The blue-skinned aliens of Avatar proved golden for Weta Digital, after the Wellington company took home the Oscar statuette for best visual effects. The gong was one of three the sci-fi smash hit picked up at last night’s awards ceremony, including best art direction, which was shared by another Kiwi, Kim Sinclair. The film was widely tipped to win best picture, but lost out to the other top contender, The Hurt Locker. More..
Category: Production
LOS ANGELES and AUCKLAND, New Zealand, March 5 /PRNewswire/ — Academy Award®-winning director Sir Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings) selected Andres Borghi from Argentina as winner of the 100% Pure New Zealand Presents Your Big Break (www.your-big-break.com) short film competition today. Borghi’s film, “Working Day,” will air on IFC just prior to the Film Independent Spirit Awards live broadcast on March 5 at 8 p.m. Pacific/11 p.m. Eastern. According to Jackson, “The standard of all five films was very high. Any of them deserve to win, but it came down to personal choice. (Working Day) stood out as a fresh and original piece of storytelling. This was an extremely accomplished piece and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for Andres’ future work.” More..
Weta Digital, which intends to tackle production-related problems with its new R&D unit, handled establishing mothership shots in District 9. © 2009 Sony Pictures. Weta Digital recently formed a dedicated R&D group headed by former Autodesk senior manager Sebastian Sylwan. He will be going to SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans in two weeks to recruit talent for the group. The aim is to bridge the gap between R&D and production. Sylwan and Joe Letteri, a Weta Digital partner and visual effects supervisor on Avatar, spoke to VFXWorld exclusively about the new R&D unit. More..
A team from Weta Digital has taken out the special visual effects award at the British equivalent of the Oscars. Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham, and Andrew Jones accepted the award in London today for their work on Avatar.
Back in New Zealand, visual effects supervisor Eric Saindon said there was a lot of excitement around the Weta Digital office when news of the win came through by text message. “Everyone’s pretty ecstatic about it, it’s pretty fun to get this award.” More..
Linuxelf is building something of an online video archive of New Zealand news segments involving LOTR. Linuxelf writes “I dont think any of this stuff has been seen outside NZ so I thought it would be good to post them so other people can see them”. Take a look at these! Ngila Dickson & Richard Taylor Interviews, plus a segment about Hobbiton Tours. Continue reading “You Want Your Classic NZ LOTR News Segments? You Got ’em!”
Rumors The Hobbit might be filmed in 3-D have been around for some time and dismissed often by Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson . Even last fall, del Toro stated on the TORN message boards:
“As a co-writer and director of this film … let me be very clear one more time: we are not talking about 3D, we are NOT writing the screenplay for 3D right now.
However, he did add this caveat:
If after “Avatar” the market may change and demands are put upon us, etc that is in the future. But if such things happen and we start discussing 3D down the line, I’ll let it be know here at TORN because that’s the proper way of doing things.
True to his word, del Toro has now added an update via the TORN forum:
I wouldn’t read much on it just yet, but now, after all this time, after AVATAR doing the Box Office it did, we have had enquires from above about The Hobbit being in 3-D. No impositions or heavy leaning. Just enquires. Just fulfilling my promise to let you all know if discussions ever started. Cheers, GDT
So while there is no confirmation on filming in 3-D, there is certainly discussions under way. Add your comments to the TORN forums here!