Even with The Hobbit looming on the horizon, the Lord of the Rings franchise marches on. Weta has just released a new art print, “Disturber of the Peace.” It’s a “long shot” view of The Hill, where Bag End is located, and the fields beyond. Gandalf is just arriving at the gate, adding a hint of trouble to come into the peaceful scene. (If you don’t already receive Weta’s newsletter, you can sign up for it at the bottom of the page.)

The original on which the print is based was painted by Ben Wootten, who was one of the main designers at Weta Workshop during the production of LOTR, though he went freelance about five years ago. Back in the very early days of my research on The Frodo Franchise, I made my first visit to Wellington to conduct interviews. That was October, 2003. Among the earliest interviews was the first of two conversations with Richard Taylor. Not only was he incredibly cooperative (as were all the team members I interviewed), but he had asked Daniel Falconer and Ben to join us. Needless to say, it was a wonderful and fruitful interview, providing lots of information and quotations I used in the book. more »

Ian McKellen’s Hobbit blog has a new entry, devoted mainly to Peter’s recovery and his weight loss since the two worked together on The Lord of the Rings. (That weight loss seems to have begun a couple of months after I interviewed him in early July of 2004.) Looking back to those early days, Ian mentions “remembering first time round when there was always a tempting bowl of sweets (“candy” to the Americans and “lollies” to the Kiwis) by the director’s chair.”

I never went on set, apart from watching some very late pick-ups being shot in the Stone Street Studios in October, 2003, all involving extras dressed as orcs firing imaginary arrows in front of a green screen. (Some takes ended up being used in the composite shot of Grond swinging, seen fairly close up and with a row of orcs in the foreground, firing CGI arrows.) But I did get to watch a fair amount of sound work in the brand new mixing studios at The Film Unit (later Park Road Post). Between the rows of comfy chairs and sofas at the back of the auditorium and the sound-mixing control boards roughly in the middle, there was a long, flat-topped cabinet/room divider. It’s visible in the photo above. It’s empty there, but when I was there it was constantly supplied with goodies, and a kitchen just outside the entrance had a refrigerator with cold drinks. The snacks ran the gamut from cookies and candy to granola bars and fruit. One could eat healthy stuff or not, but those cookies were pretty tempting. In fact, I was invited to help myself, though I did only occasionally. My main concern was keeping quiet so that I could remain a welcome guest. Once a cell phone went off, fortunately not mine, and it was an embarrassing moment for one of the team members. Anyway, I can imagine that during the production of a big-budget film like that, it would be hard to avoid gaining weight!

(By the way, I’m back from New York and have recovered from a short bout of flu, probably caught during the trip. There’s not a whole lot going on in Hobbit-related news, so I’m grateful to Ian’s new entry for giving me an excuse to reminisce a little about exciting times during the research for my book.)

Jack M., a Wellingtonian who guides LOTR tours, writes on his blog that the ship used for King Kong is apparently soon to be disposed of. Rumor has it that the ship will be sunk in February, somewhere off the coast for the entertainment of divers.

For most people, that ship has nothing to do with the film trilogy. For me there are connections. On my first research visit to Wellington when I was preparing The Frodo Franchise, I arrived on Sunday, September 28, 2003, and on Tuesday, the 30th, took a taxi from downtown out to the Three Foot Six offices on the Miramar peninsula. There I had an appointment to do my very first interview. Cobham Drive, the road out to the peninsula, runs along the southern edge of Evans Bay, and across the water I could see a small green ship moored at the Miramar Wharf. (Cobham Drive and Evans Bay are on the map of the area that appears on p. 292 of the book; the wharf is there as well, north of the Three Foot Six building, though not named.) My driver informed me that it was a ship purchased for King Kong. I gather this was supposedly a secret, though obviously not a very well-kept one. more »

I must confess that I keep posting off-topic announcements about Ian McKellen. I was a fan long before he donned Gandalf’s beard and pointy hat. It started way back in 1984, when my husband had a Fulbright research grant to live in Brussels for the autumn semester. I had a grant as well, so there we were, with a little apartment off the Avenue Louise, a 20-minute walk from the Royal Film Archive of Belgium. more »

Over on Observations on film art and Film Art, I’ve just posted an entry about LOTR producer Barrie Osborne’s upcoming children’s fantasy, The Water Horse (being released on Christmas Day). I got to watch some of the sound mixing at Peter Jackson’s post-production facility Park Road Post during my visit to New Zealand this past May. In the entry, I talk about that and reminisce about watching sound mixing on Return of the King.

Naturally the settlement of Peter’s lawsuit against New Line Cinema and the news that he will be producing The Hobbit had to come while I was out of the country! I was in Italy, giving a paper at a conference and visiting Pompeii and Herculaneum. Exciting stuff, but it meant I didn’t have time to digest all the news coverage and write about the new situation.

That digestion got set back even more when on our way home my husband and I were delayed 24 hours by the big snow-rain-fog storm that has snarled air traffic in the Midwest this weekend. We got bussed from Minneapolis to Madison last night and arrived at 2 am. As soon as jet-lag and holiday activities permit, I’ll be posting a summary of the recent Hobbit-related events.

In the meantime, I notice that people are checking out my older entries about the Hobbit project and the New Line lawsuit. Some of the entries in the Hobbit Project category provide background information that might aid an understanding of what the lawsuit was all about.

Now the The Frodo Franchise is out, I’ve been doing some radio and print interviews. These sometimes allow me to talk a little about my three visits to New Zealand during 2003 and 2004, when I was conducting interviews for the book. I also got to tour most of the filmmaking facilities created by Peter Jackson and his colleagues. Overall I spent about ten weeks there in Queenstown, Auckland, and mostly Wellington.

I have a lot of exciting memories from those days, of course. I’d like at intervals to share some of those with you on this blog. My interviewees were also extraordinarily helpful, and I was not able to use nearly all the information they provided me. I’m hoping that, with their permission, I can transcribe some sections of those interviews (a big task, since originally I just took notes on them) and post them here. more »