They interviewed the two armorers, who spent six years making nothing but chain mail. Real steel "hero" mail, aluminum mail, and for the extras waaay in the background, plastic ring mail.
They said the demands for mail kept growing by a factor of ten every time they thought they were caught up. The movie kept getting bigger, and more of everything was needed. The costumers had to keep track of 14,000 costumes in three different scales.
They developed a machine to automatically take vinyl tubing, slit it, and cut it into rings. But after that, even the plastic ring mail was assembled by hand, one ring at a time. And the "hero" armor was done in a very dense, complicated pattern using smaller rings. Again, I suspect the real steel armor was used to acclimate the actors, and then given to them as gifts after the movie was done. 99.99% of the shooting was done using aluminum ring armor.
All of that got me to thinking about the effort that went into this movie. Some people worked on it for six solid years, hundreds more for something less than that, and thousands for many months, at least. My guess is that at least a thousand man-years went into the movies, and quite easily much more than that.
That level of dedication and enthusiasm shows up in the final result. Someone in the commentary said that there was nobody just reading lines and "acting" to get a pay check. Everyone believed in the book, and PJ's movie version. I think that's a tribute to both Tolkien and PJ to get that kind of commitment from people. It also makes me wonder if PJ can draw that out of himself and everyone else if he makes The Hobbit, which was never as grand and sweeping of a concept.
A number of years back we went to the local ren-fest and I watched a couple of the SCA's show how they made their chain mail. They had pliers that had been modified to crimp the circles into place. I looked at one remarked that it looked like the old seat cushion staple crimper that my dad had kept in his tool box. They laughed and said it would probably work but they used a thinner guage wire, those staples were heavier. Very labor intensive and a real test of how much the SCA'er wanted to wear mail.
Here's hoping that PJ does the Hobbit and does it soon.