Peter Jackson gives fans a first look at next 'Hobbit'
By Brian Truitt, USA TODAY
March 24, 2013

Enthusiastic and barefoot, director Peter Jackson gave a little masterclass in Middle-earth filmmaking and showed fans their first look at The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in a live online event Sunday.

With actor Jed Brophy, who plays the dwarf Nori, Jackson gave a tour of key spots in his New Zealand post-production studio and introduced footage from the follow-up to The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey to those who bought the Blu-ray and DVD this past week.

Although the first trailer is still being prepped for this summer, Jackson showcased a sequence featuring the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) searching tombs for a missing mystical blade, and several scenes of actors working with a green screen were showcased during the hour-long live event.

With live-streaming cameras, he also dropped by the motion-capture room where Manu Bennett was working on a scene playing the chief orc Azog, looking "more friendly than he is in the movie," Jackson said.

Jackson and his team gave glimpses of many of the characters making their first appearance in The Desolation of Smaug, which continues the journey of hobbit Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and Gandalf as they help the group of dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) to steal back their treasure and home from the evil dragon Smaug. Their mission continues into the final movie of Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, next year's There and Back Again.

Lee Pace's elvish king Thrandall was seen in a cameo in An Unexpected Journey but plays a large role in the new Hobbit film, which also sees the return of Thrandall's son Legolas from the Lord of the Rings movies - and the actor playing him, Orlando Bloom.

"He's much more relaxed and a really fun guy," Jackson said of Bloom, "whereas Legolas is more uptight, shall we say."

The director promised that fans will see more of Middle-earth than ever before, including the world of men. Laketown is such a place, which is ruled by the greedy and corrupt political figure The Master, played by Stephen Fry.

Luke Evans' Bard the Bowman is in Desolation of Smaug as well, plus the elvish bodyguard Tauriel, an all-new character played by Evangeline Lilly created just for Jackson's Hobbit movies who never appeared in the original J.R.R. Tolkien source material. "She's not an elf guard to be messed with," the director said.

Jackson showed concept art for a few of the new locales, including the "heart of darkness" of Mirkwood, a sick and diseased forest, and Thrandall's woodland realm. "We wanted to make it seem very defensive and impregnable," with a bridge and raging river at its entrance, Jackson said. "Inside, we tried to make a cavernous realm look elvish, in that it looks grand and cathedral."

During the live event, Jackson answered video and Twitter questions from fans as well as from Hobbit cast members Evans, Pace, Bloom, Lilly and Fry, Lord of the Rings stars Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, and even Middle-earth aficionado Stephen Colbert, who rattled off a very nerdy question about elves. In turn, Jackson revealed that he stole a guest mug when he appeared on the comedian's Colbert Report.

He also admitted that, while he does wear shoes while filming, Jackson prefers to go barefoot these days as he's editing The Desolation of Smaug for its Dec. 13 release date. "I can put my feet up on the table and it's wonderful."

One aspect that Jackson didn't show was the massive Smaug, the dragon performed via motion capture by Benedict Cumberbatch whose eye was teasingly glimpsed at the end of An Unexpected Journey. Some idea of the beast was seen on computers in Jackson's previsualization department, though, and he teased that he sees Smaug as "a T. Rex with wings."

Jackson offered fans a look at how he edits a scene on a 103-inch TV for a sense of how it will look on a big cinema screen - "It's not just an indulgence," he said. He also showed off many of the movie posters throughout the rooms and corridors of his studio, including a host of James Bond films, the World War II movie The Dam Busters ("Someone should remake it," he said with a wink) and One Million Years B.C. in his editing station.

"The dinosaurs were cool and Raquel Welch was cool," Jackson said. "When you're a teenage boy, that's a very good poster to have on the wall."

Stars of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey find perfection in New Zealand landscapes
The first in Peter Jackson's highly anticipated trilogy adapting the enduringly popular masterpiece
Canada Free Press
March 19, 2013

Dramatic backdrops of New Zealand landscapes which feature in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, a production of New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, are so beautiful and look so perfect people will think they are CGI, says Martin Freeman, who plays Bilbo in the blockbuster movie.

Freeman makes his comments in a special New Zealand feature on the newly released DVD of the first film in The Hobbit Trilogy.

Directed by Sir Peter Jackson and filmed while the Trilogy was being shot in New Zealand, members of the film’s cast take viewers on a six-minute journey of filming locations sharing their favourite places and experiences.

The feature includes sweeping shots of recognisable travelling scenes from the movie with behind-the-scenes discussion and powerful endorsements from members of the star-studded cast – providing incentive for visitors wanting to experience 100% Middle-earth, 100% New Zealand for themselves.

