The LOTR: War of the Rohirrim workload “nearly killed” its director

It took a massive amount of work to bring LOTR back to the big screen in War of the Rohirrim, and a new interview reveals that the complicated global workflow required a massive amount of work from director Kenji Kamiyama.

Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy set a high bar for any new journey back into the world of Middle-earth. The new feature LOTR: War of the Rohirrim was the first animated take on the world in decades, and the process was more arduous than we imagined.

An interview with director Kenji Kamiyama and producer Joseph Chou from Indiewire revealed that film’s animation process was atypical for anime-style features, all under a much tighter deadline than similar projects often get. It produced a gorgeous film, but the process it took quite the toll on the director.

War of the Rohirrim workflow “nearly killed” director Kamiyama

While projects of a similar scale would use perhaps dozens of in-house animators taking feedback from their director(s), War of the Rohirrim merely had two in-house crewmembers and relied on motion capture and help from international studios to finish. According to Kamiyama:

Warner Bros.

“We had motion capture as a base that the animators would then exaggerate or reinterpret,” a process that Kamiyama had to be actively involved in. “I’d tell them, ‘Don’t trace,’ but they’d still just trace it, and it would look robotic rather than like natural movement.”

Key moments and characters, like the Watcher in the Water and particular action sequences, utilized keyframes and traditional animation methods, but the innovative use of motion capture made meeting the deadline possible. According to producer Chou, it was a massive undertaking for Kamiyama:

“From motion capture data to CG movement to camera check, to every single shot that comes up in terms of drawing, Kamiyama had to look through every single one and check everything,” Chou explained “It’s kind of unprecedented, and he nearly killed himself doing it, but he got it done.”

It all paid off, with fans praising the film’s look (despite the absence of a particular beloved character).