The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring/Trivia

The following is trivia for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring:
===In film===
*Gandalf's painful encounter with a ceiling beam in Bilbo's hobbit-hole was not in the script. Sir Ian McKellen banged his forehead against the beam accidentally. Peter Jackson thought McKellen did a great job "acting through" the mistake, and kept it in.
*The Elvish language lines spoken in this movie are not just quotes from the book, they were derived from J.R.R. Tolkien's own limited dictionary of that language. Dialect coach Andrew Jack used recordings of Tolkien reading his books to guide the actors' and actresses' pronunciations.
*John Rhys-Davies (Gimli the dwarf) is the tallest of the actors, who play members of the Fellowship. He is 6' 1".
*According to Sean Astin in the Extended DVD commentary, when Bilbo drops the Ring before leaving Hobbiton, the floor was magnetic to prevent the Ring from bouncing. This was done to demonstrate the importance and weight of the Ring.
*When the dragon firework goes off at the party, the shriek heard is Billy Boyd actually screaming, as he was unaware at the time that the firework was really going to explode on-set (he thought that it would be in a separate shot). It was not scripted, but the take ended up in the final cut.
===Off screen===
*Sir Christopher Lee (Saruman) read "The Lord of the Rings" once a year until his death in 2015, and had done so since the year it was published. He was also the only member of the cast and crew ever to have met J.R.R. Tolkien.
*Director Peter Jackson gave one of the rings used in the movies to Elijah Wood and Andy Serkis as a gift when the shoot was finished. They both thought they had the only one.
*Viggo Mortensen joined the movie when it was already shooting, never having met director Peter Jackson before, nor indeed having read the J.R.R. Tolkien book. It was Mortensen's eleven year old son Henry Mortensen who was the chief instigator in convincing Mortensen to sign on as Aragorn.
*The cast often had to fly to remote shoot locations by helicopter. Sean Bean (Boromir) was afraid of flying and would only do it when absolutely necessary. When they were shooting the scenes of the Fellowship crossing the snowy mountains he'd spend two hours every morning climbing from the base of the mountain to the set near the top, already dressed as Boromir. The crew being flown up could see him from their helicopters.
*Viggo Mortensen did his own stunts. He also insisted on using only the real steel sword, instead of a significantly lighter aluminum sword, or safer rubber sword, which were manufactured for battle scenes and stunts.
*For high-tech tasks, a computer program called MASSIVE made armies of CGI orcs, elves, and humans. These digital creations could "think" and battle independently, identifying friend or foe, thanks to individual fields of vision. Director Peter Jackson's team could click on one creature, in a crowd scene of twenty thousand, and see through his "eyes". Different species even boast unique fighting styles
Category:Trivia facts