Early this year Gordon Paddison, who ran the innovative official website for the LOTR film trilogy, formed his own company, Stradella Road. (I blogged about that here on February 12.)

Now Stradella has released a report, “Moviegoers 2010,” which has a lot of information about the degree to which  many people, especially young people, get their main impressions of films by going online. Paddison warns that studios are still not using this resource enough.

Peter Jackson quickly signed a deal with Stradella Road, based on the great job that Paddison had done with the trilogy. Now he’ll be working on the Hobbit website, which will presumably be equally cutting-edge.

Ever since Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp previewed District 9 at Comic-Con, the film has received an enormous amount of publicity. It’s had some impressive reviews as well, from professional critics as well as fanboys and girls.

Variety’s reviewer admired it, and yesterday the magazine ran an interview with Blomkamp and a brief article on its cinematographer, Trent Opalach. more »

District 9, which will be released in the U.S. on August 14, has been attracting a lot of attention recently. As most of you undoubtedly already know, it’s a horror film produced by Peter Jackson and directed by South African Neil Blomkamp. Yesterday Variety posted a favorable review. I spotted a number of my interviewees for The Frodo Franchise among the credits.

I don’t do a lot of coverage of Peter’s non-LOTR, non-Hobbit projects on this blog, but it did strike me that District 9 marks something of a turning point in the ongoing saga of the trilogy’s impact. more »

Although Peter Jackson’s news conference with 40 lucky media people has been the main news coming out of Comic-Con today, yesterday he also took part, alongside James Cameron, in a panel on 3D.

Cameron is one of the strongest advocates of 3D. Initially he insisted that Avatar, due out in December, would only play in 3D theaters. The slow conversion of screens to digital and thence to 3D (only partly due to the current recession) has made that plan unfeasible, and he has conceded that it will have to show in 2D theaters as well in order to recoup its costs. Still, he still attends technical trade shows and other venues to push the conversion. The Lord of the Rings trilogy, he suggests, could provide a big boost toward that effort.

Yahoo! has an interesting report on the Comic-Con event:

The two filmmakers say they inspired each other. Cameron said it was the artistic use of “humanoid CG” in Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” films that got him rolling on “Avatar,” set for release Dec. 18.

Jackson has said that the technology he used was borne out of Cameron’s CGI work on “The Abyss” and “Terminator 2.”

Both are thrilled by the possibilities of 3-D and plan to convert their biggest hits, “Titanic” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, into the format. Then they lamented the shortage of 3-D screens.

“There will be a lot more 3-D screens when they know the ‘Lord of the Rings’ films are going to be available,” Cameron said.

The movie industry needs 3-D, he said, to inspire originality and boost its bottom line. A “3-D ecosystem” could be built on big films converting to the format.

“If ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Titanic’ are available in 3-D, that sends a signal all the way back to the consumer electronics manufacturers: Make the screens, make the modified Blue Ray DVD players so you can have it in your home,” Cameron said.

The bit about LOTR inspiring Avatar isn’t news; Cameron acknowledged that at the time he first announced the project. It’s good to see him making clear just how influential Gollum has been, though. And, yes, I’d say that a 3D LOTR would encourage some theater owners to take the plunge and invest in digital projection (which you have to have if you want to add on 3D equipment).

Last I heard, the conversion of LOTR to 3D was still years off, so it will be interesting to learn if there’s a timetable for this. In the meantime, there’s more 3D news from Peter:

Both men continue with high-tech pursuits outside of feature films. Jackson is developing a “King Kong” attraction for Universal theme parks that surrounds visitors with 3-D images and effects. Eight projectors will beam images onto giant screens surrounding the park tram, which will be stationed on a surface that shimmies and shakes with action as Kong battles a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The ride is set to open next summer, he said.

As I’ve said, I’m not a huge fan of 3D. I enjoy it occasionally, but I don’t relish the idea of all films being made that way. Peter doesn’t seem to, either. In the third clip of his Comic-Con interview with Entertainment Weekly online, he has this to say on the subject:

I personally love 3D, just because as a guy going to the movies like everybody else, I get a kick out of 3D. I think it largely adds to the experience of seeing a film. I think a lot of it is hypte at the moment, because the studios are in a desperate situation where they’re seeing video games eat into a lot of their revenue. There’s no doubt that the film industry is going through a difficult time so 3D is being used by studios as a way of tryig to attract audiences. There’s definitely hype involved. But I think beyond the hype, it’s a very, very fun, useful technical medium to tell stories. But look, I’ll tell you, the future of good film is the same as the past, the history of good film, which is about story and character. You’ve got to have good stories and you’ve got to have good characters, and whether it’s 3D doesn’t matter at all, at the end of the day. It really doesn’t. Story and character is all it’s ever been about.

So far indicators are that The Hobbit will not be in 3D, and that’s the way most fans seem to like it. I forget where I saw this (perhaps someone can remind me), but there was a poll of fans, and 81% preferred the film in 2D. Count me among that number. But definitely there are films I would like to see in 3D, including Avatar and The Dambusters.