The feature is now available for the world to view on Tourism New Zealand’s Facebook page ‘100% Pure New Zealand’, consumer website New Zealand.com and You Tube channel.

Tourism New Zealand’s Chief Executive Kevin Bowler says the feature will provide destination New Zealand with immeasurable exposure. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is enormously popular having passed US$1 billion in box office takings, and the endorsement New Zealand receives from the international cast in this new feature on the DVD release is amazing.

Bowler says the feature reinforces the message that while the movie is fantasy, the locations are very real and that’s borne out by members of the cast, with Sylvester McCoy (the film’s Radagast the Brown) exclaiming: “It’s real. It’s the real countryside… at first you think, ‘Wow, what a great job they did,’ but… it’s the real thing.”

Setting off from Hobbiton in the lush rolling countryside of Waikato in New Zealand’s North Island, fans get a true picture of why New Zealand is the perfect Middle-earth.

“This is the Middle-earth I had always pictured” says Sir Ian McKellen, who stars as the Wizard Gandalf the Grey.

Hobbiton Movie Set is a permanent tourist attraction open to the public and is the reality of the fantasy for movie fans. Sir Ian McKellen says people can relive the films by going and actually knocking on Bilbo’s door.

The Middle-earth feature continues from location to location through New Zealand, giving the public an insight into the contrasting landscapes from north to south.

Piopio, also in the Waikato region, was clearly a cast favourite, and Graham McTavish, who plays the Dwarf Dwalin in The Hobbit Trilogy, says the sheer cliffs of volcanic rock and ancient native forest that formed the backdrop for the Trollshaw Forest scenes look like something out of Jurassic Park.

Journeying south, the DVD feature moves on to the Canterbury location of Twizel above Lake Pukaki where the Dwarves are chased by Wargs - which Peter Hambleton (who plays Dwarf Gloin) describes as “Everything you could hope for in an epic adventure”.

McTavish tells viewers he took a photo while filming in the area and sent it to friends with the message ‘Dwarves on vacation’. “They refused to believe that this was an actual photograph, that I hadn’t photo-shopped it,” he says.

Sir Peter Jackson tells viewers that Aoraki, Mount Cook, also in Canterbury, is New Zealand’s highest mountain and is where Sir Edmund Hilary trained to climb Mount Everest. “It’s a little less than half the height of Everest so basically he had to climb Mt Cook twice as he practised.”

At the time of filming wild lupins in varying shades of purple were flowering and The Hobbit Trilogy cast say they were “blown away” by the scenery.

“Nearly everyone on the crew said it was like doing a recce for an amazing road trip they are going to do in the future,” said Andy Serkis, who reprises his role as Gollum in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and served as second unit director for the Trilogy.

The remote landscapes of Strath Taieri in Central Otago were a favourite location for Sir Peter Jackson, who said he loved the idea of filming a chase there and chose it for scenes where Wargs chase after the Dwarves through rocks and across the wide open countryside.

“It’s what’s glorious about this place – you can do 360 degrees and not a satellite dish in sight,” said Sylvester McCoy.

Queenstown, New Zealand’s No 1 tourist destination brought the most reaction from cast and crew who talked about the dramatic alpine valley of Earnslaw Burn, which is surrounded by cascading waterfalls and only accessible by helicopter.

“You know when we all went to Queenstown I’d never been there before and it was just astonishing- I mean a beautiful jewel, really, at the bottom of the world,” said James Nesbitt, who plays the Dwarf Bofur.

The region was also Sir Ian McKellen’s favourite spot. He talks about the “famous holiday place” and how he enjoyed escaping up the lake and into the mountains.

Over a series of shots from rolling hills in the north to the mountains and fiords of the South Island, Martin Freeman says the world’s impression of New Zealand is a landscape that’s “got everything in it”.

The New Zealand feature finishes with Martin Freeman: “Meanwhile, the backdrop is so beautiful, people will think it’s CGI. It looks too perfect. You can use that as an advert for New Zealand if you want!”

About The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is the first in Peter Jackson’s highly anticipated trilogy adapting the enduringly popular masterpiece The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The trilogy tells a continuous story set in Middle-earth 60 years before The Lord of the Rings, which Jackson and his film-making team brought to the big screen in the blockbuster trilogy that culminated with the Oscar®-winning The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The adventure follows the journey of title character Bilbo Baggins, who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor from the fearsome dragon Smaug.

Ian McKellen returns as Gandalf the Grey, the character he played in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, with Martin Freeman in the central role of Bilbo Baggins, and Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield. Also reprising their roles from The Lord of the Rings in The Hobbit Trilogy are: Cate Blanchett as Galadriel; Ian Holm as Old Bilbo; Christopher Lee as Saruman; Hugo Weaving as Elrond; Elijah Wood as Frodo; and Andy Serkis as Gollum.

