Weta are a Kiwi production company which did a lot of the special effects on the Hobbit, bellow I have written about their use of the green screen in both good and bad ways. But I must say that the Hobbit was a fantastic film, very well put together, and immensely enjoyable. Having said that I would have done certain things differently, and used less green screen.
I watched a video recently which is a demonstration of how the hobbit was assembled with all its CGI and special effects, before it is finally shown in its finished format, in the cinema. It shows how a lot of the sets and backgrounds in the hobbit, as well as most of the characters, are CG which, especially to Sir Ian MacKellen, was pretty annoying.
This shows one of the initial (very long) scenes in Bilbo's house. The above image shows the basic set, and the last one shows the final product. Due to the heavy use of the green screen we end up with a green house with (almost) everything that is in it is made of green screen.
A problem starts to show itself when we look at the middle image. The middle image is a screen grab I managed to get showing the transition between green and the finished product. It shows Gandalf talking a glass of something out of the hand of the dwarf standing on his left, what we don't see in the cinema is that the dwarf isn't actually there. The glass of cherry, or whatever, is placed on a green screen table which mirrors the height of the dwarf 'standing there'
Now i'm not an actor, but in my opinion it must be pretty weird and disconcerting that instead of trying to immerse yourself in the world of the Hobbit, with all its finery and medieval decor, you are forced to act and react to in a green house, in a green room, with a green table, and a phantom like glass of cherry appearing on said green table, next to you.
This too me seems altogether foolish and building a world out of green screen is never going to bring the best out of your actors. You need to recreate the world that they are living in otherwise they're just an idiot in a costume. As the director I would also make sure green screen was only used when absolutely necessary. Otherwise theres just too much green.
I think this is a very relevant point to bring up regarding my scene. The actor needs to react, in time, and with the correct emotion to convince us that they are not a green screen imagination.
Obviously scenes like, the troll scene, the trolls had to be digitally created, because costumes of that much scale and detail wouldn't look anywhere near is a good. The costumes would also be cumbersome and dangerous if they were heavy. However the fire we see in the second image surely could have been a real fire ? Maybe fire doesn't look fantastic on film as it could be too much light for the camera to deal with, but surely some grading and tweaking of the footage could sort that out. It would have probably been a lot cheaper as well to have a real fire instead of 30 odd, high wattage, imitation fire-lights.
What i'm trying to say is that whether it is props or actors. 'Real' actors are going to always find a lot of trouble acting as well with the presence of green screen at every turn. We cannot stop the immense use of green screen, as it allows our imagination to run amok without the limitations of reality. However we must remember that too much green screen can ruin a movie and make it especially hard to act if the amount of physical props and objects are at a minimum.
In an interview with 'Contact Music' Sir Ian MaKellen said that the enormity of imagined characters and sets eventually bought him to tears.
"In order to shoot the dwarves and a large Gandalf, we couldn't be in the same set. All I had for company was 13 photographs of the dwarves on top of stands with little lights – whoever's talking flashes up. Pretending you're with 13 other people when you're on your own, it stretches your technical ability to the absolute limits. I cried, actually. I cried. Then I said out loud, ‘This is not why I became an actor'. Unfortunately the microphone was on and the whole studio heard."
- Sir Ian MaKellen