TheOneRing.net alerts us to a remarkable story from Tehran posted on June 25 online in Time. It reports that the Iranian government is trying to lure people protesting the results of the recent election to stay home by showing a greater than usual number of Hollywood films on television. These included a marathon day of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Perhaps the Tehran resident who anonymously supplied the description to Time is exaggerating or is reporting on an atypical group of people reacting to the trilogy. Still, it’s fascinating to read how viewers are apparently reading all sorts of hopeful, anti-government meanings into the action of the film. Gandalf the White compared to the Mahdi, a savior figure in the Muslim religion; Treebeard seen as a supporter to Mousavi because that candidate’s emblematic color is green; Shadowfax identified with the mythical white horse Rakhsh.

Perhaps the most-quoted lines from the trilogy, which occur during Frodo and Gandalf’s conversation in Moria, are being taken up into the cause:

And so we see political meaning even in the notice that one part of the trilogy is ending, asking us to be ready for the next. In edame dare: This is to be continued. The phrase has become our hesitant slogan, our words of reassurance. As does this conversation, translated from Farsi, from the movie: “I wish the ring had never come to me … I wish that none of this had happened.” “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” In edame dare. This will be continued. People are not going to let up so easily.

The trilogy–both the novel and the film–has had a political and personal impact on many people in the past. It would be wonderful to think that it would inspire the Iranians in their current situation. Whether or not it has a lasting effect, the story is a heartwarming one, well worth reading.

Yesterday The Wall Street Journal posted an interesting story about recent breakthroughs in the computer generation of convincing human characters. The occasion is rather belated coverage of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which pioneered virtual makeup to age and de-age Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. (Well, so did the third X-Men, but not nearly as impressively.)

There’s a brief interactive time-line from Young Sherlock Holmes to the present, displaying still images from some key movies. Oddly enough, neither Jar Jar Binks nor Gollum is mentioned. Odd, because those two characters provided what is widely considered the breakthrough in digitally depicting the distinctive translucent look of human skin. Maybe it’s because neither is actually “human,” though they are “human-like”–plus Dr. Manhattan, from The Watchmen, gets discussed.

If you want to check out the story, do so soon, since I’m told that the WSJ only leaves stories online for a week.

I’m slowly making my way through the stack of magazines that accumulated during the three weeks I was gone on my trip to Egypt. One surprising item that I discovered is an article in The Economist about the use of the Massive software developed for LOTR being used for practical, important real-world purposes. more »

Early last week I wrote about an event that was coming up, the Digital Entertainment Leadership Forum, which took place in Hong Kong on March 24 and focused on the success of Wellington, New Zealand as a filmmaking center. Matt Aitken and Barrie Osborne were among the speakers, introduced by Mayor Kerrie Prendergast.

I was sorry not to be there for their talks, but I got a pleasant surprise yesterday when David Ivory, based in Hong Kong, emailed me with a description of the event. It’s fascinating and contains some scraps of news. David has kindly given me permission to share his impressions of what went on. I’ll let him speak for himself: more »

If we needed any more evidence that the Lord of the Rings film trilogy built an enduring cutting-edge set of filmmaking faciities in Wellington, we’ve got it. On March 24 the Digital Entertainment Leadership Forum in Hong Kong will present a day-long program, “Innovate Locally, Collaborate Globally: The Success of Wellington, New Zealand.”

Two of the people I interviewed for The Frodo Franchise will be the keynote speakers: Matt Aitken, of Weta Digital, and Barrie Osborne, producer of LOTR. Matt’s topic is “How and Why Creativity is the True Critical Success Factor.” Barrie speaks on “Making Movies for Global Entertainment Markets.” A third interviewee, Mayor Kerrie Prendergast, will introduce the program.

The event focuses mainly on Hong Kong’s potential for imitating the success of Wellington and for collaborating with New Zealand in future filmmaking ventures.

Last August I reported that Dr. Ruth Harley, who had been the head of the New Zealand Film Commission, had moved over to direct the newly re-organized Screen Australia. Those are the parallel agencies that help fund local films in their respective countries.

I interviewed Ruth twice for The Frodo Franchise and got invaluable information on the impact of LOTR on the local film industry.

Now the Australian newspaper The Age has talked with Ruth about her approach to building up the lagging local production. It seems apparent that she will do much the same as what she did in New Zealand: urge filmmakers to consider what kinds of films theater owners would like to book in order to make money. As the author points out, the most successful New Zealand films now outperform those from Australia, proportionate to their relative populations. “Buoyed by a string of internationally acclaimed and financially successful films, most famously Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, New Zealand now supports a thriving domestic and offshore film industry.”

The article goes on, quoting Ruth: “Offshore production allowed New Zealand to build skills and infrastructure. These days, she says, Peter Jackson needs local producers to use the studio and post-production facilities he developed for the Lord of the Rings films – ‘and boy do the locals want to work with his talent and machine’.”

Even five years after the third part of the trilogy appeared, LOTR continues to influence the domestic industry of New Zealand–and now perhaps, in a less direct way, Australia as well.