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.

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.

Stuff.co.nz offers a short article on the latest annual screen industry survey from Statistics New Zealand:

Wellington’s film industry is increasingly reliant on big-budget productions such as Avatar and The Hobbit as the New Zealand industry becomes more dependent on post-production work.

Basically although filming in New Zealand fluctuates over time, the special effects and other post-production services are growing. The article doesn’t name names, but surely Weta Digital and Park Road Post are leading the expansion. The trend will no doubt continue, especially if James Cameron decides definitely to make his two Avatar sequels in Wellington, as he is inclining to do. Those plus The Hobbit and the Tintin series should keep the facilities humming with business.

The article, originally from the Dominion Post (Wellington’s daily paper) concludes:

The industry recorded revenue of $2.8 billion last year, up 2 per cent from 2009.

New Zealand had established itself as a post-production hub. Big projects would always affect the figures, but it was pleasing to see the bottom line holding strong.

Tvnz.co.nz reports that:

Wellingtons film industry is getting a further boost of government funding, with special effects workshop Weta Digital one of six fast-growing, high-tech companies awarded $7.2 million each under the new Technology Development Grant Programme. […]

Weta is only one of six firms chosen to receive the full extent of support available under the TDG scheme, which will see $92 million invested over the next three years in what Mapp says is “the largest business investment the government has ever made in helping business innovate.”

The Lord of the Rings was responsible for New Zealand’s image changing from one of a country full of sheep farms to one on the cutting edge of design and technology. The continuing success of the Wellington-based film industry, notably in the creation of Avatar, has reinforced that image, and The Hobbit can only enhance it. Congratulations to Weta!

The state-of-the-art post-production facilities built by Peter Jackson and his colleagues for The Lord of the Rings continue to win awards. This time it’s the Hollywood Post Alliance awards (whose eligibility period runs from September to September). Here are the films and people who won:

Sound – Feature Film
“District 9”
Michael Hedges, Gilbert Lake, Brent Burge and Chris Ward – Park Road Post Production

Compositing – Feature Film
“Avatar”
Erik Winquist, Robin Hollander, Erich Eder and Giuseppe Tagliavini – Weta Digital

These days, “compositing” refers to the digital combination of different visual elements into a single image. (Think green-screen work or those long shots of Rivendell combining real waterfalls, a miniature building, background paintings, and so on.)

Of course, these same companies and probably these same people will be working on The Hobbit. Congratulations to them all!

(From Variety.)

The New Zealand Herald has a story about James Cameron coming to Wellington to discuss making the second and third Avatar films there. Weta, Ltd. was deeply involved in Avatar, helping develop new technology and providing many of the digital effects. The story quotes Joe Letteri extensively:

Twentieth Century Fox announced this week that Cameron would begin writing scripts for two sequels early next year, with production to begin late next year for a December 2014 release.

Weta Digital co-director and senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri said Cameron had been in touch to discuss shooting the films in Wellington.

“I know Jim would like to do that, so once we know what the story is he’d like to come down here and explore that.”

The Wellington film industry was integral to bringing the imaginary world of Pandora to life in the original film, with Weta Digital handling the 3D visual effects and Stone Street Studios shooting the live action sequences.

“Weta Digital is hoping that again we’ll be working with Jim and Fox to actually create Pandora and to create the characters and to do all the visual effects work on the films.

“And we’re actually hoping that Jim will come back to Wellington to shoot the live action portion of the films, as he did the first one.”

Letteri said it would be some time before anything was finalised.

“It’s still early days right now. I would think we’re at least a year away from knowing something more concrete,” he said.

“We do have a good relationship, and he took us on as creative partners on the film, and we hope to just continue working with him in that way.

Ironically in the wake of the recent arguments that the New Zealand film industry would collapse without The Hobbit, Letteri reveals that Weta Digital is facing several big productions in a row:

“There has been a lot of interest and more projects coming to Weta Digital, and in fact we have been doing more work since Avatar,” he said.

“Overlapping Avatar we began work on Tintin with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, so that’s in full production here as well.

“And of course we’re gearing up for The Hobbit, so we actually have quite a busy slate right now.”

The timing would fit in nicely, with The Hobbit wrapping up before Avatar shooting began.

“It’s great news on both fronts – the news about Hobbit this week and the news about Avatar. I think that means we’ve got hopefully a good future for filmmaking in Wellington.”

Variety fills in details about the films themselves:

As first reported by Variety.com, “Avatar 2” and “Avatar 3” will be Cameron’s next films. He’s hoping to begin production in late 2011, and could shoot the films back-to-back. He’s expected to begin writing early next year. […]

For Fox, it provides two cornerstone tentpoles that are expected to hit theaters in December 2014 and December 2015, respectively. […]

One unique provision of the deal is that Fox will help co-fund with Cameron a nonprofit org, the Avatar Foundation, which will support indigenous rights and the environment, including the fight against global warming. Certain proceeds from future “Avatar” pics will go to the foundation.

“Avatar 2” and “Avatar 3” will be produced by Cameron and his partner Jon Landau for Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment. Lightstorm partner Rae Sanchini negotiated the deal on behalf of the company.

Shooting two big-budget films back-to-back is still not common in the film industry; it looks like New Zealand is becoming the go-to place to make franchise films that way.

(An editorial on TVNZ asking how Weta will possibly manage all the work of two Hobbit films and two Avatar ones misses the point that the films are to be released at the end of 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 respectively. Cameron hasn’t even started writing the scripts for his films, while the Hobbit scripts have been delivered and greenlit. There shouldn’t be a logjam of work, given that schedule. The more apropos question might be what will happen with the second Tintin film.)

Stuff.co.nz has posted a follow-up story about the fire in the Rongotai warehouse that has been used for shooting involving miniatures for LOTR and King Kong. The current theory is that some batteries and/or chargers in a workshop area started the blaze. There’s no evidence for a suspicious origin for the fire.

TheOneRing.net is reporting breaking news of a fire, apparently at Peter Jackson’s miniatures facility.

[Direct link to the TVNZ updated story.]

Today Michael Fleming posted an interview with James Cameron on his Variety blog. Cameron has said in several interviews I’ve read that he decided to make Avatar because the creation of Gollum in the LOTR trilogy made him realize that CGI technology had evolved far enough to make his film possible. In this new interview, though, he praises the trilogy as a whole more enthusiastically than I have seen previously.

Variety is starting to put up a selective pay-wall, so in case you can’t get through to the interview, here’s the relevant passage (though the interview as a whole has some interesting things to say about the future of 3D):

When I see a movie that excites me visually, the feeling is extraordinary. I went to see `Lord of the Rings’ for entertainment, but you begin to think, is this something I can incorporate? That’s how this works and it goes in cycles. Peter Jackson inspired me with consummate filmmaking and the specificity of the CG that made me feel a doorway opening that enabled me to make `Avatar.’

Cameron is already talking about making two sequels to Avatar, and I would not be at all surprised if he once again chose Weta as his special-effects house.

I’ve been reading a lot of articles on Avatar and interviews with James Cameron recently. Of course, there’s so much coverage that I couldn’t possibly get through all of it. But on the whole I was disappointed at how little information there was on Weta Ltd.’s role in the film’s groundbreaking special effects.

The Hollywood Reporter’s article by Alex Ben Block, posted December 10 and published in the December 11 print edition, is the big exception. It doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty details of the technology involved, but it gives the facts and figures to show just how much Cameron’s film relied on Weta to innovate the new techniques and to slog through the laborious process of rendering a huge number of effects shots. Here’s the section of the article on Weta: more »