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Unlike the earlier edition, there is no separate “full-screen” release.

The four-disc set is encased in an elegant, well-designed, and surprisingly sturdy cardboard slipcase with a fold-out digitpak inside. Also included is a redeemable coupon for a free ticket to The Two Towers and a very useful 12-page booklet with a fold-out map of all the supplements and supplements-within-supplements, all of which are presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1).

Four feature-length audio commentaries
I have the feeling that only the most die-hard of Ring fanatics will manage to make their way through every last second of the four audio commentaries included here, which together comprise some 16 hours of discussion. They are definitely worth a listen, particularly if there’s a certain sequence in which you’re most interested. By listening to each of the four commentaries, you will get a thorough understanding of everything from multiple vantage points.

The included commentaries are The Director and Writers, which includes Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens; The Design Team, which includes production designer Grant Major, costume designer Ngila Dickson, creative supervisor Richard Taylor, conceptual designers Alan Lee and John Howe, supervising art director Dan Hennah, art department manager Chris Hennah, and workshop manager Tania Rodger; The Production/Post Production Team, which includes producer Barrie Osborn, executive producer Mark Ordesky, director of photography Andrew Lesnie, editor John Gilbert, coproducer Rick Porras, composer Howard Shore, visual effects supervisor Jim Rygiel, supervising sound editors Ethan van der Ryn and Mike Hopkins, animation designer Randy Cook, visual effects art director Christian Rivers, visual effects cinematographer Brian Vant Hul, and miniatures director of photography Alex Funke; and The Cast, which includes Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Liv Tyler, Sean Astin, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, and Sean Bean.

Because some of these commentaries include so many people, the DVD utilizes the subtitle feature to tell you who is speaking whenever it switches to a new person. This is a simple, but absolutely fantastic idea, as one of the things that frustrates me most about “group” commentaries is getting confused about who’s talking.

J.R.R. Tolkien: Creator of Middle-earth
The first disc of supplements starts from the beginning, with this 23-minute featurette on the man who started it all, Oxford English scholar and linguist J.R.R. Tolkien. It includes interviews with the film’s writers and various Tolkien experts and scholars, as well as photographs of Tolkien at various points in his life and historical footage. While the featurette begins as a straight biography, it gradually turns into an exploration of the themes embodied in Tolkien’s work, which I found both fascinating and illuminating.

From Book to Script
Running just over 20 minutes, this featurette explores the process by which Tolkien’s “unfilmable” book was translated into a workable script. Some of the things discussed include the by-now well-known story of how the film started life at Miramax, who required that Jackson and company condense it all down to one movie, and eventually wound up at New Line; how the script was constantly being rewritten during production; and the tough decisions of what to cut from the book.

Visualizing the Story
This section is subdivided into five sections that explore how the filmmakers used both state-of-the-art technology and tried-and-true methods to develop their own visualization of Tolkien’s world. The opening 13-minute featurette, Storyboards and Pre-Viz: Making Words Into Images, gives a brief run-down of the methods used to visualize how the story would be brought to cinematic life. Discussed here are how Jackson had every single shot in the film storyboarded and how they used animatic architectural models, videorecorded walk-throughs on the sets, and crude computer animation. Those wanting more depth can then turn to Early Storyboards, which contains completed storyboards for three sequences: “The Prologue” (which is a slightly different version from the one in the finished film), “Orc Pursuit Into Lothlorian,” and “Sarn Gebir Rapids Chase.” Pre-Vix Animatics offers the rough, computer-animated versions of two sequence: “Gandalf Rides to Orthanc” and “The Stairs of Khazad-düm.” Animatic for Film Comparison allows you to use the angle button or split screen to compare early visualizations with two completed sequences in the film: “Nazoül Attack at Bree” and “The Bridge of Khazad-düm.” Finally, you can check out the Bag End Set Test, which is rather amusing video footage of Jackson and others walking through the various scenes with Bilbo, Frodo, and Gandalf in the unfinished Bag End set (which, at this point, is just plywood).

Designing and Building Middle-earth
This section contains three documentaries. Designing Middle-earth, which runs about 41 minutes, explores the development of the film’s many sets and miniatures, as well as the scouting of all the major locations around New Zealand. There is also a great deal of emphasis on conceptual designers Alan Lee and John Howe (both of whom were esteemed Tolkien artists before the film’s production) and their significant contributions to the film’s look. Weta Workshop is the place where all the prosthetics, miniatures, costumes, armor, and weapons were created, and this 42-minute documentary takes us inside the workshop with tons of video footage showing how it was all made. Described by actor Elijah Wood as “a wild fantasyland,” the Weta Workshop combined five different departments, in the process building some 45,000 different items, including 10,000 facial appliances, 8,000 body suits, 10,000 arrows, and 1,800 pairs of hobbit feet. Finally, the 15-minute Costume Design featurette is narrated by costume designer Ngila Disckson and shows the intricate details of all the clothing. Also included in this section are the extensive Design Galleries, which are divided into three sections: “The People of Middle-earth,” “Realms of Middle-earth,” “and “Conceptual Sketches and Photos.” There are hundreds and hundreds of still images included here, all of which are viewable either as an automated slide show or as single images controlled by the viewer. There are also selected audio commentaries by the artists for certain images.

