Unfortunately, The cool dudes at TBHL have closed shop. I have kept up a relationship with these guys…
Continue ReadingUnfortunately, The cool dudes at TBHL have closed shop. I have kept up a relationship with these guys for months (You may have seen our link on their site) and they are really nice. Best of luck on all your future endevours.
The Bastards Have Landed – The Original ‘Ringers’
Just found a great article by way of Joram. It’s titled “Hobbit wanted – but no little people need apply”. by: Mark Burman, for Guartian Unlimited Network
In it Mark talk with PJ himself and asks him several questions, firstly why does he think he can tackle Tolkien’s work where other’s have failed in the past?
“I’m a real believer in trying to push yourself,” (Jackson) says. “And if you’re a film-maker, I don’t think there’s anything more amazing to be involved with than The Lord of the Rings. It’s the holy grail of film-making. It’s a once in a lifetime experience, and if we do it and we can be proud, then we want to retire when it’s all over.”
PJ also talks about shooting all 3 films back to back. And how it has it’s advantages.
“Shooting three separate movies back to back has never been done before,” says Jackson. “But I think it’s unfair to say to an audience, ‘Come to The Fellowship of the Ring and, if it’s successful, we make part two’. That’s not what we’re doing. We are making the entire trilogy, one long film shoot and then we’ll cut them all together. I guess it’s a certain form of madness.”
And when asked about fan sites (who me?) PJ had this to say:
“I do read the websites. People post up opinions about the actors and the story and I sometimes sit there for hours and hours and read the comments. It must be very frustrating to feel your favorite book is going to be filmed and think, ‘How are they going to stuff it up this time?’ “
He also discusses what you folks have been telling me is a big fear of yours, ‘the shrinking thing’
“Well, we’ve thought about that a lot. We still have tests to do but the Hobbits are the principal characters. If you study Tolkien’s descriptions of them, they are really described as small people. Between three and a half to four foot tall and they’re not strange in any other way than these large, hairy feet.
“I know casting authentic little people is the way that some people have thought we’ll go but it just doesn’t fit what Tolkien wrote. So we are casting normal sized actors and using prosthetics, computer tricks and other less complicated trickery to reduce them in size. I certainly don’t want to use puppets or CGI(computer-generated imagery) characters because this is a story about real people.”
For the rest of the article: Click Here
Peter Jackson’s whereabouts of late could provide crew clues for The Lord Of The Rings. He returned to New Zealand last month after spending three weeks in Europe, where he is believed to have interviewed possible DP’s for his three-picture adaptation of the JRR Tolkien classic. Production is tipped to start on September 18. The only casting detail confirmed to date has been the recruitment of NZ armed forces as extras.
The Wellington producer-director Peter Jackson is the new owner of The Film Unit, which is the only one-stop post-production facility in New Zealand. Based in Lower Hutt, across the harbor from Wellington, it offers 16mm and 35mm laboratory and sound facilities, including a state-of-the-art Dolby mixing suite. Peter Jackson told the Press Association: “Would I have bought the Unit if it wasn’t for Lord of the Rings (which is to start shooting in New Zealand this year for New Line Cinema)? “I probably would have thought seriously about it, because if I wasn’t doing Lord of the Rings I would have been doing some other films, and I’d still want to have the facilities in New Zealand.” The first of the three Lord of the Rings features is due to start shooting in September.
The much-hyped Star Wars prequels may be getting some serious competition from an epic movie trilogy about to be made in New Zealand, reports Helen Barlow. GEORGE Lucas might have Star Wars, and he might even be shooting parts two and three of his prequels in Sydney, but there’s another mega-production taking form on the other side of the Tasman. Peter Jackson, the George Lucas of Christchurch, is about to tackle The Lord Of The Rings. He has already spent two years devising the three films, and it hasn’t been without its hiccups.
At first Miramax Films (Shakespeare In Love) was going to fund the JRR Tolkien trilogy as two movies, and it would have been the company’s most expensive effort ever. But Miramax, who love stars like Gwyneth Paltrow at the centre of their movies, baulked and good-manneredly gave Jackson a month to come up with another company.
American outfit New Line, of Boogie Nights and The Wedding Singer fame (and more of a risk-taker than Miramax), decided it would make the films. It would also be its most costly project and, what’s more, it would be happy with three movies and no stars.
It was a great relief to Jackson that the original books (and not what he calls “some strange hybrid version”) could be filmed, and that Hollywood would be of little consequence since, as usual, he would make the films in Christchurch. And what Hollywood star wants to spend 18 months there?
