On his Facebook page, PJ has announced two new cast members for The Hobbit: Dean O’Gorman, a New Zealand actor, will play Fili, and Lee Pace will be Thranduil.

According to Peter, he was impressed by Pace’s lead performance in The Fall. That’s an eccentric 2006 fantasy epic by Tarsem Singh (best known for the fantasy serial-killer film with Jennifer Lopez, The Cell). Very flashy visually, and I do recall that Pace’s performance was impressive.

TheOneRing.net has announced that in June there will be theatrical screenings of the three extended versions of the LOTR trilogy. These will be one-time-only screenings as opposed to regular runs. They’re playing in AMC theaters in major cities. To check if there’s one near you, search on something like “AMC Fellowship of the Rings Director’s Cut Event.”

FOTR will play on June 14, TTT on June 21, and ROTK on June 28. That’s all we know so far.

This is a surprising announcement, since up to now there have been no 35mm prints of the extended ROTK. Those of you who remember Trilogy Tuesday will know that we saw the extended versions of the first two films, on 35mm film, and the premiere of the theatrical version of ROTK. (FOTR and TTT played for a week each in 35mm extended versions, as a lead-up to the release of ROTK.)

It seems odd that that many 35mm prints (which cost thousands of dollars each to make) would be struck for a single screening. AMC is notorious for its lack of attention to good projection. (The last time I tried to watch a film in an AMC house, the projection was so bad that my husband and I asked for our money back, and I haven’t patronized that multiplex since.) I wonder if they’re just showing the DVDs, or perhaps 2K digital prints that were struck off the DVD masters. If either of these scenarios is the case, then this isn’t quite such a big deal as it might seem.

The New Zealand Herald has posted a brief story revealing that the producer of the Spartacus TV series is having trouble finding enough crew members in the country. Why? Peter Jackson has hired about 500 of the top behind-the-camera film talent in the country.

Producer of TV’s Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Rob Tapert said he had recruited crew members from Australia, Canada and Eastern Europe because Jackson “sucked up” local talent, according to OnFilm Magazine.

Tapert has found it particularly difficult to find Kiwi make-up artists and stunt performers.

The labor disputes of last year seem to have put the production a little on the defensive:

3 Foot 7 publicist for The Hobbit Ceris Price said most of the crew had worked on Lord of the Rings. “They are here because they want to work on our production. It’s a free world,” Price said.

In Chapter 10 of The Frodo Franchise, I discussed the “up-skilling” of filmmaking talent in New Zealand during the production of LOTR. Before that shoot, there were very few trained make-up artists and stunt performers, let alone sound mixers and other technicians. There are a lot more now, but when a few major productions requiring similar specialties are filming at the same time, foreign talent still needs to be brought in.

Peter Jackson is posting more often on his Facebook page, a habit I’m sure we all hope will continue. This time he confirms something that seemed all but certain–that Ian Holms will appear as the elderly Bilbo in The Hobbit (presumably in a frame story, since he’s a mere 51 at the end of the book):

One comment that came up from the recent video blog was the Bilbo voice at the end—many of you assumed it was Sir Ian Holm. Whilst Ian will be returning as the older Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, that recording was actually Martin Freeman’s voice, taken from a script read through we recorded when the cast first arrived. I have to admit, I wasn’t sure who it was when I first heard it, either. Cheers, Peter J

On his Facebook page, Peter has posted a brief piece about the fact that cast and crew will take a four-week break for Easter. This period, he says, will be partly occupied by script revisions “for those Rivendell scenes we have coming up.” He also has a nice anecdote relating to the famous habit the screenwriters had during LOTR filming, when they often provided revised pages to the actors shortly before the scene was to be shot. He also has some interesting things to say about the three stages of screenwriting.

In reporting on the National Association of Broadcasters convention, which is meeting this week, Variety had this to say:

Certainly there’s a sense of real change in the air, especially after Monday’s 3D television pitch by James Cameron and Vince Pace. Along with growing acceptance of 4K, Sony’s new F65 camera showing off 14 stops of dynamic range, new TVs and digital cameras that display a wider range of colors than before, there’s some real momentum behind improvements in sound and picture that have been on technologists’ wish list for years — in some cases, decades.

