Lord of the Rings: Some 3D Has Already Been Shot

During the build-up to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, everyone was watching Peter Jackson's production blogs for the next big clue about how the movie would be executed and what to expect from the Lord of the Rings prequel. Somehow, though, in doing research on RED Epic 3D cameras for our recent story on Amazing Spider-Man 2, we stumbled across something that we can't find elsewhere (credit goes to documentarian and photojournalist Zach Roberts for the find): Not only is Jackson interested in doing a 3D upconversion of his Lord of the Rings trilogy...but he was preparing for it back when he was shooting the films themselves. "Shooting The Hobbit in 3D is a dream come true. I mean, if I'd had the ability to shoot Lord of the Rings in 3D, I certainly would have done it," Jackson said in the blog, which is embedded below. "What I actually did on the Lord of the Rings is that I had a 3D camera, taking 3D photographs. Hopefully one day, maybe even on 3D Blu-ray, we might be able to actually show you some of the 3D photos from ten or twelve years ago." One of those images, as presented in the blog, can be seen at right. Do not attempt to adjust your television. Both Jackson and Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood have said at various times that they would like to see the films converted to 3D, but we had never heard before that Jackson was actually taking these photos right along--effectively giving prospective future 3D upconversion experts the equivalent of animation model sheets. And that's pretty cool.