{"id":95589,"date":"2014-12-10T23:52:56","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T04:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/?p=95589"},"modified":"2014-12-10T23:52:56","modified_gmt":"2014-12-11T04:52:56","slug":"dan-hennah-talks-about-the-designs-for-the-battle-of-the-five-armies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2014\/12\/10\/95589-dan-hennah-talks-about-the-designs-for-the-battle-of-the-five-armies\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Hennah talks about the designs for “The Battle of the Five Armies”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MCDLOOF<\/a>Here\u2019s the transcript of an interview with\u00a0Dan Hennah<\/strong>\u00a0conducted with TheOneRing.net and a handful of other reporters during a\u00a0set visit to\u00a0The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0This is blissful!<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0This is our concept room. Normally, we have all the pictures, all the concept art from all the sets around the walls. In this case, we’ve just got the concept art for the pick-ups. So we’ve cleaned the room out and we re-pictured ourselves. So really, this last ten weeks of shooting, well, it’s only six weeks so far, is pretty much what’s on the wall. Starting off on the left, there was Bree streets, which was a great fun thing to revisit. The thing with Bree streets that we never established when we shot it the first time for Lord of the Rings<\/em> was where Aragorn’s room was, because we shot the exteriors long before we built the interiors. So this time around, with our re-build, we established a window that matches the window that Aragorn was looking through when he saw the Ringwraiths. That’s something for trainspotters to look for.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Was that fun, to revisit the streets again?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0It was absolutely fantastic. It really was cool. And we had a few pieces from the old Prancing Pony, Bree’s streets, the sign for the Prancing Pony and there was a sort of cenotaph statue outside. And this time around, we were also able to integrate the Prancing Pony with Bree’s streets as one set, so you could walk off Bree’s streets in through the door of the Prancing Pony, whereas previously, one was inside, one was outside.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0\u00a0Where did you build it? Was it out in the back lot?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0In the F stage. Yeah, F stage. Beorn’s house was a great fun build that we did and shot previously. And we’ve just rebuilt elements of it this time for pick-ups, not the whole thing.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0This is movie two stuff, right? Beorn is the bear.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) Yeah, yeah. Beorn’s now in movie two. Anduin Grasslands was really just an interim piece of location between the Carrocks and Beorn’s– It’s where Bilbo first sees Beorn and comes running down to tell the guys there’s a big monster there. And that was all shot in the stage. A couple of small set pieces.<\/p>\n

High Fells tomb, this is one of the places Gandalf goes. Every time in the book when he wanders off and leaves them alone, he goes somewhere, and one of the places is the High Fells tomb where he discovers that the Kings of Men have been resurrected. He’s not quite sure what as, at that point, but he finds out later on.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Is this a real location?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) That’s a real location that we did a little bit of artwork on to make a chiseled cliff face, and then we built some elements.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Where was the location?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0It’s Glen Eyrie Lakes in Central Otago.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0It’s gorgeous.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:\u00a0<\/strong>It’s a beautiful place. Just below that, there’s big, black lakes. You can just see the tip of one in that photograph. Yeah.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Excuse my ignorance, but how are these artworks made?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/b>\u00a0Those are all generated, computer artworks. And Mirkwood Forest Gate was a set we built for the pick-ups with some Elven elements that were quite elegant, but very old and slightly disheveled. And then the trees themselves on the outside of the forest are really just great, big ancient forest trees, but once you go inside the forest, they get really creepy. Well, really psychedelic, in a way.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Is that a butterfly?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. That’s just about the scale. I was just trying to work it out, what the scale of Mirkwood was.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Yeah, that’s a big tree.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:\u00a0<\/strong>Huge, ancient tree with a canopy above.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Was it the same scale, how it worked in the films?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Pretty much, yeah.<\/p>\n

