In preparation for filmingThe Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson’s props company used miles of plastic tubing to hand craft all the chainmail seen in the fantasy trilogy because it was cheaper than buying the costumes. It also meant that Weta Workshop could individualise every suit of armour, apply appropriate weathering and battle damage, and sell the rubber as real, fantastical metal on-screen.
The same goes for theHobbiton set. What was once a field in rural Matamata, New Zealand, picked for its lake that doubled as the idyllic setting’s iconic river, was transformed into Tolkien’s vision of simple paradise. After noting a passage in The Return of the King, Jackson ordered two plum trees be planted. The problem is, Tolkien’s Hobbit children “sat on the lawns under the plum trees and ate, until they had made piles of stones like small pyramids or the heaped skulls of a conqueror”. This may not seem like an issue, but New Zealand plum trees would grow too tall for Hobbit children to feasibly pick their fruit.
The answer? The set dressers planted smaller apple and pear trees, waited until they were grown, then meticulously replaced all leaves and fruit with those of an English plum tree, essentially sizing down the tree to fit with the Hobbit lifestyle. If you don’t remember seeing these in the film, that’s because they were cut. They do appear in the extended edition for about a second, so the hard work was not in vain.
When he saw the completed set, Jackson felt it looked too fake. The hedgerows looked recently planted (because they were), the tracks through fields too perfectly designed (because they were). So he delayed filming Hobbiton scenes for months to allow nature to take its course and hired people to walk the tracks to make them feel worn and real.
Not every film has the luxuries of budget and time as the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But lots of films and TV shows have large budgets, and it’s hard to see where those budgets are allocated. Fallout is one of those shows.
The teasers we’ve seen for Prime Video’sFalloutso far seem fine. The script is a bit Whedon-esque and cringy, but perhaps it will be brought back down to earth by the non-trailer moments. My biggest gripe is that everything looks too clean.
Take the standoff between the Vault Dweller and the Ghoul, for instance. Neither of them look like they belong in the scene they’re in. They look like actors deposited onto a set. Both costumes are so clean, despite the dusty, dirty world they occupy, that they stick out like sore thumbs. They look like LARPers invited to the post-apocalypse, like the cast of Galaxy Quest thrust into an intergalactic conflict.
The same criticism extends to the set itself. The piles of rubble don’t look natural, they look perfectly stacked and artfully placed for a scene in a TV show. Maybe I’m being picky here, but not even the set dressing looks like it belongs on the set it resides on. Then you get the Power Armour.
In what world should Power Armour be so perfect? Even if it belongs to the Brotherhood of Steel, the heavy steps of its titanic feet would have kicked up tons of dust onto its polished exterior. Did the Deathclaw that clearly strafed this figure’s chest not tear any paint or expose any inner workings? Or did this super soldier sit down and meticulously polish the scratches after dispatching the vicious beast and buffing out the bloodstains? You’re telling me that not one shot has dinged off a shoulder plate in this world of unchecked animosity? No Brahmin saliva has trickled down its chest when buying a new Power Core?
Everything in the Fallout TV show looks far too clean. Nothing looks like it belongs in the world it’s selling, nothing looks lived in. I know budget and timing constraints are major issues for any production, but this screams of being filmed on a soundstage with fake dirt and fake grime and fake weathering on the costumes. What Fallout really needed was to take a look at the costumes, and pay someone to walk around in the desert in them for a day. It didn’t need the months that Hobbiton did, it just didn’t need to rush through filming so much. Deadlines are deadlines, but if you don’t care for your craft, if you don’t care what the finished product actually looks like, what’s the point of creating it at all?
Next:Games Workshop Veteran And Fallout Board Game Designer James Hewitt Has “Never” Finished A Game
