one.
The Hype surrounding The Matrix was that of unknowing. The story was in a form that this was a first time for everyone. I have to admit I was one of the few that thourghly enjoyed all three episodes and admired them for there story and cinematics. For lord of the rings I already know the story is good, I am just here for the cinematics.
A plea to the moderators (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know how it's possible that they haven't yet learned this basic fact, as it's been discussed to complete death by everyone and their grandmother for the past 10-20 years.
Tolkein was not a holy saint. His work is not the Bible. In some places his story telling is actually subpar. Peter Jackson has(for the most part) done a truly excellent job of culling the important elements into a theatrical release that the public can enjoy. His idea of releasing a very different version on DVD for the book fans is sheer genius. He recognizes that you can't please everyone with one version. Why can't you? It's not a hard concept to grasp really.
And if you really have issues with the job Jackson has done, suggest someone else who would have done better. Peter is the perfect choice IMO, as he doesn't have the ego that big producers do, an ego that would have turned LOTR in "Spielberg's LOTR".
Re: earning it's hype (Score:5, Insightful)
Lord of the Rings is not like other books. The greatness of the book cannot be distilled into a simple plot of ring is found, ring journeys, ring is destroyed. The book is an epic tale with multiple plot lines, and MUST be taken in as an overall story. This book is the progenitor of the fantasy genre, and those of us who loved the book long before the movies were even on the drawing board recognize the overall importance of it in its entirety. If you consider getting the ring to Mordor to be the most important part of LotR, you just don't understand it at all.
Re: earning it's hype (Score:3, Insightful)
I dont have any problems with the scenes he left out... I have a real problem with the ones he put in that dont have anything to do with the original story.
We dont want Aragorn doubting if he wants to be king or not.
We dont want any more Dwarf-tossing jokes
We dont want Faramir to be cruel and aloof.
We dont want any 10 minute long dreamy sequences of Liv Tyler... wait a sec. we DO want those, but not in LOTR!
Re: earning it's hype (Score:5, Insightful)
And no, it doesn't have to be taken in as an overall story. You don't have to have it all in there verbatim. You want that? Go read the book again. It doesn't have to be transcribed scene for scene, word for word, for the *point* of the story to be made.
The greatness of the book is shown in the craftsmanship of the props and sets and everything else on the screen.
Re: earning it's hype (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, here you have this Ring, this totally evil, corrupting, terrible power, and you go to great lengths to make sure the audience knows about it and that even hobbits can't resist its effects forever (Bilbo). Then along comes this Man, Faramir, brother of corruptible Boromir, whose weakness led to his own death even. Faramir says "Nah, fuck it, I wouldn't even pick it up if it were lying there on the ground"
You've just killed the Ring's power. It's impotent now. Here's this guy who can just shrug it off. He's nothing special, was just introduced. Is *everyone else* in Middle Earth so pants-pissing weak then?
I submit that the Faramir of the book is the flawed character. Surely with all that willpower he would have been greater than he was. Interesting to imagine what might have happened if Faramir *had* been allowed to go to the meeting instead of Boromir, though.
But as for dwarf-tossing, I agree. Toss it. =)
Specs? (Score:2, Insightful)
Are these people temps or do they have full-time jobs? Must be a real challenge to find that many people with experience in this sort of thing. I imagine they do alot of training? Anyone know?
> Servers in renderwall: 1,600 Processors (total): 3,200
Anyone know what these are? Dual Xeons? Do they take advantage of fast graphics hardware to speed up the rendering?
> Processors added 10 weeks before movie wrapped: 1,000
Making for a total of 4,200? About 30% more capacity 10 weeks before the end. So they added 1000 processors just to save about 3 weeks!
> Temperature of equipment rooms: 76 degrees
Assuming farenheit, that actually seems high.
> Fahrenheit Weight of air conditioners needed to maintain that temperature: 1/2 ton
This seems low...