\"DoSMirkwood\"<\/a>Question:<\/em>\u00a0Mirkwood seems to have a Dagobah, swampy feel.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0It has a swampy feel and it has very much a fungal element going on, which is what we interpreted as creating the hallucinations, this feeling of disorientation that these guys get. They are breathing in the spores of those psychedelic mushrooms and starting to see things. And in the set itself, we put a lot of color into those sets. And then the lighting, of course. And the forty-eight frame, the high frame rate and the 3-D took a lot of that color out. So we had to put it in enough to for you to read it, but it always looked– When you’re there for real, you go, “Wow, this is too much color.”<\/p>\n

Question:<\/em>\u00a0Is Peter planning a smell-o-vision element to that? Is he going to pump some psychotics into the theater at that point?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) It would be cool, wouldn’t it? That would be very cool.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Roger Corman would do it, is all I’m saying. William Castle would be all over that.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Thranduil’s realm. The thing with Thranduil’s realm is that it’s all inside the mountain, But he’s tried to create, all the elves have tried to create the feeling of a forest, but in a very art nouveau-influenced way.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Interesting, because it’s a very Dwarvish instinct, and he’s not a fan, so–<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0No, no, no. He’s not. But for whatever reason, they live under the mountain. So we’ve tried to keep the very Elvish art nouveau influence going in that environment.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0So are a lot of these concepts Alan and John’s?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"022611barrels01\"Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0A lot of Alan and John’s. There’s a few that are Anthony Allan, who’s a guy who is still here, and Ra Vincent, our set decorator. So four of them, really. And Gus Hunter, of course, from Weta. He always churns out so many beautiful stuff. The sluice gates, the old trick of the barrels into the water and off down, that was too good a chance to let it go past without having a good ride. So yeah, we built quite a lot of stuff for that. Including a big, circular sluice that we drove with two five hundred horsepower jet units to get the water flowing. Did you see them when you were–<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Yeah. Well, there was–Andy was shooting those, right?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0That’s right, that’s right.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0They are on the river, too.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0And on the river, yeah.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0That was interesting, watching dwarves float down. They didn’t get off on the right spot.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Were you at the Pelorus River as well? Yeah, yeah. You realize that the day after, it had risen fifteen meters?<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0(overlaps) Yeah, no, crazy. Saw that.\u00a0They should have had the cameras rolling. You wouldn’t have had <indistinct><\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0That would have been cool.<\/p>\n

These are just continuity shots from Thranduil’s cellars, which we shot in the main shoot, but we’re doing some pick-ups again now. This is the High Fells Grasslands. This is just beside the High Fells– Well, it’s just after Gandalf and Radagast have come out of the High Fells tomb and they’re talking, they realize that the Kings of Men have been resurrected as some sort of spirits, and Gandalf goes off to Dol Guldur. And Dol Guldur we see quite a lot of. It’s a very mean, vicious place in the Great Greenwood, which is now Mirkwood Forest. And it’s the main influence, it’s the main dark influence. They have all these vines that have– And toxins and things that have killed off all the trees or are making things rot. And there’s a whole lot of confrontation there between– Well, first Gandalf finds Thror, who’s been held prisoner for years. Then he confronts the Ringwraiths, who are the Kings of Men who have been resurrected by Sauron, and then he has a confrontation with Sauron, and some elves come and help him out. It’s all pretty much out of the end of The Return of the King, the appendices. So it’s all from the Tolkien resource.<\/p>\n

Bard’s house. We go to Lake-town. Of course, Bard picks the dwarves up on the river and takes them to Lake-town. He takes them into Bard’s house. There’s a whole lot of subterfuge going on as they are sneaking around trying to get weapons and trying to get supplies to go to the Lonely Mountain without giving away too much. And the Master of Lake-town, who’s a really great character, is trying to stop them, or trying to get a part of anything that’s going on, basically.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Stephen Fry, yeah?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. So Lake-town we pretty much treated as a village on a lake that is a few hundred years old, and the bed of the lake is mud and so the village has sunk a little bit here and a little bit there. And so it’s all a bit higgledy-piggledy. And pretty run right down. The tax department have been taking too much money, the people haven’t got anything left. It’s a story that all governments should watch.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0The Master’s listening in on all the emails and the phone calls.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) Yeah, yeah, all that stuff.<\/p>\n

