Scene

Script with scene shots

Monday: The Journey Begins

PRODUCTION

0:25

[Gasps and heavy breathing echo in the darkness.]

Gandalf: "We now have but one choice."

[Light appears from Gandalf's staff, showing the startled and frightened faces of the Fellowship.]

Gandalf: "We must face the long dark of Moria. Be on your guard."

Gandalf: "There are older and fouler things than Orcs,..."

Gandalf: "...in the deep places of the world."

Director-CoWriter-Producer Peter Jackson: Yeah, I mean I love the idea that they decide [Boyen: Yeah.] they don’t want to go through the Mine when they see how nightmarish it is, and then they have no choice: they get entombed in there. [Boyen: Yeah.] They have no choice at all but to have to walk through the Mine. And I love the idea it’s a four day journey, that they’re walking under the Mountain. It’s just such a great, evocative sequence; it’s probably, you know, the best sequence in the book, really. It’s…

Cowriter Philippa Boyen: Mmm. I love Moria.

Jackson: It’s something that everybody remembers from the book, so [Walsh: Yes.] [Boyen agrees] it, sort of, naturally became one of the major set pieces in the film.

Cowriter-Producer Fran Walsh: I think it’s one of the most well-written chapters of the book.

Boyen: Yes, I agree.

Walsh: It’s beautifully written. And musically,

Character Effects Designer Richard Taylor:  . [continued from previous scene of the Watcher] ... feeling that there was great intelligence underneath the eyes, that they had these saggy, weeping bags, as if they were the eyebags under the eyes of an elderly man. The mouth we designed to feel like some bizarre sphincter. The best way that I could demonstrate it to the guys in the Workshop was to hold my hands together with the back of my hands touching,

Visual Effects Supervisor Jim Rygiel: [continued from previous scene of the Watcher] . . . playing with sticking random imaginary splashes just flying in from off camera, and when you look at it there will be a splash that comes from behind camera where there’s nothing even splashing. But what happens is it instantly kind of gave you that excitement build-up, that you’re missing without it. And, and so it was that little bit of extra splash elements that was needed, and that instantly kind of sold the whole thing.

Weta Animation Designer and Supervisor Randall William Cook: And poor Sean and Viggo were out there and that was not, that was not a heated tank,

0:05

Gandalf: "Quietly now. It's a four-day journey to the other side. Let us hope ...."

Howard [Boyen sighs] took his cue from…

Boyen: Yes.

Walsh: …from the Dwarves and utilising

and then by rolling my hands out, forcing the fingers to splay,

that was near-freezing water.

Rygiel: Mmm.

Scene

Script with scene shots

Tuesday: A Walk through the caverns

PRODUCTION

0:20

[Time passes. The Fellowship enters a great cavern. Music starts.]

Gandalf: "... that our presence may go unnoticed."

[Camera pulls back to reveal winding path amidst crazy stone formations.]

Dwarves sing: "Durin Ku Binamrad" (Durin who is deathless)

a male choir to…

Boyen: That was Peter, actually.

Walsh: …take us through Moria.

Boyen: What happened, I remember, we were having lunch at your place, and you were talking… You and Howard, Walsh, were talking about the choral… the concept of choral music, especially in this place. I think you’d found some

would give the feeling of the mouth, as if this huge sphincter was opening, and here was these big gnashing teeth.

Miniatures Cinematographer Alex Funke: We call this shot the “new chamber”. Blue screen characters – we’re pulling out from them and through this amazingly complicated miniature setup where we had to close the set in around the camera as it pulled back to we had the feeling that we were just really dodging the rocks as we went along. The whole idea of this was to establish the fact that this place is huge,

0:04

[Closeup on Frodo]

Dwarves: "Durin..." (Durin...)

great stuff from the temp track that you’d used

who’s at the back . . .

and that the dwarves had worked

0:05

[company passing]

Dwarves: "...Ku Binamrad" (...who is deathless)

and Howard had really enjoyed it; and Pete, you were talking about some of the

and he has a fiery torch, and

it for thousands and thousands of years . . . all by hand.

0:15

[foreground with bridge in background]

Dwarves: "Ugmal Sulu Addad..." (Eldest of all fathers...)

[Gandalf starts up stairs]

Dwarves: "...Ku Ba" (...who awoke)

women vocalists that were around and things like this; and I said that all the Dwarves were male, and that’s when your eyes lit up and said, “A male choir!”. You were thinking of the great Welsh mining choirs and that… It took off from there, and then, of course, Howard managed to find an incredible Polynesian choir here in New Zealand.

we eventually rationalized that he would have picked up one of the, um, dwarven . . . fiery torches and lit it with his flint, or whatever he carried in his pocket. It’s just that whole “how do you light the front and the back; how do you get enough light into these caves

I love this shot. This is a full size foreground in front of a miniature background. Glad that got back in. Again, that was a fun one to do, because basically we said “let’s see how much of a set we can build back behind this thing” and so it goes back and back and back.

