Suryakant Jena

The Lord of the Rings is one of the all-time greatest cinematic achievements in the world. Each part of the epic trilogy and the Hobbit series has mesmerised people with their marvelous fantasy created by Peter Jackson and Co.

The films created a fandom never seen before and still continue to make audiences riveted to their seats two decades later. Yes, Hollywood had had epic movies before the advent of the Middle Earth saga, but none had the impact like the LOTR. 

It often makes people wonder about the level of undertakings the makers had to take to create such a masterpiece. While the big credit goes to JRR Tolkien for creating the unparalleled works of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Jackson was equal in his pursuit to justify the epics in his staggering effort.

From employing 20000 extras to shoot the sequences, the maker of the film took nearly 3 months to create the scenes, one month to edit and compile just 10 minutes of the clash. There are many unheard yet impressive facts about the high fantasy franchise and one of them is the work put behind the scenes of the Battle of Helm's Deep also named the Battle of Hornburg. 

Well, not exactly a scene, but entirely a major part of the second flick of the series, The Two Towers, the Battle of Hornburg was insane on the silver screen. During the clash, the great black Uruk-Hai orcs drew swords against the mighty Rohirrim. Film critics have always expressed their admiration for this battle scene which went on for about 40 minutes of screen space, making it one of the most iconic battle scenes in celluloid.

But did you know that to create original and unique vocalization of thousands of Orc warriors, Peter Jackson adopted a novel idea. While shooting his films in New Zealand where he shot most part of the Trilogy, Jackson took help from cricket fans to generate the sound effects. 

It was February 16, 2002, at Wellington New Zealand played out a rather dull encounter against England. But the audience little knew that they were up for a real treat. The ODI match was viewed by around 25000 people inside the stadium. During the innings break, Jackson came to the ground and called upon the viewers to help him record the sound for his movie. The fans readily agreed and unleashed their version of the battle cry as they howled and roared as loud as they could. The thunderous sound effects were recorded on the spot itself by Jackson. The rest is history.

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