The Difference between Hobbits and Humans

For "Lord of the Rings" forced perspective was used in mist of the film to make the Hobbits appear smaller than the humans.  They also achieved panning shots while still maintaining forced perspective by using moving sets and paying incredible amouts of detail to camera angles.

Movie Magic

This "Movie Magic" episode goes over the forced perspective used in the modern "Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman".  As stated earlier these forced perspective shots relied greatly on lighting, a long depth of in the camera lens and the blending of. 
Specifically it goes over a how to do a camera move while still creating the illusion of forced perspective

(At about 11 minutes in there is also a piece on "Darby O'Gill" - and it is mentioned as one of the finest examples of forced perspective)

Modern Matte Paintings

If you pardon the music, this is a great video has numerous shots of modern matte paintings. 

The Invisible Art

This book is all about the art of matte painting - there are countless images of before, after and in-between shots of scenes of movies that have used matte paintings. 
There are a couple of images of Darby O'Gill & I've also included the scenes the matte paintings were done for. The mattes match seamlessly. In the videos you'll also spot some other special effect techniques such as the King Brian puppet and bigatures.

Making the Leprechauns: Forced Perspective

This is the second half of the clip shown here on matte painting.

This clip covers the use of forced perspective in Darby OGill - this clip explains how it was used, where to spot it and  some other special tricks they used to create this effect.

Creating Rathcullen & Knocknasheega: Matte Painting

This is an excerpt from the extras added to the DVD release of the film. This segment is about some of the techniques of matte painting. (See the rest of the video here).  Rathcullen is the small town that this story takes place in, Knocknasheega is the fairy mountain in which the Leprechauns live. 

The Special Effects of "Darby O'Gill"

Thesis: The film Darby O'Gill and the Little People pushed Disney's special effects to the next level - work done in this film not only raised the bar in special effects, but has been  influential to many films after it.

 Disney's Real Leprechauns

The first step in making special effects is making sure audiences will believe them.  As an elaborate promotion for his upcoming film, Walt Disney aired an episode of his show "Wonderful World of Color" in which Disney takes a trip to Ireland in search of actual leprechauns to appear in his "Irish picture". Disney eventually meets up with to Brian, King of the Leprechauns, and the two produce Darby O'Gill and the Little People.
During production there was no mention of the actor who played King Brian - Jimmy O'Dea - but instead there were multiple bios and photo shoots of his character King Brian. In the opening of the film there is even a thanks to King Brian from Walt Disney.