00:00It certainly was the most challenging experience of my life.
00:03I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that we were filming three movies at once
00:07over such a long period of time and, you know, rising at five in the morning, working till
00:11eight at night, six days a week.
00:13It starts to just wear at you and you get kind of lost, but I think what kept our momentum
00:18going, what kept us sort of passionate about what we were doing and kept our focus was
00:23literally, I think, the reliance on each other as well as the fact that we were working on
00:27something that we were very impassioned about, you know, and that we loved so much.
00:51I decided very early on I couldn't make the film for millions of other fans because I'd
00:55never second-guessed what everybody wanted and everybody expected to see, so I made the
00:59film for one fan, which was me, because I'm a fan.
01:03I read the book and I couldn't wait till the film got made when I was 18 and I read the
01:07book for the first time, so I just thought, well, this is the fan I've really got to make
01:11this for and if I like it, then hopefully other people will too.
01:15I'm very happy with it, yeah, I'm very happy with it.
01:19What I'm most proud of is that it doesn't remind me of any other movie.
01:21It feels kind of like its own identity, which I'm pleased about.
01:38Initially one of the main pressure sort of points was the idea that Frodo was steeped
01:46in literature and there was a massive fan base that knew the character, had their own
01:51ideas as to what the character should be, and I'd never really felt that kind of thing
01:55before, so that was the initial pressure, trying to live up to other people's imaginations.
02:01Once I got to New Zealand and had those kind of things hanging over me, once we started
02:06filming, I just kind of let go and gave way to the journey and felt comfortable in the
02:12role.
02:29Bringing Lord of the Rings to the screen is a massive undertaking, assembling a crew
02:33of over 2,000 people in so many far flung locations across New Zealand, from glaciers
02:40to volcanic plains, on rivers and lakes, and getting through 15 months of production
02:49was quite a challenge for all of us.
02:51It's not logical that you'd give me $270 million, it's not logical that you would, you know,
02:57one of the screenwriters, Philippa Boyens, has never written a script before, you know,
03:01that's not a logical thing.
03:02It's not logical you'd say, well we want amazing costumes, we want amazing set design, we want
03:07really great production values and New Zealand is the place to go for that.
03:10That's not a logical thing.
03:12It's not logical that you wouldn't trust the incredibly complicated digital computer effects
03:17with a tiny New Zealand company.
03:20You know, none of this is logical and I kind of love that about the project, it's broken
03:24all the rules.
03:38Now I feel like I've done the best job that I can do and, you know, if people respond
03:42to it and if it's anywhere close to their visions then I've done over and above my job.
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