Dwarves, elves, wizards and worse, The Lord of the Rings is a story packed with inhuman and non-human characters, but The Two Towers introduces fans to several very different creatures.
 "Not all of the new characters of The Two Towers are played by human beings," says director Peter Jackson as the central film in the trilogy introduces two memorable digital characters, brought to life in the Wellington, New Zealand-based studios of WETA Digital. Gollum, articulated through groundbreaking motion capture techniques using actor Andy Serkis as a guide; and Treebeard, a character that mirrors the actual trees seen every day in our environment, but who also walks and talks. "The character of Gollum is a completely digital creature, but I was determined that I wanted an actor to actually create the character, which in this case is Andy Serkis," he says. Serkis' body and voice design was taken into an animated world through motion capture photography, computer generated imagery and digital sound mixing. The resulting synthesis is a ground-breaking visual effect. "Obviously, Andy creates the character through the voice," explains Jackson. "But also, we're doing a lot of Gollum as motion capture, which is when Andy wears a suit covered in these little dots, and he performs Gollum. "He says the dialogue, he plays the scenes out just as he would, and the computer is able to capture his movement, and translate that to the digital version of Gollum." The film also stages a colossal battle at Helm's Deep, in which thousands of Uruk-hai soldiers storm the Rohan fortress. This startling scene was achieved through an intricate combination of live action, miniatures and Massive, the state-of-the-art software which gives each digital character a mind and will of its own. "We used this program to some degree on The Fellowship of the Ring, but in this movie it really comes full force against the inhabitants of Helm's Deep, with 10,000 Massive-driven computer generated Uruk-hai marching down the valley towards the castle," Jackson describes. And while residents of Birmingham believe that the title of this second episode was inspired by author Tolkien's life in Edgbaston, and the two towers on Waterworks Road, Jackson explains it's Middle Earth meaning. "The title, The Two Towers, refers to the tower of Orthanc, which is where Saruman is based, and the tower of Barad-dûr, the home of Sauron, and the two are in alliance," comments the director/ writer/ producer. "It's a story of genocide to some degree, of these two evil forces deciding that the race of Man, mankind itself, must be eliminated from the face of the earth. And they attempt to do that." For more on author JRR Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, see: www.icBirmingham.co.uk/tolkien/ | 
