The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Visual Companion

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Visual Companion is Jude Fisher's 2001 official Houghton Mifflin tie-in companion to Peter Jackson's first LOTR film, the first volume of what would become a six-book Visual Companion series spanning the trilogy. Fisher (the working pen name of editor Jane Johnson, who edited Tolkien at HarperCollins UK) wrote all six.

The book's value is its access. Fisher worked directly with the New Zealand production design team (Weta Workshop, Weta Digital), with the costume department, and with the on-set photography crew. The result is the most comprehensive single-volume guide to the visual design choices of the Fellowship film, with extensive coverage of the Shire, Rivendell, and Moria production design that the film itself can only briefly show.

Recommended for Lord of the Rings completists, for readers of film-production tie-ins, and for anyone looking for books like The Fellowship of the Ring Visual Companion in the official-film-companion tradition. Four stars and the standard reference on the first Jackson film's design choices.