Middle-earth Atlas
If I were to pick one supplement that seemed somewhat pointless, this is it. I can see why some people might find it interesting, but it felt a bit like filler to me. Essentially an interactive map of Middle-earth, it allows you to trace two separate journeys, Frodo’s journey out of the Shire or Gandalf’s journey to discover the true nature of the ring. Both use the map and trace out where the characters went, stopping at various times and inserting clips from the film.

New Zealand as Middle-earth
This section is divided into a series of mini-featurettes that each run 1–2 minutes in length and show the initial video footage shot by Jackson and company when scouting locations around New Zealand.

Filming The Fellowship of the Ring
After an entire disc of supplements focusing on preproduction, this is where we finally get to the heart of the film’s actual production. This section is divided into three in-depth behind-the-scenes documentaries and a section of production photos. The Fellowship of the Cast, a 35-minute documentary, is comprised mostly of interviews with the various cast members and focuses on how they bonded together over the 15-month shoot (there are also plenty of funny anecdotes, the funniest of which are about Sean Astin’s anal-retentive safety concerns). The 12-minute Day in the Life of a Hobbit is, well, exactly that: a look at what the four actors playing the principal hobbits went through each day, starting at 5 a.m. with make-up and the application of hobbit feet and ears, through filming, and finally getting it all removed that evening. The 50-minute Cameras in Middle-earth is the most in-depth look at the making of the film included here, essentially following the linear path of the story’s narrative and exploring what was involved in the production at each point. Finally, Production Photos includes 70 color production photographs, which can be viewed individually or as an automated slide show.

Visual Effects
Given the massive amount of special effects required for the film, there is a lot of material to cover in the three documentaries included in this section. My favorite was Scale, a look at the various tricks employed to make normal-sized actors like Elijah Wood appear to be only four feet tall. This was accomplished using a clever variety of techniques, from forced perspective, to oversized and undersized sets, to scale compositing and the use of doubles. Miniatures is about the creation and use of models that the production team ended up calling “Big-atures” because they were so large. The documentary included here covers all of the major locations built using miniatures, as well as six galleries containing dozens of color photographs of the miniatures during production, as well as the finished products. Finally, we have Weta Digital, which focuses on the in-house digital special effects company that was formed specifically for the production of this film. This documentary covers the digital creation of the various monsters (including the Watcher, the Cave Troll, and the Balrog) and locations (particularly the Dwarf City in Moria), as well as the development of the innovative software program Massive, which allows for “artificial life” in creating the thousands upon thousands of figures needed for the battle sequences.

Post Production: Putting It All Together
According to editor John Gilbert, Jackson shot roughly 5 million feet of film, which is significantly more than he had ever worked with before. Editorial: Assembling an Epic looks at how Gilbert worked with Jackson in order to get hundreds of hours of footage assembled into a coherent film with an acceptable running time. As a brief demonstration of the complicated decision-making process involved in such an endeavor, also included is an Editorial Demonstration, which shows a 90-second sequence during the Council of Elrond. There are also six other windows playing at the same time that show all of the raw footage shot for that brief sequence. At any time, you can click on one of the windows and see that 90 seconds of raw footage full-screen.

Digital Grading
The Fellowship of the Ring has a unique, fantastical look to it, and this 12-minute featurette shows how it was accomplished using “digital grading,” a process by which the original negative is scanned into a computer, colors and hues and contrast are digitally altered, and then the film is output back onto a negative. According to Peter Doyle, supervising digital colorist, about 70% of the film was graded in this manner, and this featurette gives some illuminating side-by-side comparisons of original images and their digitally graded counterparts.

Sound and Music
This section contains two 12-minute featurettes on sound and music. The Soundscape of Middle-earth focuses on sound effects and how various artists took Jackson’s mantra of “make it real” and produced the Oscar-nominated soundtrack. Primarily, the featurette focuses on the creation of sounds for the various creatures, including the Watcher, Moria Orcs, the Cave Troll, the Balrog, and the Ringwraiths. What is most fascinating about this segment is how ordinary sounds such as banging around wet rubber floormats or the scream of cowriter Fran Walsh were utilized to create sounds that are both otherworldly and completely convincing. Music for Middle-earth focuses on the work of composer Howard Shore.

The Road Goes Ever On ...
To round out the supplements, this 8-minute featurette gives us video footage from the various world premieres of the film, including London, Los Angeles, and, most moving of all, Peter Jackson’s homeland of New Zealand, where he was given a welcome worthy of royalty.