\"Dwarven<\/a><\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0He’s got his own prison running.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Valley of Dale. The whole city of Dale– In the first place, we saw the city of Dale in all its glory in the first picture, in the prologue to the first picture. But when we see it again now, it’s been ruined, it’s been blown by Smaug a hundred and sixty odd years earlier. And so the dwarves who walk through there on their way to the Lonely Mountain find it pretty much as it was. No one’s been there. There’s petrified bodies and all sorts of stuff in the streets. And from Dale they see Erebor, and they of course travel on to Erebor, and they find their way around the back. And we have the big statue of Thrain. I think it’s Thrain. Or Durin? Thrain. Around the back. And they climb up the statue to this little piece at the back and they find the door into the back of the Lonely Mountain. So we built that as a set piece which we just resurrected and just chopped up again.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0You built the giant head?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. The giant head, it’s very cool. And then, of course, they go inside the Lonely Mountain and they find it in a very wrecked state. But there are some rooms that are beautiful that the dragon hasn’t got to and some that the dragon has got to and stored up all the gold. So there’s a whole lot of stuff that happens inside Erebor.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0That’s what they’re shooting on K, right?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"BotFATrailer73\"<\/a>Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ravenhill Fortress.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Almost has an Escher quality to it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, yeah, it really does. That’s a pet John Howe piece. Ravenhill has been a great challenge. It’s taken four years to find out what Ravenhill is. And obviously we always knew that it’s an outpost of the Dwarves, but it was really how Peter wanted to use it in the film and so therefore what we had to build.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0That’s the dragon.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, which is in the trailer. Without giving too much away.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Yeah. “It’s in the trailer.”\u00a0There is a Smaug in The Desolation of Smaug.\u00a0Yeah.\u00a0We were pretty surprised to see it in the trailer, actually. I was.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Me, too. But interestingly enough, you don’t actually see all that much. You think you’ve seen it, but it’s a shadow and an eye.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0(overlaps) Yeah, you see just a little there.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0And right now we’re just shooting this Battle of the Five Armies stuff, which are very much film three elements.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0So, Dan, just to make sure I understand, and to get it on tape, the purpose of all these is to help you guys when you need to build them practically. That’s really what it’s all about.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Dale2_The_Hobbit\"<\/a>Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0It is. There’s a two-fold purpose. First, to establish what Peter’s vision is, which is what concept artwork really does. And then from that, we, in discussion with Peter, work out which part of that he feels he needs, which part he can shoot. And then we go out and we make a model. And the model is usually the elements that we think he needs for his shoot and he think he needs for this shoot. He looks at the model, and invariably we’ve modeled a little bit more than he thinks and it’s going to cost a little more than we’ve got. So he can say, “Well, I like this bit and I like this bit,” and then we go into set design. So then there’s a whole set drawn before we start construction. But right next door, we’ve got some models. So if you’re ready, we’ll pop up.<\/p>\n

This is the garden city of Dale. This is as we built it for the prologue. And in this case, we built the model thinking, “Oh, yeah, we might need to build this piece as a set, or maybe that piece or that piece.” And Peter liked it all so much that we built the whole thing as a set. So that’s up the hill. Have you been up there? Mount Crawford. It’s where we’re shooting on Monday.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Yeah. I’ve heard it’s awesome.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0What we did was we build it like this in all its finery in mid-summer, with this little carousel and all the fruit and vegetables. And then we shot that for two days and then we trashed all of the greenery and cut holes in the roofs and burnt windows and so we made it look as post-Smaug.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0So the Dale that’s out there now is the–<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Dale is post-Smaug. Yeah.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0So, this is Dale.\u00a0This is pre-Smaug.\u00a0This is happy Dale.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0This is very happy Dale. This is a little pick-up piece we built for the cellar, the wine cellar. Thranduil’s wine cellar.<\/p>\n


