Incredible Lord Of The Rings Special Effect Done In Camera
In Lord Of The Rings the Hobbits, who are supposed to be very small, are required to interact with much larger humans. I always assumed they did this by recording each actor separately and then combining them in post but I was very wrong. By using a telephoto lens and very small aperture that produced a long depth of field, they could place the actors on different focal planes and keep them both sharp. With some incredible set design they could fool the viewer even while the camera was in motion. via BestofYoutube.com
This was not the case in every instance however. Sometimes the crew did use blue and green screens to record each actor and then shrink or grow one of them in post. You can see an example of this here:
