Actors - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

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	Actors - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is a film, released on December 19, 2001, directed by Peter Jackson, with a runtime of 178 minutes. It is the opening installment of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, and relates the adventures of the Fellowship of the Ring that are contained in the similarly titled first volume of J. R. R. Tolkien's epic literary fantasy, The Lord of the Rings
. The screenplay was written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson. It was filmed in New Zealand simultaneously with its two sequels, having a combined budget of U.S. $270 million. Principal photography took 15 months and post-production continued for a year afterwards.

Cast

Synopsis

Sauron, the Lord of the Rings, has awakened and threatens to conquer Middle-earth. To stop this ancient evil once and for all, Frodo Baggins must destroy Sauron's One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom. Men, hobbits, a wizard, an elf and a dwarf form a fellowship to help him on his quest.

He travels from his home in the Shire with Sam, Merry and Pippin to Bree where they meet Aragorn. Pursued by Black Riders, they must get to Rivendell where they decide to take the ring to Mordor, and where they are joined by Gandalf, Gimli, Legolas and Boromir. They try to cross the mountains but are defeated because of Saruman's magic and travel underneath, through the mines of Moria, where Gandalf falls into a chasm while fighting a Balrog. They then travel to the country of the elves in Lothlorien, and down the Great River on boats, where the company splits during an attack by uruk-hai. Boromir is killed, and Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas split off to track the uruk-hai who have captured Merry and Pippin. Frodo and Sam head east in the direction of Mordor.

Special effects

The Fellowship of the Ring makes extensive use of digital, practical and make-up special effects throughout. One noticeable illusion that appears in almost every scene involves setting a proper scale so that the characters are all the correct height. Elijah Wood, who plays Frodo, is 5ft 6in (1.68 m) tall in real life, but the character of Frodo Baggins is barely four feet in height. Many different tricks were used to depict the hobbits (and Gimli the Dwarf) as being of diminutive stature. (As a matter of good fortune, John-Rhys Davies — who played Gimli — is as tall compared to the hobbit actors as his character needed to be compared to theirs, so he did not need to be filmed separately as a third variation of height.) Large and small scale doubles were used in certain scenes, while entire duplicates of certain sets (including Bag End in Hobbiton) were built at two different scales, so that the characters would appear to be the appropriate size. At one point in the film, Frodo runs along a corridor in Bag End, followed by Gandalf. Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen were filmed in separate versions of the same corridor, built at two different scales, and a fast camera pan conceals the edit between the two. Forced perspective was also employed, so that it would look as though the short hobbits were interacting with taller Men and Elves. Surprising the makers of the film, the simple ruse of kneeling down was used to great effect.

For the battle between the Last Alliance and the forces of Sauron that begins the film, an elaborate CGI animation system, called Massive, was developed by Stephen Regelous that would allow thousands of individual animated "characters" in the program to act independently. This helped give the illusion of realism to the battle sequences.

Filming locations

A list of filming locations, sorted by appearance order in the movie:

Deviations from the source material

A small but vocal minority of admirers of the original book raised some concerns when the film was released, complaining that the movie's screenplay made a number of changes to Tolkien's work. Many of these protests seemed to be rather minor concerns and were largely ignored by general movie-going audiences. However, more than a few people expressed surprise when the movie diverged from the book in what might be considered more fundamental ways.

The final scene is actually taken from the first chapter of the second volume, The Two Towers.

Bilbo's birthday party was actually a combined birthday party for himself and Frodo (who was 33) since they share the same birthday. The (controversial) number of guests invited to the party (144) was determined by adding their ages together.

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