> STORAGE Near online: 72 terabytes
What would this be? Robot DVD archive or something?
> Digital backup tape: 0.5 petabyte (equal to 50,000 DVDs)
What kind of tapes are these? Last I checked, IDE-RAID was a better bargain than tapes and DVD archives.
> Number of f/x shots: 1,400
> Minimum number of frames per shot: 240
This is confusing -- so a minimum of 1,400x240 frames = 224 minutes of shots but the screen time of F/X shots is quoted as 120 minutes...
> Average time to render one frame: 2 hours
Is this on the whole farm? If so, that's 76 years. If that's on a single processor, then the farm should be able to render the whole movie in 160 hours -- and you hardly need such a big farm. Must be rendering a frame uses several processors?
In all, very confusing...!
-Bill
Re:Unless - LOTR - the Slashdot Edition (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: earning it's hype (Score:5, Insightful)
That said, I agree that even with that, he should have been more tempted by the Ring, except after the changes made in the movies with the breaking of the Fellowship. Within the original context of the books, even Aragorn would have been tempted by the Ring to the point that he would eventually succumb, which is why the Fellowship had to be broken in secret. But in the movies, he established that men of pure heart could resist the Ring (temporarily, at least), so the original characterization of Farmir could have stood as is.
Re: earning it's hype (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A plea to the moderators (Score:3, Insightful)
And you are willfully refusing to consider that TTT is the middle part of what is essentially a 14 hour movie. It cannot truly be separated from the other two films. It has no true beginning, no true end. It simply *cannot* stand on its own against single-part films. Especially when you front-load the opposition like that.
As for Tolkien - he was not God with a typewriter. He made mistakes, fewer than average for an amateur writer, but perfection eludes even the Lord of the Rings.
Re: earning it's hype (Score:5, Insightful)
I love the books, I love the movies. but they've GOT to be two different stories. It's just not possible to tell the same story in both print and on screen, because the mediums are so completely different. Imagine The Matrix (the first one, the good one...) as a book. How could you possibly convey the slack-jawed wonder you felt the first time you saw the fight scene with Morpheus and Neo in the dojo with the written word? If it had been a book first, there would have been a lot more pontificating about the nature of reality, and a lot less action, and then when they made the movie, we'd all be here on
That said, the parent poster is right, that the Extended Editions are MUCH better than the theatrical releases. I felt a little disappointed last year after watching The Two Towers in the theatre. Just a few days before, I'd seen the FotR:EE DVD, and TTT just didn't compare. It seemed light on the story and the character development. It was still a good movie, but it didn't seem to hold up to the first one. Flash forward to last week. I bought the Two Towers: EE, and I've already watched it twice. AMAZING. Now, I think it's superior to the first one.
So, that makes me worry a bit for the third movie. I'm sure I'm going to see it in the theatre, think, "it was pretty good," until I get the EE next year, at which time I'll love it. That is, of course, assuming Peter Jackson doesn't completely destroy the ending of the series. First, I'll say that I'm not bashing PJ. I think he's done an amazing job, and it's awfully easy for people to sit on their asses and criticize, but the labor of love that was the making of these films must have required a level of dedication and sacrifice few would understand. However, PJ, PLEASE don't change the end. I don't want a happy hollywood ending. The ending of the books was absolutely fantastic, and there's no reason to change it. Let the world be changed. The elves, the wizards, the ring-bearers, SHOULD go to the West, and leave everyone else behind. It's supposed to be bittersweet. It's supposed to make you realize that when something that horrific happens, things just can't go back to the way they were, and it's not a "there and back again" adventure like the Hobbit.
Oh, and Gimli shouldn't be the comic relief.
Re: earning it's hype (Score:3, Insightful)
Boromir - succumbed early on to the will of the Ring. Led him to his death. He did redeem himself in the end, but he's still dead.
