Take Me Somewhere Tropical

Registeel: 01000011 01100001 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01101100 01100001 01101001 01101110 00101110 00100000 01010100 01101111 01101111 01101011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101011 01101001 01100100 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01110000 01100001 01110010 01101011 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100111 01101111 01110100 00100000 01101001 01100011 01100101 00100000 01100011 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101101 00100000 01100001 01100110 01110100 01100101 01110010

In Memory of Naya Rivera

Recent events.

LOTR’s special effects are stylized in a very careful, deliberate, and beautiful way.

In a behind-the-scenes video,  the films’ visual effects supervisor explained:

We wanted the look of the film to have this storybook look to it. This is one of the things that Peter Jackson would impress upon the post-grader. He would literally sit there with watercolor (paintings) and say: THIS is what I want it to look like.”

Compare Alan Lee’s watercolor painting (its texture, its limited and unreal color palette, and the careful use of bright highlights in specific places that “frame” the characters/create an interesting composition)–

To the very similar look of the final film:

Because the goal wasn’t to create a perfectly realistic version of Moria. It was to create a version of Moria that looked like a watercolor painting. 

And this “watercolor painting” effect isn’t just epic fantasy moments either. Even many of the non-fantastical backgrounds in Lord of the Rings don’t look “fully realistic.” They look very high-contrast and painterly, with dramatic unreal shafts of light bursting through the clouds:

And again, this is by design:

“We wanted to nudge it sideways from reality. New Zealand is a lovely country but it’s still New Zealand, still a real country….and I wanted to nudge it slightly to Middle Earth, which is an ancient world….a world of myth, and legend.”

And the watercolor storybook-inspired colors and lighting isn’t just in the environments either. It was also used in very basic dialogue scenes, to make you really feel like the entire movie was taking place in a fantasy world:

I’d also add that yes, they pushed the look of the whole film into “unreal” territory, but they also were very selective and deliberate about where they used CG versus practical effects. Or practical everything, really. In every single possible instance that something could be shot using real elements, it is. The costumes and sets and props are nearly all real, the forced perspective shots are real. As often as possible hobbit actors are just on their knees or the other actors are on appleboxes or replaced with larger/smaller actors from behind instead of being digitally shrunken down or up. The sets were largely built by hand or on location, and the only greenscreen factors in once you get to the far distance. They built the frickin chainmail by hand, even. 

Which is the OTHER reason that it holds up. Your eye knowns when you’re looking at a real thing, even if your brain can’t quite articulate why. 

Which is why an image like this:

Or this: 

Or this:

Which are all effects shots! Feel more real than this:

Or this: 

Or this:

(This is honestly the main reason why I had trouble watching MCU films for so many years. It just don’t look real, guys. I can’t think of anything but how you’re shooting this in a studio somewhere.) 

Marvel and LotR are using the same tools, including set extensions, CG, color grading, all of it, but Marvel tends to use CG and greenscreen on almost every element. LotR is real in every possible way that it can be. 

Marvel films are stylized and made to look unreal just like LotR - but they also largely ARE unreal. LotR is mostly real but faked, and there’s a big difference between those things. 

Like this image: 

The boats, the water, the cliffs, the actors are real. And the statues were real too - just small models, probably smaller than a person, shot separately in similar lighting, then comped onto this shot to look thousands of times larger than they actually are. Then the whole image is graded and blended together so that the colors are seamless, the cliff edges are extended so that you can’t see the edges, add a little digital mist in the far background there to really sell it - and boom. Feels real.

Your gut knows when something is real - which is why it holds up when you rewatch it. No matter how advanced CG gets, and it’s pretty damn advanced at this point, it’s still little pixels on a screen. But real chainmail on a real person standing in a real forest with a little CG far in the back? Two actors of roughly the same size looking like they’re two different sizes just because of where they’re sitting? It feels real because it mostly is. 

It’s not just color grading and blending, it’s knowing when and where and how to use things, and then actually taking the time (and the expense) to do it right even when most people won’t be able to tell - or, in a lot of cases, even care.

This is an amazing addition!!!

Yeah the reason LOTR’s visuals have held up so well is the combination of careful stylization AND using practical effects whenever possible.

As a result, the things that look unrealistic, look unrealistic on purpose. It’s wasn’t “the visual effects artists weren’t given enough time to finish the shots” (which was actually the case for Black Panther)  it was “they were deliberately and carefully trying to get that very specific storybook-illustration effect.”

For context here is a picture

I lived in Alaska for two years and I will never get over the sheer overwhelming bigness of it. 

Nights where the sky is clear you can see clusters of stars or the Northern Lights dancing. When the lights are rippling especially strong and fast you can hear a static crackle in the air. When the moon is out after it’s snowed, you don’t need flashlights to see. Everything glows and glimmers like polished quartz.  

But when the sky is clouded over so you can’t see the stars, you can kind of almost sense the mountains towering over you and helping to block out the light, these giant monoliths acting like this void darker than your soul. I’ve never experience night like Alaska night. 

Everything is big, the mountains, the sky, the valleys. 

“A New Call to Service” opens a pathway for young people to meaningfully engage in their communities and in communities around the world, and focuses on key challenges of our time: resilience and sustainability against climate disruption; addiction, mental health, and substance use; and long-term caregiving and intergenerational mentorship.” 

https://peteforamerica.com/policies/a-new-call-to-service/