IMPOSSIBLE Shots Explained - Lord Of The Rings Archery

it drives me bonkers how unrealistic the archery scenes are from The Lord of the Rings I mean I enjoy the movies but the archery scenes are just terrible to watch so that's where you draw the line considering you completely disregarded the Orcs wizard goblins trolls walking trees Wizards goblins and Orcs you have to draw the line at archery being unrealistic at how the knock was improperly knocked to the string or whatever you're talking about you are unbelievable thank you for joining me today my name's Kramer Ammons it's a pleasure to meet you we're talking about Lord of the Rings and the archery movie scenes I'm actually going to reenact a couple of the scenes and show you some of the uh tricks that are done to accomplish this type of archery when you're using an actor who probably doesn't actually shoot archery in the last video I made this replica of legal loss's we're going to use this today to create some of these scenes my hair is not quite long enough but it's going to have to [Music] do we must be [Music] quick we must be quick yeah I know that was terrible but it's actually kind of fun to make and I'll do one more later but you might not even find it interesting but what you might find interesting is that I've got eight things that I am guessing they did in this movie in order to pull off these archery tricks let's jump to number one I think the bow is made from PVC based on the shape of it I think they added some sort of plaster Bondo or something onto the PVC in order to give it the design my guess is this is a 5 or 10 poundage bow because of how the string waves after it shot I've done a lot of slow motion footage of shooting a bow and this is not normal on a high poundage bow but I have noticed the lower poundage bow I use the more noodly the string looks after I shoot which the PVC bow is consistent with my theory that leg loss dry fires most every single shot in the movie this makes a lot of sense for a couple reasons if you're acting there's going to be people camera crew a bunch of things around you're not going to actually want to shoot somebody in the St studio so if you can avoid shooting an arrow then you can put the arrow in and post allowing it to be safer on set plus if you use a 5 or 10 lb PVC bow the PVC is strong enough to dry fire if you take an actual wooden bow and if I shoot this without an arrow there's a very very high likelihood this bow will break when they're shooting legolas's face he's acting he's making it dramatic he's making it believable he's putting his hair often in front front of the string so his hair flips up when he releases the bow if the arrow was there can you imagine if the arrow got caught on his hair that'd be painful my best guess and what I can see from the clips is that there is no arrow for most of the shots the movie has Lego loss shooting some shots right-handed and shums left-handed I believe that he probably shot them all right-handed and then the editors flipped the clip there's even a specific clip that I flipped and matched the quiver angle to a different right-handed clip there was one with him left-handed one with him right-handed and when they matched up I was like yeah I think this confirms my theory my fourth hot take there's a lot of different ways to shoot a bow and I think depending on how he's shooting the bow is depending on if there's an arrow in the shot so when he shoots with the arrow on this side of the bow I think it's real when he shoots on the Arrow on his thumb over here I think it's added after the fact I think that's the tell that's the that's how you can immediately see okay that arrow is added later on he even does a lot of stunts where the the Bow's Twisted this way now you can hold the arrow like this it's just going to make it a whole lot more difficult to keep it in tight and most likely that Arrow was added after the actual footage was shot next we get to the famous back quiver I don't actually think he pulls an arrow out of the back quiver there might be one shot where he grabs an arrow but I don't think he's actually pulling arrows out I think when he's shooting he's uh f faking it and everything so quick so action so much Mo blur you can't tell but I really think he's just going like this and then shooting and just faking to grab an arrow which makes sense to me because to grab an arrow pull it down actually knock it and shoot it makes it nearly impossible to do some of the stuns and when he's sliding down the stairs the chance that he can be that quick at grabbing an arrow and shooting it is nearly impossible but the actor can probably do this motion all this helps me conclude the arrow is post production and that right there makes it a lot easier to do a lot of the stunts and repeat them quickly you'll also notice there'll be some tight shots like this and it's of the actual Arrow right here but then when it goes wide and then there's some sort of action the arrow is actually not there and and that is a good NE trick because the further you are from the actual shot the easier it is to fake the arrow but what you'll notice is when he's right here this tight IT rarely shows him releasing the arrow most of the time he's releasing is without the actual Arrow it's easier to fake the arrow with a wider shot than it is a tighter shot one of my favorites is the scene of him sliding all the way down those stairs I don't know what they did here exactly maybe he sliding on flat ground and then they change it and post but it kind of looks real from a specific angle that he's going down some sort of stairs so I think what they actually did is had him on some sort of cables it's like he's on a zip line basically because his legs don't move if you take a look at his shoulders they stay the exact same height the entire time as he's going like this to shoot it looks really silly now back in the day it was the absolute coolest clip I remember seeing that when I was young and I was like that's amazing sound design sound design makes things so real for example this very last clip of the movie I'm going to reenact it real quick and uh show you the trick I myself am sitting pretty on 43 I myself am sitting pretty on 43 so it appears that the arrow goes right between gim's legs which isn't actually the case what actually happened is through sound design made it seem like The Arrow flew through the air but it didn't if you slow it down the arrow was always there and he probably just hit it to make it bounce just like we did here in the shop so by using action and sound design your brain will fill in those little gaps so that you can do a stunt like that and make it safe and not actually shoot right next to somebody one of the things I talk about when making this bow is that it's hard to make something functional and good for acting and so to get something at least powerful enough to actually penetrate armor like in the movie is going to be probably even way heavier than this 40 lb bow and the stunts to do with such a heavy bow is nearly impossible in real life now if you want to uh indulge the fantasy real quick I think the elves are hundreds or thousands of years old and so maybe if he practiced for thousands of years and gained that specific strength then he could do that but then again it's a movie it's not supposed to be realistic it's supposed to be realistic inside the world they created which it very well might be next time you watch an Archer movie forget this video you just watch now enjoy the movie just enjoy the movie and then if you want to dissect it later go through again and dissect the video later try to watch the first time and enjoy it before you ruin it for yourself and everybody else forgive me for making this video Stay shatterproof and I'll see you on the next video