\nQuestion:\u00a0We get to put dibs on one of these that we get to take.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n

\"Dol<\/a>Question:\u00a0(overlaps) <indistinct><\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Henneh:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, yeah. Oh, this is a piece of Dol Guldur. Purely, this one is just for pick-ups. So, it was just these various elements that we could bring in and then move around, so we could re-create these different parts for his various pick-up shots.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0So, was this built in such a way that you know if you’re going to shoot a certain element, then you know exactly how to build just that one small–<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) Yes. But also, you had the scene with the bridge and train but then he also wanted a pick-up scene of something else. So, we had to bring one of these over and put it there and take this out. So it was very much a changeable set that we built. There’s Laketown, we’re just resurrecting this model but that was sort of part of the Laketown build. And Laketown, really– Did you see Laketown for real? Yeah, yeah. We built some more.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0What kind of time, to build this, is involved? How quickly can somebody make this?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:\u00a0<\/strong>With enough people, we probably built this in about three weeks.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0All right! So that’s good to know. But I mean just the model.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh, the model? Oh, sorry. I was talking about the set.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0(overlaps) I wasn’t clear. The sets– That’s great to know, too, actually.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0The model. How long did you take to build this model?<\/p>\n

Crew Member:<\/strong>\u00a0Three or four days?<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Wow! \u00a0Including painting and all that?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, knowing what the pieces were, this model, how long did that take?<\/p>\n

Crew Member:<\/strong>\u00a0That was a little bit longer. Maybe like a month for that one.<\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0But for that we had six model makers working, so it’s all about resource. How many people you can throw at something. This is the big Dol Guldur model, which was a courtyard we built for the main shoot. And so we pulled that back out to reference for what we needed for the pick-up shoots.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Is it usual to build so many models for a film like this? Or is this something very characteristic of Weta?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) It’s very characteristic of Peter.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Of Peter?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. Weta don’t have– This is just the art department. \u00a0Individual contractors doing this stuff.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Yeah. Peter?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0But, it’s really for Peter and it’s really a great way to establish what you’re building.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Are these referenced into the computer as well? Do they start here and then the computer artists scan these and–<\/em><\/p>\n

\"BotFATrailer70\"<\/a>Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) Yeah. They do, and also the concept artists who were working on all of this have gone on to Weta Digital, so they’re working in the computer generation department and also our head of set design has gone with Weta Digital. So, he’s got all the plans of everything we’ve built, so that sort of fed into the system as well. It’s a really integrated process.<\/p>\n

These are just some elements of Erebor that we’re resurrecting and will be setting up for the next couple of weeks to shoot pick-ups in and around the Dwarf mines and the Dwarf holes. All through Erebor, in fact…the ramparts. And this what they’re shooting on today. That’s Ravenhill Fortress. So, the pathway up into Ravenhill, the gateway, the bridge across, there\u00a0was a bridge across the lake and then the watchtower at Ravenhill. We are going to build– Next week we’re going to start building the Frozen Lake, so you can have ice hockey with swords.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Blood will look great on that.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0That’s the model in K stage, I mean the set in K stage is that element there. And in G stage is that element there.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0So where are they standing as they look over? Just on the edge there, right?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0That shot that we were shooting earlier?<\/p>\n

