Since September 1937, millions of people across the globe have been transported to Middle-earth, the fictional continent that serves as the locale for many of J.R.R. Tolkien’s writings, including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Using both the prose of the stories and intricately drawn maps crafted by Tolkien himself, the fantasy world of Bilbo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, and Gandalf the Grey have traditionally been brought to life in reader’s minds through the sole power of imagination.
That changed in 2001 with the film release of Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship of the Ring, which brought Middle-earth literally to life onscreen. Amongst those who played an instrumental role in the creation of this Middle-earth was Joe Letteri, a native of the small Pennsylvania town of Aliquippa, located a mere eighteen miles from Pittsburgh.
“Middle-earth is a great place to make a film,” Letteri told StudioDaily in February 2014. “There’s always something fantastic as you move through the landscape.”
Since 2001, Letteri has personally contributed to that sense of “fantastic” in his role as visual effects supervisor for Weta Digital. It was, however, only the latest stop on a long journey that originated in Pittsburgh. From his hometown of Aliquippa, Letteri headed to California for an extended period of time before moving on to New Zealand, where Weta is based.
After receiving his diploma from Center High School in Beaver County during the mid-1970s, Letteri attended the University of California, Berkeley. Although he graduated just as the merging of computer technology into filmmaking was beginning in earnest, Letteri was still able to learn the basics on his own and eventually landed a job at George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic. While at ILM, he helped explode the Klingon moon Praxis in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and bring dinosaurs to life in Jurassic Park.
Letteri spent ten years working for George Lucas before joining Weta Digital, the special effects company founded by Peter Jackson to assist with production of his Lord of the Rings trilogy. Since then, Joe Letteri has won four “Best Special Effects” Oscars for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, King Kong, and Avatar. Despite the central role he has played in the creation of so many classic sci-fi films – the list also includes the 1997 Star Wars Special Edition and X-Men: The Last Stand – the Middle-earth of J.R.R. Tolkien is still the pinnacle of Letteri’s achievements, as well as the barometer against which special effects during the twenty-first century are ultimately measured.
“For me personally, the big step was coming here to do Gollum,” Joe Letteri told StudioDaily. “Before that, we did creatures. If we did a character, we tended to puppeteer it. We could do dinosaurs, but they were creatures. Gollum was the first character that had to work for the film. I remember in Two Towers, Gollum had a major role and he wasn’t going to be Andy Serkis in costume. If that didn’t work, the movie wouldn’t work. He wasn’t the main character, but he was a big focus. So for me, that was the breakthrough – bring a character that’s almost human to work side by side with actors. For the last twelve years or so we’ve built on that.”
That development includes the use of “digital doubles” for the primary actors of any given film. “Creating a believable human is still a technological challenge,” Letteri adds. “How the lighting works with the skin, the muscle simulation, the facial simulation, hair and cloth dynamics. All these simulations still require a lot of handwork. None of this is automatic. There’s really a lot we don’t know. But as we chip away, we understand more about how to do these things and we lock a few more down. We still get in and do work on top but each time, the base level is a little bit higher.”
Although it takes a lot of work and innovation to get there, it’s the end results that matter most for Joe Letteri. “We don’t get all this handed to us,” he explains. “We have to make the case that a film like this deserves the investment. We want the quality and an audience experience that will hold up for a lifetime. People tell me they watched the trilogy with their family. We’re thinking that way, that these films are things people will put in their library and pull out over the years, so we want the films to work as well as they can possibly work. It does require a big team to do that, and, yes, it helps that we can do all the work at Weta. We don’t have to spend time coordinating. We can put our time into developing the art and science we need.”
Thanks to the effort and imagination of Weta Digital, fans of J.R.R. Tolkien are able to witness the adventures of Bilbo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, and Gandalf the Grey in the most realistic and fantastic fashions possible. It may be a long way from Pittsburgh to New Zealand – especially with stops on the Klingon moon Praxis, the Skull Island of King Kong, and Avatar’s fantasy world of Pandora – but for Aliquippa native Joe Letteri, it has been a rewarding journey nonetheless.
Anthony Letizia