Guillermo del Toro Chats with TORN About ‘The Hobbit’ Films!

April 25th, 2008 by xoanon | Discuss | Comments Off

In an exclusive interview with TheOneRing.net, Guillermo del Toro talks about Ian McKellen, Andy Serkis, Howard Shore, Animatronics vs CGI, the ‘tone’ of the upcoming ‘Hobbit’ films and much more!

We had the opportunity to chat with Guillermo del Toro this morning from his current HQ in London. He’s hard at work putting the finishing touches on ‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army’ and taking interviews from news outlets about that film, and the recent announcement that he’ll be doing ‘The Hobbit’ and a subsequent Hobbit sequel down the line.

First things first, YES, that is him on our message boards, he told me he intends to post there as often as he humanly can. And yes, he is as cool and approachable as he sounds. Take a look at my interview!

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More about Alan Lee, Andy Serkis, Casting Rumors, Guillermo Del Toro, Headlines, Hobbit Book, Hobbit Movie, Howard Shore, Ian McKellen, John Howe, Locations Sets, New Zealand, Other Crew, Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor, The Hobbit, WETA Digital, WETA Workshop

Doctor Who goes ‘Massive’

April 5th, 2008 by maegwen Comments Off

From Digital Spy: “The opening episode of Doctor Who’s new season used groundbreaking special effects technology that was created for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.” ‘Who’ uses ‘Lord of the Rings’ technology (spoiler free for tonight’s premiere)

Sketching Tour with Daniel Reeve – LotR Artist and Calligrapher

November 6th, 2007 by Corvar Comments Off

If you have a spare couple of weeks to take a tour of New Zealand next October, Red Carpet Tours has setup a wonderful tour that includes Daniel Reeve. He will be leading sketching workshops and traveling with the group to a variety of locations where the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed. I haven’t had the pleasure of taking one of these tours, but according to the people who have, they are fantastic. [More]

New Font by Daniel Reeve

August 5th, 2007 by xoanon Comments Off

Stan writes: LOTR artist Daniel Reeve has a new font, “Shire Regular, as written by Frodo Baggins” available for purchase on his website danielreeve.co.nz.

Radio Watch: Gino Acevedo on radionz.co.nz

July 15th, 2007 by xoanon Comments Off

Rachel, Web Content Manager for Weta, sends this along: Tomorrow, Weta Workshop’s Senior Prosthetics Supervisor Gino Acevedo will be interviewed on National Radio’s Nine to Noon programme. Gino will be interviewed by host Kathryn Ryan on National Radio’s Nine To Noon programme about his work on King Kong and his little known conservation projects. The interview will broadcast on NZ Tues 17 July at 10.05am. Take a listen to the archived interview here.

New Adventures in Middle-earth

May 22nd, 2006 by Tehanu Comments Off

Recent travellers on Red Carpet’s Lord of the Rings locations tour have been wowed by a new guest attraction – none other than Brett Beattie, body double to Gimli. Tour chiefs Vic and Rae James say they’ve been fascinated by the stories Brett can tell from his long days on the set. Brett probably spent as much time as any of the actors filming up and down the whole country, and his recollections can hold a tour party spellbound. Check out tours

The March tour was so enthused by their tour experience that some members put together a messageboard for past, present and future LOTR tour parties to share their stories. [More]

Shane Rangi to Attend Elf Fantasy Fair

April 4th, 2006 by leo Comments Off

Shane Rangi, the stuntman/actor who played several characters in the Rings-trilogy and was recently spotted in as General Otmin in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, will be amongst this years guests at the Elf Fantasy Fair. Other guests include cartographer Daniel Reeve and fantasyauthors Stan Nicholls, Tad Williams and Cate Tiernan. The event, which draws some 20.000 visitors to The Netherlands each year, will be held on the 22nd and 23rd of April. Head over to their website for more information! [ElfFantasy.nl]

Three-Time Oscar Winner Joe Letteri of Weta Digital to Create Visual Effects for ‘The Water Horse’

March 8th, 2006 by xoanon Comments Off

LOS ANGELES, March 8 /PRNewswire/ — Weta Digital’s Joe Letteri, who was a member of the Academy Award©-wining Weta Digital teams that created the visual effects for “King Kong,” “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” will serve as the visual effects supervisor on the upcoming Walden Media, Beacon Pictures and Revolution Studios co-production “The Water Horse.” Most recently Letteri, along with Weta Digital colleagues Brian Van’t Hul, Christian Rivers and Richard Taylor, won the Oscar© for Achievement in Visual Effects for the groundbreaking work on “King Kong” at the 78th Annual Academy Awards on March 5th. [More]