Scene

Script with scene shots

Wednesday: The Mithril Mines

PRODUCTION

0:05

[side shot along the face of the mining works.]

Dwarves: "Abad..." (to darkness beneath the mountain)

to actually see the actors," you know? So, ah, I think at some stage you discover

0:15

[Gandalf rests his hand upon a rock with a dark, silver veins running through it.]

Gandalf: "The wealth of Moria was not in gold... or jewels..."

Dwarves: "...Ku Ganaga" (...Who walked alone)

[The wizard tilts his staff down towards a pit.]

Gandalf: "...but Mithril."

revealing more information about the mithril vest which Bilbo gave Frodo, and we felt that the mithril vest had been established well enough back in the Rivendell bedroom scene, and we didn’t really need to dwell more on it, which is why this was trimmed out;

that BBoromir is walking along with a  torch in his hand.

we basically made a decision that because we’re entering a civilization that was dead, we would visually interpret that as saying that we are sucking the life out of the colour palette of the film . . . which we

0:04

[Boromir.]

Dwarves: "Tur Ganad" (Through halls)

Bilbo at Rivendell.

But mithril is the

0:04

[Aragorn.]

precious metal that the dwarves carved

0:08

[A vast rock wall drops into the depths below. Row upon row of ladders and scaffolding, old and disused, disappear into the mining shafts below.]

Dwarves: "Abanul..." (of stone)

out of the inside of the Misty Mountains and, um, the Mine itself is this vast

0:04

[Merry leans forward slightly to look closer. Pippin puts a warning hand in front of him.]

chasm that we don’t see

fairly monochromatic would virtually

0:03

[Frodo stares down until the light fades.]

the bottom or top of,

go completely black and white, and

0:04

Gandalf: "Bilbo had a shirt of Mithril rings that ..."

Dwarves: "Durin..." (Durin...)

or even the other side of,

in many images the only thing that was left was either – we

0:03

[Gandalf closeup.]

Gandalf: "...Thorin gave him."

it’s so huge.

just had a very subtle green

0:03

Gimli: "Oh, that was a kingly gift."

Dwarves: "...Ku bin..." (...who is...)

We came up

cast in some of the shadows,

0:03

[Frodo closeup.]

Gandalf: "Yes! I never told him,..."

with the various cemetery ideas, you know just as walk-throughs,

and the flesh tones were very weak

0:05

Gandalf: "...but its worth was greater than the value of the Shire."

Dwarves: "...Amrad" (...Deathless)

that, um, some of them had watercourses in them, and some

but they were still there, and the flaming torch – were actually the only things that were

0:04

[Frodo looks surprised.]

some of them were, were quite monumental and, and carved

providing any colour reference at all.

Scene

Script with scene shots

Thursday: Cemetery and Crossroads

PRODUCTION

0:06

[They then climb up steep steps on the side of a cavern.]

Dwarves: "Ku Ba..." (Who cleaved...)

out of the rock and things and ah, Peter himself came up with this idea. One morning he came sort of bursting

Weta VFX Cinematographer Brian Van’t Hul: These stair shots . . . the miniatures were shot first, and then later, when they shot the live action, and when they

0:04

[ Frodo climbing.]

Dwarves: "...Kana..." (...The Darkness...)

in, he said, “I’ve thought of what we’re gonna do for the cemetery

0:04

[ Pippin loses his footing and slips onto Merry.]

Merry: "Pippin!"

Dwarves: "...A Na..." (...Lord of...)

stairs. I wanna have these stairs that are precipitously steep

0:03

and so it’s almost like

0:12

[Gandalf climbs another flight of stairs to a crossroads in the mine: three doorways loom before him.]

Dwarves: "Un Du Abad Un Du Abad" (This is your light! This is your light!)

The fork in the road, the three-way crossroads, is in the book, and

you’ve gotta crawl on your hands and knees to get up this set of stairs.” So the stairs would be more vertical than they would normally be

0:12

[Gandalf glances from one to the other and back.]

Gandalf: "I have no memory of this place."

Dwarves: "Ku Gan Ahga Aznan" (The Dwarrowdelf of Khazad-dum!)

I always liked that idea that Gandalf kind of forgets. We wanted to play Gandalf as being… human, really.

Walsh: Fallible.

