We’re just a little over a week away now from the world-wide release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and fans are getting a final tease of what should be a superb collectible. Jerry Vanderstelt has released the last of his teaser images for his upcoming print that will capture The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. In this image we get a fantastic look at brothers Dwalin, Balin, a small glimpse of Thorin, and the eagles. Stay tuned and as soon as this goes up for order you will know so you can order this great collectible for your collection.
Jerry has this to stay about his last teaser image:
“Well friends, here is the last teaser of my Hobbit art. I am getting very near the end of finishing up the Original and soon this art will be available as Fine Art Giclee prints in Canvas and Paper editions, but here’s a little something for now!”
Ian McKellen chats with TODAY’s Matt Lauer about reprising his role as Gandalf the Wizard in the new film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and working with the special effects required to create Middle Earth. He says in it “he has five more weeks (of shooting) to do next year” and that working on the green screen can be “a bit unnerving”. Continue reading “Ian McKellen interviewed on MSNBC”
Peter Jackson’s grand experiment with 48-frames-per-second digital footage is just the latest in a long line of filmmakers pushing the technological envelope in Hollywood.
There’s been plenty of buzz about the upcoming film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, but it’s not just about the movie itself. It’s also about the format the director Peter Jackson has decided to use, which he just defended in detail in a Facebook post yesterday. Normally, films are shot at 24 frames per second (fps), and have been for roughly 80 years. American television is broadcast at 29.97 fps, while European television is broadcast at 25 fps. Each of these have a unique look to which we’ve all grown accustomed. Continue reading “PCmag explains what 48fps means and how it works”
Will Gollum appear at the end of the third film?Although the wait is nearly over for the familiar goblins and mystical forests of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, senior visual-effects supervisor Joe Letteri says the only thing that remains the same for this iteration of Peter Jackson’s fantasy films is on the surface. The digital tools that brought countless Orcs to life and gave Gollum his distinctive distorted face are virtually unrecognizable from those used a decade ago for the The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
“It’s changed almost completely,” Letteri says. “On the outside, you want Gollum to look like the same character, but he’s completely different” underneath.
The biggest change from the first set of films is the way that actor Andy Serkis’ performance is captured and analyzed in order to create the digital character, according to visual-effects supervisor Eric Saindon. “Our facial capture has progressed leaps and bounds,” he says. “Now we actually capture all of Andy’s performance, when he’s acting with Martin (Freeman) in Gollum’s cage on set. We have a small camera attached in front of his face that captures his exact facial performance. Rather than an animator going in and doing it frame-by-frame, the computer analyzes Andy’s performance and then fires Gollum’s muscles to do the exact same thing. So the first half of the animation, which is the raw mo-cap data, is really Andy.”
“We know so much more about how the face works,” Letteri adds. “When people communicate face to face there are so many things that are going on that you really have to study now and put into the characters. We hope that people recognize that there’s this extra layer of depth.”
Thanks to Ringer Lissuin on the TORn message boards we have the following translation of the article in Swedish paper Nöjesbladet talking about Mikael Persbrandt and his role as Beorn in The Hobbit. Warning: some film and book spoilers! Continue reading “Jackson: Persbrandt to gain larger role in The Hobbit”
We’re just a little over a week away now from the world-wide release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and fans are getting a final tease of what should be a superb collectible. Jerry Vanderstelt has released the last of his teaser images for his upcoming print that will capture The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. In this image we get a fantastic look at brothers Dwalin, Balin, a small glimpse of Thorin, and the eagles. Stay tuned and as soon as this goes up for order you will know so you can order this great collectible for your collection.