Videoconferencing Kept Lord of Rings on Track

January 31st, 2006 by xoanon Comments Off

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson needed to view what seven film crews were shooting. His solution: push the envelope on videoconferencing technology. In the pitch-black night of the New Zealand winter, Duncan Nimmo, information technology manager of 3Foot6 Ltd., and his two-man crew hoisted heavy equipment—including spools of military-grade fiber-optic cable, a battery pack, wireless computer modem and an eight-foot-high antenna—up Mount Ruapehu in Tongariro National Park. They had followed worn goat tracks up the slope, and were high in the clouds. A snowstorm threatened to blow them off the mountain. [More]

ORC Report: What’s New with Calligrapher and Mapmaker Daniel Reeve

January 28th, 2006 by xoanon Comments Off

Daniel explained that the creating the actual film props turned out to be only part of his work. He went on to work with dozens of merchandising licensees, preparing a massive style guide for them to ensure uniformity in graphic presentation, and then also created the titles and graphics for the DVD releases in dozens of languages.

The scope of his work is pretty amazing: Every character and location in The Lord of the Rings has its own unique type treatment, a graphic style and look that helps communicate the essence of that character or place. Even individuals in the same culture were distinguished from one another – Daniel created different handwriting styles for Bilbo and Frodo even though they both wrote using the same hobbit alphabet. Daniel also trained the actors, like Elijah Wood and Ian Holm, who had to write on screen. Fan-favorite exhibits include Elijah’s calligraphy practice sheets.

After the Lord of the Rings, Daniel continued to work with WETA, creating maps and calligraphy for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and King Kong. If you saws these two films, you’d recognize his handiwork in Tumnus’ arrest warrant, signed and paw-printed by Maugrim, and in the map of Skull Island, which resembles a gorilla print, and the New York newspapers and posters.

In an informal Sunday morning breakfast, Daniel talked a bit about his recent projects. He was selected by the New Zealand government to work on a prestigious calligraphy project creating replicas of the Treaty of Waitangi (1840), the founding documents of the New Zealand nation, consisting of nine documents recording agreements between the British Crown and over five hundred Māori chiefs. The materials are a central part of an exhibition on the treaty, called Treaty 2 U, that’s touring New Zealand in a mobile exhibition trailer from January to May 2006.

He also worked on Dead Letters, a short independent film shot recently in Wellington by Quarter Acre Pictures and directed by Paolo Rotondo. The film, shot in just six days, is a wartime love story set in 1943 involving piles of letters sent to soldiers serving overseas. Grant Major is working on the film’s production design, and Park Road Post is one of many Wellington area businesses supporting the project. Dead Letters was one of only nine films funded by the New Zealand Film Commission’s Short Film Fund in 2005. It will be released this year.

For the film Daniel created letters in different handwriting. Daniel, or actually his hand, makes its film debut writing on camera, in an extreme close-up because the letter writer is supposed to be a woman. Like many others working on this independent film project, Daniel donated his time and talent.

He’s also created a set of illustrations for game cards for Hasbro’s upcoming game based on Pirates of the Caribbean (Reminder: Orlando Bloom fans can see their man in action as Will Turner starting July 7 in the US).

For ORC, Daniel had brought just under a hundred handwritten copies of Bilbo’s birthday party invitation to personalize for attendees and sell. They all sold out Friday, with lines forming at his table immediately after the presentation.

Daniel is a wonderfully talented, gentle, and unassuming artist. I found him standing in the back of the auditorium Saturday while Elijah and Sean were speaking and had to tell him more than once to go up and take an empty seat in the front so they could see he was there.

More about Dead Letters.

Daniel’s website.

Michael Pellerin Interview on AintitCoolNews

January 3rd, 2006 by xoanon Comments Off

AICN writer Quint writes: Quint here with a chat I had recently with a man by the name of Michael Pellerin. Michael is the dude most directly responsible for those amazing LORD OF THE RINGS Extended Edition DVDs and has also recently contributed to that fantastic documentary on the 1933 KING KONG DVD as well as providing all those weekly (or bi-weekly as it was during the filming) Production Diaries for Peter Jackson’s KING KONG. I met Michael on one of my last days on the set of KONG. He’s a big fan of the site and even though the pressure of recording DVD material as well as cutting material for the online Production Diaries was obviously stressing him out I could still tell that he was in his element, doing what he loves. [More]

Meet Daniel Reeve at Elements Festival

December 15th, 2005 by xoanon Comments Off

One of the creative talents behind the King Kong Christmas blockbuster, and the Lord of the Rings movies will outline his work at a special presentation at the Porirua Festival of the Elements on Waitangi Day. Titahi Bay’s own Daniel Reeve has become internationally known for his calligraphy and cartography work in films including all three of the LOTR movies, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, King Kong and Van Helsing. [More]