Jackson: Yeah, to be fallible: that he wasn’t just a wizard that knew what to

and then the mausoleums would be set on either side of it so, um . . .  Of course dwarves are of a smaller scale to humans, or to

Funke: This is a good example of “cinematic dark” because obviously there’s really not supposed to be any light in here. How do you light something that’s, that’s supposed to be in the darkness

0:03

[The Fellowship rests. Aragorn sits beside Boromir.]

Aragorn: "Hmm."

Men if you like, so we

0:12

[Camera pans down from Gandalf thinking to Company resting and waiting.]

Pippin: "Are we lost?"

Merry: "No."

Pippin: "I think we are."

Sam: "Shh! Gandalf's thinking."

Pippin: "Merry?"

Merry: "What?"

Pippin: "I'm hungry."

had scaled down a lot of the stairs anyway. And, ah, we were faced with building these stairs that were not only incredibly steep

Scene

Script with scene shots

Friday: Frodo, Gandalf and Gollum

PRODUCTION

0:05

[Frodo looks down into the cavern.]

but were also quite shallow in terms of where you put your feet, and, ah,

0:05

[and sees a small figure leaping from stone to stone.]

0:03

[Frodo; shot pulls back.]

0:03

[Frodo approaches Gandalf.]

0:15

Frodo: "There's something down there!"

Gandalf (without surprise): "It's Gollum."

Frodo: "Gollum?"

Gandalf: "He's been following us for three days."

Frodo: "He escaped the dungeons of Barad-Dûr!"

Gandalf: "Escaped?"

0:03

Gandalf: "Or was set loose?"

uh, people who’ve just seen Film One.

Cook: This is one of

0:03

Gandalf: "And now the Ring..."

0:12

[Dark and dirty fingers clasp a stone implement.]

Gandalf: "...has drawn him here."

[From the distance below, Gollum looks up, his large eyes piercing the darkness.]

Gandalf: "He will never be rid of his need for it. He hates and loves the Ring, as he hates..."

these . . . ah . . . this sequence which we’re looking at now, the three doorways, was, um, one of the sets that we worked on quite early on, because it is very very well described in the book.

only that this character had to be scrutinized very closely. This was one of the few shots I got to animate in the film personally. You know, animate through shading, lighting, everything.

Rygiel: Steve Demarest and Darren Bedwell did the shaders and the textures on this and did a great job.

0:06

Gandalf: "...and loves himself. Sméagol's life is a sad story. "

We kept going for the eyes. I mean, you look at the eyes on this thing, it’s just, they’re incredible, they just have exactly

0:07

[Gandalf left profile.]

Gandalf: "Yes, Sméagol he was once called. Before the Ring found him..."

this, the, what you expect to see, and—

Cook: And you couldn’t get that retinal reflection from a puppet  [Rygiel: No] or a real

0:04

Gandalf: "...before it drove him mad."

thing.  [Rygiel: No.] It really is, you know one

0:04

Frodo: "It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill him when he had the chance!"

of the things that CG does beautifully which is y’know  . . .  mimic.

Rygiel: And what we

0:02

have to do

0:02

Gandalf: [glancing sharply at Frodo] "Pity?"

beautifully for Film 2,

0:02

Concept Artist John Howe: And there is this slow apprenticeship of Frodo Baggins as he learns things that are

where Gollum appears

0:04

Gandalf: "It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand."

everywhere. [laughs]

Cook: Yeah.

44.

0:06

Gandalf: "Many that live deserve death, and some that die deserve life."

0:03

Gandalf: "Can you give it to them, Frodo?"

0:02

0:06

Gandalf: "...to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise can not see all ends."

is really the heart of the book.

Walsh: It does, yeah.

have to do with relationships, with Frodo and Gandalf, where they sit and Frodo’s . . .

0:07

Gandalf: "My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill..."

Boyen: In ‘The Shadow of the Past’ chapter.

Walsh: It’s –.

quite uncertain about taking the Ring, and . . . he looks for Gandalf for wisdom, and you hear elements

0:05

[Gollum pulls back into the darkness, wrinkling his nose.]

Gollum: "Gollum."

Gandalf: "...before this is over."

[Gollum slinks off.]

0:05

Gandalf: "The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many."

what Gandalf’s saying to Frodo is so

0:03

[Gandalf pauses.]

utterly important, because this is where you’re getting

0:08

[Frodo sits down next to Gandalf.]

Frodo: "I wish the Ring had never come to me."

Frodo: "I wish none of this had happened."

a sense that he knows that he is not going to be around [Walsh: Yes.] for this boy…

Walsh: Yeah.

Boyen: …and not going to be around to help him.

Walsh: Yes. And there –.

Boyen: And I think Ian played that beautifully.

