The White River Valley Herald

Son of Local Man Works On New ‘Lord of the Rings’ Films




Greg Butler, son of Ed Butler of Randolph, has what many film fans would call a dream job. He created special effects for the new "Lord of the Rings" film premiering nationwide Dec. 19.


The younger Butler, who grew up in Suffield, Conn., graduated from Hampshire College in 1993 with a degree in film, television and theater design; although he originally went there to study American history.


"I’ve always had an interest in filmmaking, but hadn’t really imagined I’d end up with a career in it," Butler recalled. "My brother Jared and I used to make Super-8 films in our neighborhood. We’d do our own special effects, like cardboard monster limbs and toy spaceships "flying" through space. My first real film job was as a producer’s assistant on the Jim Carrey film ‘The Mask’ at Industrial Light and Magic in 1993 and my first film credit was as a technical assistant (also in 1993 at ILM) on ‘Forrest Gump.’"


For "The Fellowship of the Ring," Butler is the Sequence Lead at Weta Digital Ltd. in Wellington, New Zealand, where he has been since Jan. 1999. He had at least three roles on the film.


"For almost two years, Weta was doing research and development and pre-production for all three ‘Lord of the Rings’ films," he explained. "During that period I was the Digital Creatures Supervisor. I managed a department of 7 Creature Technical Directors. My department was responsible for the building of digital creatures. We drew on the work of many other departments to put together a working digital asset that could be driven by animators or performers and put into the film. As well as the more obvious creatures like the Cave Troll and the Balrog, we also set-up digital versions of each of the nine fellowship and numerous digital ‘agents’ for the large battle scenes that will be featured more heavily in the later two films."


Once the actual filming of the movies was wrapping up and Weta Digital started to work on shots, Butler left the Creature Department and took on the role of 3D lead for the Watcher Sequence. As the Fellowship pause at the door to the mines of Moria, a large tentacled creature, the "Watcher in the Water" emerges from the nearby lake, grabs Frodo and drags him away. The sequence consists of roughly 30 effects shots. Butler’s job was to supervise the 3D work involved.


He also acted as Technical Director on a number of shots in the film. Technical Directors are responsible for the digital lighting, rendering and other technical aspects of a particular effects shot.


Butler read the "Lord of the Rings" books as a boy and remembers "staying up quite late while reading some of the more exciting parts. When I was seven, my mother took my brother and me to see the animated feature of "The Lord of the Rings" by director Ralph Bakshi, which only covers the first book and half of the trilogy. I didn’t know it at the time, but the production ran out of money before it could finish the ambitious undertaking. The world Tolkien created certainly stuck with me and I think the film is very faithful to the feeling of the book, but it isn’t a line by line adaptation."  


There are two more "Lord of the Rings" films planned: "The Two Towers" (2002) and "The Return of the King" (2003). All three have already been shot and were photographed entirely in New Zealand. The shooting took 274 days, but development (writing and design work) started at least four years ago. The work will continue until Dec. 2003.


Butler noted that "one unique challenge I faced was the use of normal actors to portray hobbits. In Tolkein’s Middle Earth, hobbits are generally 3 ft. 6 in.-4 ft. tall. Rather than draw on the very small pool of actors that fit that physical type, director Peter Jackson decided to cast normal actors and use various techniques to convince the audience that two same-sized actors walking through the same doorway were totally different from each other.


While many of the techniques used for these effects depend on computer graphics, many are as old as film making itself.


"The most common of these is known as forced perspective, Butler explained. "Simply put, if two people stand in front a camera and one is closer than the other, that person will appear larger. There are of course, many other details in making this trick absolutely convincing, but the basic gag is that simple."  


In addition to the films already mentioned, Butler has worked on "Starship Troopers," "My Favorite Martian" and "Practical Magic." He and his wife, Lisa Rollins, have settled into "a cozy little house on the water, down the street from Peter Jackson." They recently bought a small sailboat with some friends and are looking forward to a beautiful New Zealand summer, although they’ll miss a month of it while they’re in the U.S. in January spending time with family in Vermont, Maine and Connecticut.  


By Martha Slater



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