People are talking about shooting ratios forgetting also that on these movies there is also a huge amount of miniatures work, plate shots, shots where there are two passes to mix smaller characters with taller charcters etc. Yes PJ shoots a lot of footage, but the amount of takes where there is no VFX going on is also really small I imagine, and a lot of those vfx use shot elements, not just computer graphics.
Like with Lord of the Rings the shooting ratio much more reflects a film which has to build a world rather than just tell a story, and to build that world requires many raw elements that are composited together and eah element may have minutes worth of footage shot that end up being only seconds on screen, but those seconds are vital to building depth to the world.
Ultimately I believe it was the depth of the wold portrayed on screen that made Middle Earth so entrancing the first time around, and to get that depth you need to have an inordinate amount of detail available at every turn. An extraordinary amount of shooting does not necessarily represent a shocking breadth of coverage, it can instead represent an amazing depth of detail.
Originally Posted by Jannard