Walsh: There are two great messages that come through in this scene. [Boyen: Yes.]

The first one is:

you see right into his brain almost. Certainly it turns him into an almost sort of nocturnal creature,

of the task that he’s on, and whether he’s even capable of doing it. By using Quenya and Sindarin and Dwarvish in Moria, particularly helped me the accuracy of the cultures

0:05

Gandalf: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide."

“Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement”… [Boyen: Yes.]

cave dweller.

because you wanted to feel that you were in those worlds, not that you were absorbing them but that you were actually

0:03

0:03

Gandalf: "...is what to do with the time that is given to us."

the spirit of the book. It’s forgiveness, and through forgiveness

Peter would say when they looked down into the depths of Moria,

0:04

Gandalf: "There are other forces at work in this world,..."

0:02

Gandalf: "...Frodo, besides the will of evil. "

Boyen: And also that –.

Walsh: …notion.

Boyen: And that

0:02

Gandalf: "Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, ..."

0:03

Gandalf: "...in which case you also were meant..."

0:03

0:03

0:02

Scene

Script with scene shots

Saturday: The Dwarrowdelf

PRODUCTION

0:02

Gandalf: [looks towards one of the doorways] "Oh!"

0:02

0:02

Gandalf: "It's that way."

0:02

[Company by torch]

0:02

Merry: "He's remembered!"

0:12

[The Fellowship starts down a dark stairway. Gandalf puts on his hat.]

Gandalf: "No, but the air doesn't smell so foul down here."

[The wizard rests a hand on Merry's shoulder.]

Gandalf: "If in doubt, Meriadoc, always follow your nose."

Boyen: That is the essence of the book.

Walsh: Well it… Well that’s about free will [Boyen: Yes.], which again, plays directly to the powerful things that underlie the story, which really informed Tolkien’s, you know,  

Alex Funke’s miniature shooting stage. It was fantastic to go into rushes in the first few days and start to appreciate how massive the world of  Middle-earth would feel. We, ah, we did build some fairly

create the world that the Fellowship would go to.

Rygiel: This is the introduction to the Dwarrowdelf chamber, which was completely computer-generated, just because of the massiveness that we needed to achieve in this, and the different camera, flying  

0:07

[The Fellowship comes to a more open space. Broken columns lie tumbled across the floor.

view of life.

Boyen: [in agreement] Mmm…

Walsh: His Catholic faith.

Boyen: Mmm.

extensive miniatures for Moria that aren’t seen in their full extent in the film, but I do love the way that Peter’s

cameras through these columns. It would have been difficult to shoot miniatures and have the cameras fly all these levels through as if they’re being chased by all these orcs.

Gandalf and the group are

0:06

[Gandalf lifts his staff.]

Gandalf: "Let me risk a little more light."

cut together the scenes with the miniatures that he chose to use. We had originally intended building

shot against blue screen. But then when we get into the chamber and we get to the wide shots, everything is digital including the Fellowship. So

0:03

[His staff illuminates a giant stone hall with tall pillars and arched ceilings. Gimli gasps.]

0:07

[Merry sees chamber. Pan to chamber.]

Gandalf: "Behold: the great realm and Dwarf city of Dwarrowdelf."

wonderful watercolour painting of these huge towering columns that seemed to go on and on forever, with this tiny little group of people walking

a miniature, but, ah, what became apparent was because of the feeling that it went to infinity

miniature we had to match the detail that they were putting into the miniatures and the live-action set. We actually had Andrew Lesnie the cinematographer helping us with the lighting, and we were discussing with him,

0:03

Sam: "Now there's an eye opener and no mistake."

at their base; and we looked at that painting

in almost every direction, the miniature was going to either need

how would you light this thing if you were, you actually had all the

0:02

[Boromir reacts.]

0:06

[The Fellowship walks forward through the hall]

we ever met Alan Lee, and we always took huge inspiration from the visual look of Moria. And then – that’s the image there – and then, much later, for my

be on such a massive scale it would have made it infeasible. So to that end it was decided that it would be controlled as a digital

chamber? And so he was very helpful in getting that lit and the idea was to get it to blend into the live action which I think it did very well.

Shore: I wrote a theme for

0:05

[Walking along the floor.]

birthday [Boyen laughs] Walsh gave me a present, and I opened it up and it was the original painting that she’d got. She’d persuaded Alan to part with it [laughs]

environment instead, and I believe worked very beautifully in the end.

Major: There’s also an issue with the source of lighting...

Dwarrowdelf, the ancient dwarves’ ruined city of Moria. I played that for Peter and Fran. And they liked that, it seemed

Continued over next scene:

and because we’re inside the Dwarrowdelf chamber