Question: Yeah.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0They’re standing right– But what we’ve done is we’ve cheated it for being on this side. It’s a sort of convoluted way of doing something.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0And where are they looking? Where is Fili and–<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) They’re looking up there.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Oh, so they’re looking up? Where is Fili getting munted?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Up there.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Right, okay. They’re looking up? \u00a0Yeah, it really felt down, but it’s hard to know exactly.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. No, until the geography gets played with, it’s always– It’s not about the geography, it’s about the drama.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Most importantly, how can that guy do that? \u00a0Yeah, I’m waiting for that moment in the film.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) He’s falling. This is a moment in time. It’s like the eagle can stay in the air.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0That’s right. Yeah.\u00a0Nice repelling scene.\u00a0So the rigs bull comes and kills them all.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, that’s right. Kills us.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Yeah, sure.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0This is a set we built in K stage, which is Smaug’s lair and I can’t remember how many coins we made for it. But there was a lot.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0You actually made–<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0We made fifty buckets of gold coins.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Actual coins?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Actually, no. We ended up with fifty buckets, I think we made a hundred and fifty buckets.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0So it was a hundred buckets worth that ended up in the pockets of–<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Oh, who knows. It was certainly a lot of souvenirs I noticed.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0<\/strong>What were the coins made out of?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0They were pressed out of aluminum and plated in gold.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0(overlaps) Real gold? This is a big production. They don’t half-ass that stuff.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) Real gold. Yeah.<\/p>\n

But also we have sheets and sheets of molded rubber coins, so the actual coins were really just to sprinkle over the top to get the reflec–<\/p>\n

Question:<\/em>\u00a0(overlaps) The molded coins were to give the impression of more gorgeous coins.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) Yeah. Lots of gold.<\/p>\n

Huge amounts of gold. That’s the edge of Dol Guldur where it runs off across this big chasm into the ruined forest. There’s Beorn’s chair.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Nice!<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0That’s the Beorn-sized one. We also built a huge one.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Is this Mirkwood?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:\u00a0<\/strong>Yeah, that’s a piece of Mirkwood that we built for pick-ups. So we have all these various numbered trees that we take away and bring back. And that’s just got a hint of the color scheme of what we painted.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0So, when the show’s over, does this all go into storage?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, pretty much. Most of these crates had some of these in them. And we brought them back and we’ll crate it all up again.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Are any of them for sale?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0You’d have to ask Peter that question.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0What was that, I’m sorry?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"ThranduilOnThrone\"<\/a>Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0That’s Thranduil’s throne. And that’s the set piece that we built as the backdoor into Erebor.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Do the toy licensers and the merchandizing, do they reference these things?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0No. No, these were really just for the film. Just for Peter.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Kind of got a Lovecraft-ian–\u00a0(overlaps) Yeah, it does. doesn’t it?\u00a0(overlaps) Weird, this quasi-organic feel to it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, that’s the very, sort of, Elvish art nouveau influence.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Art nouveau meets David Cronin.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0This was just one of the entrances out of Thranduil’s realm.<\/p>\n

That’s all part of the process. That’s a piece of Dol Gulgur, obviously. This is the great hall of\u00a0Dale, with Thranduil’s campaigned here, when he first turns up. He sets up at the great hall of Dale, and then packs that up and goes down to Erebor and then the battle kicks in.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Where does he pack his tent up?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0He packs it up. Well, he doesn’t personally pack it, but he has people who pack up.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Do we see it after without the taping?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes, we do. In fact it’s at A stage right now.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0(overlaps) Right, so it does get taken down in the story. Well, not physically.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) No, no, no.\u00a0It just goes away.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0(overlaps) It goes away somehow and you find it’s not there anymore.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0That’s right. But he goes away with it.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0It’s in his backpack.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n

