The Making of a Movie…

ECOMP 6016 - Assignment #5A: Watch a "Making Of…" special feature on a commercial, television show, or movie and write a reflection about what you learned about the movie-making process.

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When the Lord of the Rings came out on DVD, I had to buy them. J.R.R. Tolkien (author) is an unbelievable storyteller and Peter Jackson (director) did a great job of transferring the book to the big screen. However, when the “extended” versions of the movies came out I had to buy them as well with a need greater than before because they included so many clips and extras about HOW they did, well, everything. In fact, there was so much to the “Making Of…” that they had to divide it up into sections such as locations, costumes, special affects, miniatures, props, the editing room and more.

One section of the “Making Of…” dealt with how they chose the locations for filming the scenes in the movie and then what they had to do to transform that location into a place from Middle Earth. For example, when they found the mesa that would become Edoras the government informed them that they would have to restore the location to exactly the way it was before they arrived. So, we got to see the green houses they built to keep the local flora and fauna that they removed alive while they filmed and would then replant afterward. In the section about costumes, one of the actors commented that, while he was putting on his armor costume he noticed that the artist had carefully chiseled a beautiful crest into the inside of the chest plate. Now, the camera would never see this attention to detail, only the actor. This realization made him feel special and used it as a vehicle to get into his character before filming.

When you watch the “Making Of…” section about how the movie was edited together, you get to see what footage the director is willing to part with and what he simply can’t live without. It taught me that directors often go back to film additional scenes or “pick-ups” to help fill in missing pieces or better connect two scenes together. And, being a techie, I now make a point to try and determine what type of computer the team used as well as the computer software they used to edit the film.