But this year’s biggest leap forward seems to be in the move to higher frame rates. Cameron has been evangelizing the idea for years, and Doug Trumbull, who pioneered the idea with Showscan in the 1980s, presented an updated concept, Showscan Digital, at the Digital Cinema Summit on Sunday. Then Peter Jackson confirmed rumors that he’s shooting ‘The Hobbit’ at 48 frames per second, in addition to 3D.

While some people still love the 24 frames-per-second look, the shift to higher frame rates doesn’t need to incite a debate like that surrounding 3D. What’s more likely is that that filmmakers and all manner of content creators will now choose their preferred frame rate based on the look they want to achieve, much as they now choose a color palette and filters.

I’m not sure why some people are so enamored of 24 fps, a filming/projecting rate chosen in the early days of sound filmmaking. As you’re watching a film in a theater, 24 frames are projected on the screen per second. In the interval when the film is moving to the next frame, a shutter crosses the lens, and there’s a tiny moment of darkness on the screen. It’s too tiny for our eye to notice ordinarily, although in very bright scenes one can sometimes see a distinct flickering. The same is even more true when a silent film is projected at 16 or 18 or 20 fps, since the tiny moment of darkness is slightly longer. In short, by projecting twice as many images per second, the filmmakers can cut down even further on the length of split-second of darkness.

Shooting more images per second also minimizes blur. In shooting 24 fps, the film is exposed long enough that rapid movement in front of the camera will blur, especially if it’s moving from side to side. (You can easily see just how blurry individual frames can be if you freeze-frame a DVD during a movement of quick action and then go through frame by frame. There’s a lot of blur!) By making the exposures of the frames half as long, the camera can minimize the blurring.

The Variety report suggests that professionals in the film and television industry see shooting at increased frame rates like 48 fps is a very major development, and once again Peter’s team is leading the way.

Over on his Facebook page, Peter Jackson has posted his first HD video in what promises to be a series of entries on the making of The Hobbit. (Like my husband, Peter refers to to blog entries as “blogs.”)

The interior of Hobbiton is shown fairly extensively, rebuilt on the B stage at Stone Street Studios. There are brief scenes of martial arts and horse-riding training. The Rivendell set has also been rebuilt, with new sections added. Peter’s tour shows off the statue that later would hold the shards of Narsil. This was one of the few set elements that was still present in the Stone Street studios when I was given a tour in October, 2003, and I saw it up close and personal.

There’s also a traditional Maori welcoming ceremony to get the production off to a good start.

The goblins’ caves of the Misty Mountains have been built in what is described as Studio F. I don’t know of a Studio F at the Stone Street Studios, but I suspect it’s what is commonly referred to as the “Kong Studio.” That’s the big sound stage and construction facility built after LOTR on the west side of the Stone Street Studios. I toured it in 2004, when it was full of Kong jungles. It’s a huge space and looks very much like the buildings at the big Hollywood studios. (For a list of the facilities at Stone Street, see here.)

So we’re off to a good start now with the Facebook series. You can already tell which actors and crew members play to the documentary camera and which shy away from it.

Variety has posted an article on the pros and cons of shooting a mainstream movie like The Hobbit at 48 fps (frames per second) rather than the standard 24 fps:

Peter Jackson’s plans to shoot “The Hobbit” at 48 frames per second — twice the current rate — marks the beginning of a technical shift in moviemaking that’s as significant as 3D, color, or even sound.

But the world’s first 48p feature also presents a serious hurdle for New Line, as retrofitting the quickened print to play in analog projectors, which still operate at the majority of screens, is not so simple.

