

Essay by anonymous09High School, 10th grade April 2006

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The film the "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" is an amazing masterpiece. It does not merely entertain, but takes the audience to a magical land from medieval times where hearts can soar, imaginations fly, and spirits rise. The film teaches the virtues of fellowship and courage, wisdom, and determination. How was such magic made? It would have been very difficult to produce the film the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King without special effects.

Many types of intriguing special effects were used in the creation of this enchanting masterpiece. These special effects can be divided into two main groups, technology based, and art based. One of the many technology based special effects used in the creation of the film was the classic blue screen/ green screen, or Chroma Key trick. Although this Hollywood trick has been used many times before, it is still a very sophisticated one.

Basically, this is how the effect works. Chroma Key is based on something called a luminance key. In this key, everything in the image in front of the blue or green screen over or under a brightness set into the luminance key is removed from the image and replace by another color or image. The Chroma Key used in the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was so advanced it could make a key (the object removed from the image) invisible. Most Chroma Keys can only make it less visible to the viewer ("Blue Screen Page").

Another technology based special effect that was used in producing the film is motion capture. This special effect was used primarily in the creation of Gollum. Motion capture was used to create Gollum because the director, Peter Jackson said he "wanted to avoid a computer generated look" so motion capture...