That’s the Erebor ramparts, or it’s a set piece we built as part of the Erebor ramparts. This is where all the argy-bargy takes place with the boys shouting at each other back and forth.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Do you have a favorite? It’s work for you, but is there anything–<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lake-Town_TORn\"<\/a>Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Laketown has got to be my favorite, just because you have this sort of water and the boats moving through the sea. It’s got a lot going for it. They are all sort of favorites but that would be the main one I like. And I guess Ravenhill because it’s so hard to get there. That’s sort of cool.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0How’d you get to how it looked?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. It took four years to find out what it looked like. So that was all worth the journey.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0How did you settle on the shade of green? It’s very, very–<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) Well, there’s– One of the concepts from the very earliest stage of the journey was that they’re travelling east. In Lord of the Rings we traveled south, and here we’re traveling east. So, we sort of took the view that if you went east across Europe you’d start to encounter different influences on architecture and color and that sort of thing. And so we took that on board. So as you go, you get into Tibet and you get into Lapland and you know that sort of thing. And there’s a mountain in China, where they mine this green and gold marble so we took that as an influ– Well, why would the whole Lonely Mountain not be a huge chunk of green and gold marble with quartz running through it? And the Dwarves are in there, chipping away at the quartz getting the gold and the diamonds out and making this architecture of the center and then polishing it up. So we went very much for a polished inside. Just a polished green and gold marble.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Awesome!\u00a0Very striking. It looks awesome.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0It was quite cool, when I found the reference to what was coming out of this mine and tunnel, I was just delighted<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Yeah.\u00a0“That’s it!”<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0“That’s it! That’s it!”<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0And then Peter goes, “Eh.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0No, no. No he didn’t! He bought into it straight away and bought into it a hundred percent. So, it wasn’t just an influence. It was like, this is it. Which is very cool. Very cool.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0I like the little fellows as well. \u00a0It seems obvious, but you guys make all your little guys as well, right?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Yeah, I was going to ask that one. \u00a0Maybe there’s some model store. \u00a0(overlaps) They could just be painted G.I. Joes.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0No. Dwarves. Dwarves and Elves and Beorns. That’s an experimentation on techniques to light ice. I like the far one.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Yeah?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0This one’s the resin, when you look at the yellow.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0(overlaps) Yes, it’s the nicotine version.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah. That’s the smoker’s version. That’s a sort of cool color combination.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Yeah, you can get a sense of the water beneath it. The green and the blues.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0(overlaps) Yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n

Question:<\/em>\u00a0This one looks like plastic is floating on the top.<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah this was– We tried using cling film to get the sort of broken ice– It just didn’t quite work.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0So how did they make this one?<\/em><\/p>\n

Dan Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0That was with epoxy resin, Dacron, and they did use some cling foil. I think it was a different sort of epoxy that didn’t react… A lot of the stuff we do is techniques that we evolve as we go along. A lot of the rock, a lot of the ice, all those things are just things we find out. You know what it should look like and then you got to find the product.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0Find a way to get there.<\/em><\/p>\n

Den Hennah:<\/strong>\u00a0And use it badly to make it look like that.<\/p>\n

Question:\u00a0That’s Dan Hennah, art department, designer. \u00a0Thanks, mate.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join us in Los Angeles in February at The One Last Party<\/h4>\n

\"one<\/a> We’re hosting a Party of Special Magnificence next February — a final toast to all SIX movies, both The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy.<\/p>\n

We’re inviting you to join us and make it happen through our Indiegogo campaign — so we can all celebrate Peter Jackson\u2019s Middle-earth movies together!<\/p>\n

Visit our campaign page and find out how you can help!<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s the transcript of an interview with\u00a0Dan Hennah\u00a0conducted with TheOneRing.net and a handful of other reporters during a\u00a0set…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82,"featured_media":69447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,1124,14,22,4,333,1599,1802,496,148,2497,1911,156],"tags":[2871,2915,2909],"class_list":["post-95589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-production-crew-news","category-dan-hennah","category-events","category-headlines","category-hobbit-movie","category-hobbit-locations","category-mrcere-in-new-zealand","category-press-conferences","category-production","category-hobbit","category-the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies","category-the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug","category-torn-announcements","tag-dan-hennah","tag-the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies","tag-the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/dan-hennah.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-oRL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95589"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95610,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95589\/revisions\/95610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}