As of now there are about 16,000 digital screens in the US, of which about half have 3D capacity. Those digital projectors could be switched to project 48 fps with no difficulty. There are over 23,000 theaters, however, that still show film-on-film, 35mm prints, and they can’t suddenly switch to 48 fps. In his Facebook post, Peter said that by the time The Hobbit is released in December, 2012, there might be nearly 10,000 screens worldwide capable of showing it in 3D at 48 fps. That’s not really a lot compared to the number of theaters that would need 35mm prints. According to Variety:

Making “The Hobbit” compatible for those screens isn’t as easy as taking out every other frame, which would create a jerky image. Instead, it’s necessary to combine pairs of consecutive frames to a single image in post-production.

Warner and New Line have not addressed their plans for film prints for “The Hobbit,” and did not respond to requests for comment. Exhibitors were also not available for comment.

Obviously the studios can’t just abandon the larger market where 35mm prints are required, so I presume it will be show in 2D as well–at 48 fps in digital houses, at 24 fps in theaters not yet converted to digital. (A recent estimate suggested that 35mm prints will continue to be used in theatrical distribution until at least the end of 2013, just when The Hobbit’s second part is due out.)

On his Facebook page, Peter has posted an excellent little essay about shooting digital 3D images for The Hobbit. For the first time in a mainstream commercial film released into theaters, the filming rate will be 48 fps (frames per second) rather than the standard 24 fps that has been used since the late 1920s.

There has been some confusion about what 48 fps means. Is it that the two lenses filming the 3D image will each take half the images? No. The answer is quite simple and depends on the images being projected at 48 fps in the theater. It’s necessary to understand that no matter how many frames you shoot per second, the speed of the image will be identical to the speed of the real-life action if the speed of projection is the same number of frames per second. In the 1910s, a filming rate of 16 or 18 fps was common, but projectors ran at the same speed. If you ever see early silent films that look fast and jerky, that’s not because the camera operators of those days were ignorant or the cameras primitive. It’s just because you’re seeing the images projected too fast, most likely at 24 fps, or “sound speed.”

As Peter explains very clearly in his essay, showing more frames per image gives a steadier image with less strobing and blur. The reason is because your eye is given twice as much visual image at 48 fps than at 24.

In Chapter 9 of The Frodo Franchise, I talked about the enormous influence LOTR had on film technology, primarily in the areas of digital intermediates and color grading, of techniques for creating realistic human skin and eyes (used, of course, for Gollum), and the Massive program for multiplying people and animals through the use of simple artificial intelligence. It looks like Peter’s team will be equally cutting-edge with The Hobbit!

Peter promises a video to come soon, so perhaps we can expect a production diary from him and his crew, something similar to what he did for King Kong.

Anne Thompson’s blog has a story on Weta Digital’s participation in a publicity event on Facebook:

Peter Jackson has long been ahead of the curve where doling out info directly to fans is concerned. Thus, live from Wellywood, New Zealand, Jackson’s VFX house WETA Digital (The Lord of the Rings, Avatar, District 9, Tintin) will reveal cool stuff from Rise of the Planet of the Apes via Fox’s Facebook fan page for James Cameron’s Avatar, which has 14.2 million followers. This is basically a maneuver to grab those fans and lure them to also follow this movie via a five-second preview of Rise of the Planet of the Apes (August 5, 2011) on its official Facebook page.

What will they see on April 13 at 2:30 PM Pacific time? WETA’s Oscar-winning VFX master Joe Letteri and Dan Lemmon will give a behind-the-scenes look at how they created photo-real intelligently emotive CG ape Caesar (although their last ape, Jackson’s King Kong, also acted by Gollum’s Andy Serkis, will be hard to top). Jackson’s King Kong earned WETA the coveted Avatar gig, which won them the VFX Oscar.

Go here for the rest of Anne’s story.

Yesterday Peter’s own Facebook page carried this message: “Hi everyone. Watch this space…My first video post from the set of THE HOBBIT will be landing here soon!”

Last month it was announced that Warner Bros., parent company of Hobbit producer New Line, would become the first big Hollywood studio to sell and rent movies via Facebook, so it’s not surprising to see official publicity videos being posted there.