[TheHutt]

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You have the sensation you're looking
1 00s and 1 00s of feet into the air.

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Now with Orthanc, we wanted to capture
the original painting of Alan Lee.

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He illustrated very much the feeling
that this was a tower...

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...that had been chipped
out of black obsidian.

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The way we captured
the look of black obsidian...

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...was by carving it
out of microcrystalline wax.

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We carved every element,
then assembled it...

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...using hot waxes to melt
all the elements together.

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And then we took a massive silicon
mold, a huge matrix mold...

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...of this whole structure and then
replicated it in encapsulating resin.

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lt's designed so that you can
come up to it really close.

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Now, we get into
hyperdetailing here.

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We were gonna do a shot of the stairs
with Christopher Lee walking down it.

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Every step was carved
with great precision...

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...and every little edge
was sharpened...

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...so when we get in that microscopic
magnification, it would still stand up.

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My old friend.

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Sweeping in on Orthanc
with Gandalf on the tower...

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...that lasts over a minute long,
which is another special effects rule:

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Keep the shot short so people
don't know that they're fake.

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Our miniatures were so big and
impressive that they stood up...

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...to a minute-long shot,
no problem.

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lt's built at 35th scale to sit in
amongst this huge miniature we built...

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...the size of a rugby field.

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The Ring of lsengard was 60 feet
in diameter. lt's 35th scale.

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lf you multiply that,
it's almost a mile in diameter.

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So it's representing something
that's absolutely enormous.

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The Ring and the tower are miniatures
and the sky is a matte painting.

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That's one of our classic hybrid
shots where it reads. You say:

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''Wow! Look at that!''
But it's built out of pieces.

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You put things together
to make it work.

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Twenty-four mineshafts were built
into the surface of the miniature.

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There was over 1 000 pieces of
individually modeled architecture...

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...that made up the componentry...

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...of the mine workings
throughout this miniature.

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They were just urethane pits
we had carved out of this foam...

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...and put stuff in there.
Then it's come to life.

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lt's moving and it's smoking
and it's seething with life.

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That was brilliant.

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The crow-hole shot, where the
crows come and report to Saruman...

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...we needed a hole for them
to dive into...

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...a first cavern for them
to fly through...

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...a second cavern
and another cavern...

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...which would be the live-action plate
at the end.

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So this is one continuous shot,
shot in five separate pieces.

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We had a week and a half.

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But it was a treat. lt's very exciting,
and Peter just said:

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''Make it cool. Make it look like an
ant farm.'' That's what we did.

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John Howe's illustration strongly
inspired the Argonaths.

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He played a great part in the art
direction of these characters.

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lt's funny standing amongst them.

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Since you're not at the eye height
of the Hobbits in the boats...

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...it looks very miniature-like.

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But when it's lit by Alex Funke
and his team on the miniatures stage...

154
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...and the correct digital
surroundings...

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...tall Grandia sitting amongst the falls,
the sky and landscape placed in...

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...a miniature like this
can come to life.

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l love the Argonaths.
They were at 1 /60 scale.

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They stand about eight feet tall...

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...and they were sculpted out of
urethane foam, which is a rigid foam.

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There you are. lnstant aging.

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This is a top-secret process,
developed over a million years...

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...by cavemen and model-makers alike.

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l won't knock that front piece off--
l need to think about that.

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l've got to knock a piece off the nose,
and l know the wrong bit will fall off.

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l'm gonna make Alan Lee
knock the piece off the nose.

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The trick with a scale model is not
to overdo it. You've got to be subtle.

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You can't go whacking into things
and getting too carried away.

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The concept behind them is that they're
carved out of the river's cliff faces.

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But we theorize that probably there
wasn't the necessary rock...

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...to carve the whole figure.

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So, what we're saying is that they were
able to carve to about this level...

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...but then had to construct
this massive quarry to mine the rock...

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...lifting with massive lifting
equipment up onto the upper surfaces...

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...of these huge, 300-foot tall
sculptures...

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...to place in place these huge granite
blocks into which they could carve...

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...and create the final look
of the characters.

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How they did it? l don't know.
Would've been great scaffolding.

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lt would've been great
to do a retro model...

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...to show the construction
of the Argonaths.

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l think it would eclipse the pyramids.
But anyway....

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We had to think it through and make
it look like that's what they did.

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We had Alan Lee drawings.
They were fantastic.

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There were lots of sketches
showing different areas of it.

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lt was like a city that had fallen
down into the volcanic pit.

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This miniature particularly was
very complex and very large to build.

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lt came apart in eight or nine pieces
so we could get them out...

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...and down the road
to the shooting stage.

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The camera had to be able to film
within two inches of the surface.

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So therefore, the whole miniature had
to be done at macrodetail.

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The Khazad-dûm stair scene
where they run...

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...and have to jump over the hole
in the stairs...

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...they are miniature environments
that l use shot after shot after shot.

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lt's a three-minute section that is
filmed continuously inside this model.

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Virtually no set was built.
There's a tiny piece...

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...for a few close-ups.

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The rest was shot against blue screens
using the miniature as the background.

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Here we are in the great hall of Moria,
one of the Dwarves' strongholds.

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lt lies between the stairs of Khazad-dûm
and the bridge of Khazad-dûm.

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Come on!