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.”
Sculptor Anneke Bester is profiled in the Christchurch Mail for the Hobbit premiere. November 29, 2012. Ringer Paul sends us this article from the November 29 edition of The Christchurch Mail about the sculpting work of Anneke Bester. Continue reading “Tireless artist sculpts staffs of legend”
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” features at least 13 dwarves, a hobbit lead and a Shire-full of supporting hobbits, three wizards, an elven queen and many more characters, and that’s just the first film in the Peter Jackson trilogy; Britain-based designer Ann Maskrey was tasked with creating costumes for them all. Maskrey is new to Middle-earth, but her previous work includes designing costumes for the “Star Wars” prequels, “Clash of the Titans” and Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland.” Hero Complex recently spoke with Maskrey about the challenges of dressing the dwarves and designing the look for a new wizard. Read the full article on the Los Angeles Times here.
In this neat little video, Channel 7 Australia’s James Tobin chats with master swordsmith Peter Lyon about the weapons he made for The Hobbit. Some really interesting info about Orcrist, Thorin’s /other/ sword and Bolg’s massive be-spiked war-mace.
It’s not that long ago that Howard Shore’s OST for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was fully revealed for the first time as a listenable web-stream. Problem was, you couldn’t pick single tracks to listen to, and if you paused it, you had to start all over. Now, Rolling Stone offers the standard edition to listen to in its entirety with the ability to select tracks independently and the ability to pause as well.
Or if you want to trial the Special Edition, Watchtower Records has short previews from every track available on its website.
In the Rolling Stone article, Neil Finn says that “Song of the Lonely Mountain” builds on a musical theme written for the movie by New Zealand film composers Plan 9 and David Long, which a group of dwarves sing in an early scene. To work on the song, Finn put himself in the dwarves’ shoes.
“I’d get a little melody and I’d think, ‘Would a dwarf sing that?’ And you go, ‘No, it’s too floral. It’s not earthy enough,'” he says. “Even though there’s aspects of brotherhood and kinship in the song, I had a line about love and Peter and Fran [Walsh, co-writer and co-producer] sort of looked at me and said, ‘No, not love. There’s something not quite right about that.’ It’s not a love song.”
Fans of the Lord of the Rings film know that of the three screenwriters, Fran Walsh is the one who avoids interviews and other sorts of publicity. When I was doing my research for The Frodo Franchise, I managed to talk with Peter and Philippa, but not Fran, who sent word that she was too wrapped up in working on King Kong to think back to her previous project. Fair enough, as Bilbo says in agreeing to a certain riddling game. Still, fans of the trilogy can’t help but be intrigued by this talented lady. After all, she not only helped write the LOTR scripts, but she did some directing and came up with the idea for the famous “Gollum talks to himself” scene.
But yesterday the New York Times published a substantial piece on Ms Walsh, written by Brooks Barnes, who is obviously a lucky fellow. Last summer, he says, he “largely roamed without supervision” during a two-day visit to the Hobbit set–spotting, among other things, Ian McKellen in full Gandalf mode catching a snooze between scenes.
Even so, his eventual interview with Fran had to be done via long-distance telephone. Philippa chimed in as well, which makes sense, given how closely these two collaborate on the scripts. Very closely, in fact, since they reveal that they often work in bed together in their pajamas, surrounded by dogs! (When I interviewed Philippa, she was living next door to Fran and Peter, and I suppose she still does.) It saves the trouble of commuting the short distance to the Miramar filmmaking facilities.