Denethor - I forget exactly why he's a right bastard (need to read the book again, I guess), but he's got some serious personality issues of his own that his Numenorean heritage wasn't able to help him with.
Faramir - same lineage, same bloodline, flesh and blood of the above, but somehow he's a saint who can do no wrong and withstand any temptation?
Hmm. Perhaps he got all the good of his family. You may yet have a point. =) But I still say that it would have lessened the power and force of the Ring to just have this random guy (for those people who haven't read the book) shrug off its influence. Especially when they find out he's related to a pack of people who apparently *dont* have the ability to resist temptation.
Re:LOTR Hype (Score:3, Insightful)
Here ye, here ye! (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I don't have the bladder control for a fifteen hour movie. Yes, now you know the real reason for cutting the film to three hours (four for those in the comfort on their own homes). Bladder control. Simple really.
agreed [spoilers for the non-readers] (Score:3, Insightful)
By the time he returns up the river with the ships, flag of Gondor flying, he is the king. (goosebumps)
Re:earning it's hype (Score:4, Insightful)
Now there's a corker of an idea! One normal length movie coming out every 6 months for 10 years. Then they can cover the entire book, with nothing at all left out.
It's not so far fetched, how long have we had to wait to get 6 Star Wars movies? And I can remember my mum saying how she used to look forward to the next book coming out, back when Tolkien was first writing them, it's worth waiting for.
Go to it Pete!
Re:A plea to the moderators (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd bet a wagon full of Southfarthing tabac that Peter Jackson sees the DVD releases as the "real" movies.
It would be a TON of effort and a big financial risk (based on extra revenue generated just from the difference in versions) to make the DVD releases like they are "just to please the book fans". Those extra scenes are not just spliced in. It seems fairly obvious he planned the entire production around the DVDs. I think he WOULD have released those versions to theaters if he hadn't been contractually obligated to give them movies that were under 3 hours each. The theater release versions are to please the pocketbooks of the theaters, because they can show more than 3 showings a day. I don't believe for a second, after reading and listing to interviews and commentary, that the theater releases are what he considers the "real" movies, or that he released shorter cut down versions of his dream production just to please the uninitiated or the attention-span challenged. He did it because that was the only way the theaters where going to show it at all. He had no choice.
5 years from now, the "extended" DVDs will be all that counts in anyone's book.
Re: earning it's hype (Score:2, Insightful)
live up to the hype or not... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: earning it's hype (Score:3, Insightful)
Others in LoTR had no problem resisting the Ring. Bombadil. Aragorn. Elrond. Frodo only succumbed after carrying around for over a year under very difficult conditions.
It's just a matter of your quality.
Peter Jackson butchered Faramir and Fanghorn's character in the movie adaptation. Nonetheless, he did a far better job of it than anyone had a right to expect. Andy Serkis deserves an Oscar.
Re: earning it's hype (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the real power of the books comes from the completeness of the world Tolkien created, and Peter Jackson has brought that world to life perfectly. Sure, i've had some doubts about the parts of the book that have been excised, and I've questioned a few of the character decisions, but throughout it all I've felt the movies have captured the look and feel of the books with deadly accuracy. And for that Peter Jackson and his crew deserve heaps and heaps of praise.
-sam
Re: earning it's hype (Score:3, Insightful)
The main problem, I think, is that in a visual medium you have to be reminded physically of a threat as ephemeral as the Ring. In the book it's perfectly workable to say that the Ring is an evil influence and leave it at that; in a series of three-hour films, a general audience is going to need some kind of reminder that it's there. The Ring itself, the centerpiece of the movies, barely appears in Two Towers as it is.
I think also it ties into the Ring growing more powerful as it grows closer to Mordor, and also getting more desperate to find someone whom it CAN tempt. Galadriel's little spiel near the middle of the movie sets this up, and I think the conflict with Faramir pays it off.
Re: earning it's hype (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, and there's no such thing as giant talking tree people, evil magic rings or orcs. What's your point?