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:
They also used a lot of body doubles when faces weren't shown.
I can't believe it's just over 10 years since FoTR was released.
Lord of the Rings BTS always has interesting content to play with! Love it!
WETA is probably me most technically innovative and creative studio right now. Nothing comes close to some of the work they're doing in terms of believable visual effects versus cheesy CGI.
Similar to how Lucasfilm was when the original Star Wars came out in 1977. Watch Peter Jackson's video diaries from "The Hobbit" productions. Absolutely stunning how much they put into making quality cinema. Working for WETA would be a dream job.
Yeah thats true WETA is really a good studio, but i think ILM is as good as WETA, too
If you want to see Peter Jackson's video diaries from "The Hobbit" productions, you can find them at YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqaUk-r8DBk
Like Hail said, they are worth watching!