[doug*platypus]

Very cool. The best part about the Orc costumes were the one-piece latex head masks. Looking around at sixty or so of Weta's different Orcs was just like walking down the street in Mordor. Every single one was completely individual. Not enough slight deviations of each other. Completely individual, as if you plucked sixty people at random from all over the world. Simply amazing.<P>The detail on the deep background extras was sick. In <B>any other movie</B> they would have been good enough to be the main actors! This is how detailed it was: between takes, Weta staff would come around and squirt fake drool into my orc nostrils and around the mouth! How cool is that?! I was only filming for three days, but you could tell that the entire production was a labour of love.<P>Each of the armies has a very individual look to it, something you can notice in the films but only fully appreciate at close range. Our Orc (not Uruk-Hai) weapons and costumes were all shabby and decrepit! There were many (plastic) rustry scimitars, and I myself had a particularly nasty looking pike that could easily have come out of my grandfather's garden shed! Being Orcs of Mordor, our costumes were partially made up of armour scavenged from Gondorian equipment. Here and there were pieces of shoulder armour held on by strips of leather. And all this was just for the deep background extras, in the hope that all of the detail would help the overall impression. LOTR is the costume king.