LotR Limited Ed. DVD Extras (TTT, RotK) - Miscellaneous....

[mechtild]

This penultimate "Limited Editions Extras" post presents a couple of unrelated screencap series, simply because neither has that many frames. First there are some shots of Elijah Wood performing Frodo struggling with Gollum in the Emyn Muil. Second, there are shots of Elijah watching as Sam's coverage is being filmed for their Sammath Naur scene

Comments

[mechtild]

I'm not going to bother to check, but I think in the "thrown around" scene, Andy is there, but not near him when they are filming those close-ups.

As I recall, when they talked about how they developed the way they would end up working with Andy, they did rehearsal passes for reference, then "clean" passes, in which Sam and Elijah had to mime Andy being there, trying to remember where Andy had been and doing the reactions (with help for the people who could see the Andy footage immeditately, on set). The Emyn Muil scene was the very first scene the three of them worked on together. The "Go Home Sam" scene was filmed without Andy, since he hadn't been hired yet.

Andy had said how odd it was to have completed a pass, with him in it, which, to him, would feel like the final take. He'd feel deflated afterwards to realise that his super-duper "final take" would not actually be the one used. But in a commentary PJ remarked that the best pass was always the one with Andy actually in it and they resorted to "painting" him out, painstaking as it was, then inserting digital Gollum.

So it may be that shots like this one of Frodo against the wall being attacked was not the one used in the film, but one in which Andy actually had his hands on him, painted out in post-production -- simply because Elijah's reactions were much better when Andy really was there.

Thanks for the enthusiastic response, Pearl!