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Lord of the RingsIn creating The Lord of the Rings epic film trilogy, director Peter Jackson and his cohorts have been able to take a popular book series with a large cult following, and turn it into a huge, mainstream box office success, showered in critical accolades, amassing a total of 17 Academy Awards®. Produced with a production budget of $270 million, total revenue for the trilogy will likely top $4 billion. Successfully adapting a successful book series may not sound like that large of an accomplishment, but consider how rarely that feat has been accomplished. Add to that the subject matter, which is both unconvential for box office blockbusters and expensive to bring to the screen. In fact, when they first decided to take on the Lord of the Rings project, they had trouble convincing a studio to commit to the project as two features. Fortunately, New Line Cinema had the foresight to see both overall potential of the Lord of the Rings, and the need to tell the story in three parts, not two. As it is, the Lord of the Rings trilogy reached theatres as an epic of over 9 hours and 17 minutes combined. The Extended Edition DVDs, which restore a great deal of the story that was removed to accommodate the constraints of a moviegoing audience, weigh in at a whopping 11 hours and 12 minutes combined. Watching the documentaries about the making of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, one gets the impression that in many ways the Special Extended Editions of each film are very much the true vision of Peter Jackson and his associates, not just a theatrical release that has been padded a little with some incidental footage to sell a few extra copies. Scenes that help viewers understand the flow of the story are sometimes exclusive to the Extended Editions. Perhaps these Special Extended Editions of the Lord of the Rings are a reflection of the overall trend of the motion picture industry, away from the collective experience of the cinema, towards the privacy and seclusion of the Home Theatre. Never before were so many resources put into an edition of a film that was solely intended to be seen at home. Actors were brought back so that new scenes could be shot, new visual effects were created, additional score were composed and recorded. From the start of production to the wrap up of the Special Extended Edition of The Return of the King, the Lord of the Rings project has required over five years of those most closely involved. Early on, the decision was made to shoot all three films at once. This would save money by getting a single commitment from the talent involved, rather than having to renegotiate between installments, and would allow them to re-use sets and props to a much greater extent. Peter Jackson was the first person ever to direct three films simultaneously. Initial photography for all three films was completed in one massive 274-day shoot. The Lord of the Rings trilogy also broke new ground by being the first to introduce a fully computer-generated character to capture the public's imagination. The Gollum character that is central to The Two Towers and The Return of the King, though closely modelled on the in-camera performance of Andy Serkis, appears in the final footage as a completely digital character. This in itself is not new, but the Gollum character achieved a level of popularity that had not been seen before in digital characters. In many ways, The Lord of the Rings movies may herald a new era in film making. And whether or not the innovations that made it successful become Hollywood standard practice, this trilogy seems destined to be the standard by which epics are judged for a long time to come. LinksOfficial Site of the Lord of the RingsMerchandise for the Lord of the Rings
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