“I feel quite safe and sort of isolated in New Zealand,” said Jackson. “I guess I feel that I’m out of that (Hollywood) system that I don’t particularly like. So it’s a good place to be.”
Jackson, who was born on Halloween in 1961, had been lauded internationally for his films Heavenly Creatures and his splatstick movies (a genre he invented) Bad Taste and Braindead. He had been hankering to do a bigger movie and when the long-awaited remake of his favourite film, King Kong, fell through – under the weight of Godzilla and Mighty Joe Young – The Lord Of The Rings seemed the obvious choice.
“The Lord Of The Rings is big but it’s such a wonderful property that it’s worth spending five years of your life to do,” said Jackson, talking at the International Festival of Fantasy Films in Brussels. “If it was anything other than Lord Of The Rings, I probably wouldn’t do it, but it is such an amazing story and an amazing book that it’s an honour and a privilege really. “But I wasn’t one of those total Lord Of The Rings aficionados. I read it when I was 18 and I didn’t read it again until the whole idea of doing the film came up, 17 years later.
“I was thinking about what to do after The Frighteners (his horror movie starring Michael J Fox) and I was really thinking about what is possible with computers and technology now, what amazing new places and creatures you can create. I realised this could be the ideal time to finally make Lord Of The Rings, because for 40 years it hasn’t been made as a live action movie.
“I know there have been various film-makers that at times have tried to do it, some scripts have been written, but it has always been one of those unfilmable stories. (In 1978 an animated film of the first two books of The Lord Of The Rings was directed by Ralph Bakshi.) I thought probably the time of it being unfilmable has come to an end with the advances in computer technology.”
Jackson is one of the few movie directors who truly understands the technology as well as the creative process of movie-making. He can produce the costly special effects relatively cheaply in New Zealand, but with the help of computer experts from around the globe.”I’m absolutely hopeless on computers,” he said with a laugh. “I understand what they do, which is important, I understand how they do it, but I can’t actually type in the instructions myself.”
In the three Lord Of The Rings films there will be around 65 speaking parts, and while prosthetics and other special effects will be used, the only fully computerized character will be Gollum. “He’s the little emaciated guy who’s been kind of poisoned by the ring over 500 years,” Jackson explained. “He is actually a key character in the second and third films, but he doesn’t do much in the first. There are all sort of creatures and monsters that will be created on the computer but Gollum’s different because he says dialogue and has to have an emotional connection in the story. He’s very much a real character.”
Jackson’s screenplays for Lord Of The Rings have taken form at his Christchurch home, where he has recruited his usual collaborator, partner Fran Walsh, as well as two local writers, Stephen Sinclair and Philippa Boyens.For those experiencing memory loss from their childhood, The Hobbit actually preceded The Lord of The Rings in the Tolkien saga, and told the wondrous tale of the unassuming Bilbo Baggins, who discovers a mysterious ring.
The Lord Of The Rings begins with The Fellowship Of The Ring (which is followed by The Two Towers and The Return of The King) and follows Frodo Baggins, nephew of Bilbo, as he discovers that the ring left to him by his uncle is very powerful, particularly for the evil Lord Sauron. So with his friends Sam Gamgee, Merry Brandybuck and Pippin Took, he undertakes an adventure to try to destroy it.More than 50 million copies of The Lord Of The Rings have been sold in 25 languages since the books were first published in paperback form in the 1960s. Tolkien, an English Professor at Oxford University, created the series out of his life-long interest in languages, myths and legends. His world is like a utopian peace-loving Europe, filled with wizards, elves,dwarves, dragons, goblins and more fanciful characters, like hobbits, orcs, balrogs, woses and ents.
Most of the players will be unknown, though the exact casting has yet to be decided. Jackson denied reports that Sean Connery will be in the film. “That’s just stuff that’s on the Net,” he said. “I mean, Sean would be fine, I’d love to work with him one day, he’s one of those icons. But he’s never been approached and I suspect it’s not going to happen in this movie. I can’t quite imagine Sean Connery coming down to New Zealand for 18 months.
“Whoever will be in all three of these movies will basically be spending most of 18 months in New Zealand. So it’s much better to work with unknown actors, who are happy just to do the work.” The much postponed Lord Of The Rings shooting date is now September, and Jackson promised it was set in stone.
But what of his smaller genre films? “Certainly whatever happens with Lord Of The Rings, no matter how successful or unsuccessful it is, I’m definitely going to make some smaller films next, because I’m making a big movie now, I’m making the biggest film that I ever want to make,” he said “I don’t need to make anything bigger than Lord Of The Rings, but it’s a great experience.”
