When the Lord of the Rings movies were first made in the early 2000s, there wasn’t the same incredible CGI technology that exists today. This meant that all of the impressive sets in the movies, the ones that really brought audiences to Middle Earth, had to be made by hand. This is one of the reasons the trilogy has received as many Oscars as it has, and one of the reasons it still holds up and is so loved even now.
Everything about the films was made with care, love and detail, to the point where crew members could walk around the sets feeling like they had been transported back to medieval England, or to the deepest, darkest depths of an ancient forest. It’s this amazing dedication that makes the movies feel so authentic and whose sets are known as some of the most remarkable in movie making history.
New Zealand does not have the same architectural past as England, and as such it does not have the same type of castles or strongholds dating back to the various invasions in British history. Therefore, building Helm’s Deep was a monumental challenge to bring that archaic, thick stone-walled perception into the movies.
The first step was to find a location large enough to house such a massive building, so the film team decided to hire a local quarry. This had the advantage of already having some real, natural masonry in it, which could be used as a base for the set to be built on. The crew then built Helms Deep in five parts, including the main ramp to the entrance, the stairway carved into the rock itself, the deep wall (which is blown up by the orc invader), and the horn that Gimli blows to warn of the arrival of the orcs. The set was made of wood, stone and a layer of Styrofoam cut and painted to look like the weathered surface of stone bricks.
The hardest part of building Rohan was finding the location. There is a very specific description of Rohan in the books, and the filmmakers wanted a setting that would have the feel of an ancient settlement, where some sort of royal Viking or Saxon civilization had taken root. The chosen location, Mount Sunday, had fantastic 360-degree views and was located in a valley in the mountains. This was complicated because it was a channel for multiple windpaths, which made filming there very difficult. However, it also made for some great moments, such as the flag flying past Eowyn as she runs away from Grima into the open air.
The settlement was originally built in metal frames, then covered with a wooden facade. Meduseld, the golden hall, was given a golden thatched roof, a skill the team had to learn as New Zealand has no thatched culture. Horse motifs were carved into the walls, as were rich vibrant colors used to reflect the sunlight from the exterior and give it that glowing feel. The interior was built at Weta Studios and included intricately carved wooden beams, a hand-carved throne for King Theoden, and hand-stitched tapestries with paintings strung across the top. The entire set was dismantled after filming was completed, and there is not a single trace on the landscape that it ever existed.
This set was intended to be filmed on location on a wet New Zealand plain, but turned out to be too unstable to film. The location that has therefore been recreated on the parking lot next to a railway line. Set designers used 11,000 sandbags around a wet set, which were covered in mosses, weeds and other wetland flora to hide them, creating the path Frodo and Sam are led down by Gollum. Gas pipes were then run through the set and set on fire to create the small flickering flames that make the scene so eerie.
The entire backdrop of the scene is a painting digitally superimposed on a green screen behind the physical backdrop, then going one step further in making mannequins of the dead elves in the water. These were made entirely of silicone, clad in elfin armor representative of the Second Age, and then submerged in the water to create the horrible dead faces that lure Frodo inside and nearly drown him.
Home to the Ents, Middle Earth’s famed tree herders, Fangorn Forest is possibly one of the most creative sets of the bunch. The crew searched for ages for a real forest, but none of New Zealand’s forests felt dark enough like England’s eerie, twisted forests associated with fairy tales. Forests are particularly difficult to film in as there is no way to control the light, so the crew decided to shoot the set indoors, adding to the gloomy and oppressive atmosphere.
Trees were made with a combination of driftwood and old dry branches that already had a gnarled, organic shape, reflecting these for both the roots and the tops of the trees. Set designers sometimes even found large fallen logs on the beach, cut them apart and then reassembled them around large steel beams in the studio. The trees were only about half the height, due to ceiling limitations in the workshop, but despite this, the crew reported that it was possible to get lost in the woods and completely forget they were inside. To top it off, the creators took dry leaves and moss from nearby botanical gardens and scattered them around to give Fangorn that authentic wet earthy scent so often found in forests.
Probably the most iconic set of them all, The Shire was built on several acres of New Zealand farmland. The first step was to make the trails around things like the party tree, the Green Dragon Inn, and Bag End itself. Thereafter, small mounds were built to serve as the mounds under which the hobbit holes would be built. The crew sewed grass over them to blend in with the surrounding landscape, and created the wooden fronts of the hobbit holes. They added all kinds of things to the landscape, such as trees made of wire and leaves, cobbled paths, market stools and the small hobbit tables, chairs and beehives that can be seen scattered around this idyllic house.
The insides of the hobbit sets, such as Edoras, were filmed at the Weta Studios. Two versions of the sets were made here: a miniature format, for Gandalf to play in and appear larger, and a large format, for the hobbits to play in to make them appear smaller.
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