You could also play with camera angles, but dimensionally, yeah, no substitute for a big dude.
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2026
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Or a little dude to make a normal dude look big like in LotR.
I thought a lot of their work was camera tricks. Jonathan Rhys-Davies was 6'3.
They used every trick out there at some point. They even invented a new technique for 2 shots in Bag End where they had motion-controlled cameras, tables, and benches synched up so they could do the only ever forced-perspective shots with moving cameras ever really used.
Everything since then went digital in the following years, the technique was never really used again.
In the Hobbit films, they had to lean more into digital because they were in 3D, so forced perspective shots wouldn't work.
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See: Hagrid's behind-the-scenes.
And Lord Of The Rings in Bilbo's house
Honestly seeing the camera shift in a MAKING OF clip for some of the angles made my brain work overtime, because when watching the movie so many times over the years, my brain just goes "yeah, hobbit next to man riding on a wagon" or "hobbit and man at a table across from each other" but then you see them from a different angle and it's just... Wrong.
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VFX artists react look at these things all the time:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Wf8NgICk3ng
Some really cool 90s tricks with forced perspective.
This is one of the reasons why I love love love cinema history. The lengths that the crew and creative team went to in order to make an illusion work is just mind-boggling. One of my favorite things to do as a kid was watch the DVD extras about Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Labyrinth, all that.
One of my favorite forced perspective tricks ever was Darby O'Gill and the Little People. That old Irishman playing a fiddle above a cavern full of leprechauns, galloping around a pile of ancient treasure on tiny horses, and then rushing off to hunt foxes through a magical crack in the wall?
Literally, one of the most incredible feats of practical film illusion ever concocted, right up there with the velociraptors of Jurassic Park and the chest-burster from Alien.
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Arnold is six feet tall
One time, Arnold and Andre went out for lunch.
When the check came, both men reached for it. Andre decided the issue by picking Arnold up and carrying him away.
Holy shit that’s Wilt Chamberlain??
It is!
To put this photo in perspective Wilt "The Stilt" was 7'1" and 250lbs (216 cm/113 kg). Andre was 7'4" and 520lbs (224 cm/236 kg). Almost twice Wilts overall size, just an absolutely massive unit of a human being.
They both make Arnolds impressive 6'2 & 210lb (190cm/95kg) seem relatively dwarf-like.
Now is where someone better at storytelling than me would talk about the time Andre the Giant drunkenly passed out in a hotel lobby and nobody could move him so they just left him there.
Andre had a lot of joint problems related to his gigantism, as well as physical injuries from his wrestling career. He self-medicated with alcohol, and became addicted to it.
It was really sad.
Hello sir, yes hi. I came for an amusing anecdote, but instead I was shown nothing but sadness and pity. I’d like a refund please.
I'm sorry I am not authorized to give refunds, but I hope that the following Andre the Giant facts will help: he was widely known as the "Gentle Giant" because his real-life personality was exceptionally kind, friendly, and generous. He was soft-spoken and gentle around children, lifting them up and being patient so they wouldn't be scared. He disliked arrogance and mean-spirited people, and would physically "reprimand" bully coworkers in the ring.
Or the time he let out a fart for, like, 3 minutes straight and someone asked "Andre, are you okay?" to which he replied "I am now, boss."
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To be fair, André was one especially Big McLargehuge beefy specimen of mountainous manmeat.
Mandy (Inigo) is 6 foot (1.83m), Wallace (Vizzini) is 5 foot 2 inches (1.57m)
I never realized Inigo was himself tall. Wild
6 ft is only a little bit above average.
If 6 inches is ‘a little bit’ then sure.
"Western" nations average 5'9" to 6', so yeah, Mandy (Inego) is about average height, like 2.5" taller than average for Spanish people.
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He's....a giant
How does his parents knew he was going to be giant as a baby? Or it was just luck that he was named Andre the Giant, and grew up to be giant?
Manifest destiny, you name a kid "the Giant" and they'll grow
He was enormous at birth, if I remember correctly.
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The irony is that he's actually not that tall. It was practical effects. Not digital.
He's 7ft tall. Even being 6'3, my reaction to a 7ft tall person is, "Holy shit, that's one tall dude."
It's crazy being a tall(ish) person and seeing someone a full head/shoulder above you. If I notice a tall person they're tall.
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Forced perspective is how they made the hobbits look so small in LOTR.
I still struggle with how animators in 1937 were able animate the ripples in the water in Snow White at about 1:36.
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I mean, they might be cooked but that seems like a reasonable question for a kid who doesn't know all the tricks and hasn't seen it before. This feels like "I'm going to bash the youth because I'm old" boomer humor
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I feel like the right thing to do is show them a movie from the early to mid 80s that used early CG and then show them Legend from 1985 point at Darkness and be like "That's a dude in a suit. 5 and a half hours of makeup every day for him to look like that." Then pull out Clue and point at Wadsworth and be like "This is the same dude."
Then get a mop because you have to clean up after their heads explode.
Why would they ask "how" they made him big? Wouldn't they simply assume the usual CGI or forced perspective? (I'm assuming here dad has sat them through all 286 hours of Lord of the Rings Making Ofs)
Edit: ah. see below.
I mean, it is a movie from the 1900s, so how did they do it?
Oh you mean the question isn't just "how did they do that" but rather "how did they do that, that's impossible without CGI (which is a modern thing)". That... makes sense.
Edit: since this is apparently not entirely clear: everything inside quotation marks is a hypothetical quote, including everything inside parentheses.
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Today with Robert Bobroczkyi. What an absolute unit. Singular. Unique.
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The Wizard of Speed and Time is a very interesting 2026 movie when you realize it was made in 1988 (or 1979, depending on which part) without computer animation. Someome asked how he filmed the train sequence, where he outran a train. His answer? "I just ran faster than the train was moving"
Still happening today. Backrooms did some numbers this year on a low budget, and relied on a 7'7"/2.3 m actor (with prosthetics and makeup) for one of the freakier looking characters in recent film.
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