The international ensemble cast of the Trilogy also includes James Nesbitt, Ken Stott, Sylvester McCoy, Barry Humphries, Aidan Turner, Dean O’Gorman, Graham McTavish, Adam Brown, Peter Hambleton, John Callen, Mark Hadlow, Jed Brophy, William Kircher, Stephen Hunter, Lee Pace, Benedict Cumberbatch, Manu Bennett and Conan Stevens.

The screenplay for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is by Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson & Guillermo del Toro, based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien. Jackson also produced the film, together with Carolynne Cunningham, Zane Weiner and Fran Walsh. The executive producers are Alan Horn, Toby Emmerich, Ken Kamins and Carolyn Blackwood, with Boyens and Eileen Moran serving as co-producers.

New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (MGM), Present a WingNut Films Production, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. All three films in The Hobbit Trilogy, also including The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and the final film, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, are productions of New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (MGM), with New Line managing production. Warner Bros. Pictures handled worldwide theatrical distribution, with select international territories as well as all international television distribution handled by MGM.

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” will be available on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray and DVD from Warner Home Entertainment. All disc versions feature more than 130 minutes of bonus content.

Andy Serkis revisited his "Lord of the Rings" role of Gollum plus was in charge of action scenes as a second-unit director for "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey." (Photo: Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY)

Andy Serkis plays dual roles for 'The Hobbit'
Brian Truitt
USA Today
March 18, 2013

The actor reprises Gollum plus helps Peter Jackson in the 'Unexpected Journey' director's chair.

Andy Serkis was important on both sides of the camera for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

The English actor reprised his motion-capture Lord of the Rings role as the weathered little weirdo Gollum in the first of Peter Jackson's Hobbit movies, but also was a second-unit director for many scenes of the film, including several battles.

The special features of The Hobbit Blu-ray and DVD (out Tuesday) include a slew of Jackson's behind-the-scenes production videos, with Serkis and others part of a special look at location scouting, filming in 3-D and other production ins and outs. (The home-video release also includes a code for Jackson's live first look this Sunday at the second Hobbit movie, The Desolation of Smaug, in theaters Dec. 14.)

Camera crews were constantly documenting Jackson's video diaries, Serkis says. "There isn't a single second of a day that isn't recorded in some way, shape or form and you just got used to it. You become so used to conversing with the cameras — it is like this other character which is there monitoring what is going on."

The first thing Jackson filmed for The Hobbit two years ago was the memorable meeting between Gollum and Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) in the Misty Mountains, where Gollum — the transformed former hobbit named Smeagol — has been hanging out while going on a downward spiral of crazy for 500 years.

It's a different Gollum than we saw in Lord of the Rings, though, according to Serkis. He hasn't been tortured by Sauron, still is in possession of the One Ring and is simply delighted to have some company.

"Suddenly, to have someone who he recognizes as a fellow hobbit — because of course, he was a hobbit before he became addicted to the ring — and to be able to have a game of riddles, nothing could be better. Life is good," Serkis explains.

"Of course, the Gollum side of his personality just wants to kill Bilbo in a very expedient way so that they have some dinner. Therein lies the conflict in the character."

Serkis also enjoyed his behind-the-scenes role as a director, and found that the key to a great battle scene — and adding to the "hack and slash of it all" — is having human beats in the storytelling that make it poignant. (He's also taking on the role of second-unit director for The Desolation of Smaug as well as the third Hobbit movie, next year's There and Back Again.)

"In Helm's Deep, for instance, as much as it is people hacking on the battlements, it is the women and children who are hiding underneath that you cut away to which gives you the import and the fear and the implications and the ramifications of the battle," Serkis says. "So it is always the human cause and cost within that conflict."

Martin Freeman: Making First "Hobbit" Film Was "Huge"
The first installment of Peter Jackson's new Tolkein trilogy arrives on Blu Ray
By Scott Huver - NBC New York
March 18, 2013

As “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” – the first installment director Peter Jackson’s long-awaited film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkein’s beloved prequel to “The Lord of the Rings” saga – makes its way to Blu-ray, Bilbo Baggins himself – in the form of actor Martin Freeman (“Sherlock”) – looks back at the opening chapter, recalling the journey from green screen sound stages to a full-fledged Shire.

What was the experience of making one of these films with Peter?

I think I probably did myself a favor and tried not to do too much imagining about what it might be. I think whatever you conjure up nothing ever is what you imagine it to be. Whether it’s your trip here or your trip home, nothing is ever how you’re going to imagine it. So I suppose I was expecting the unexpected. The only thing I knew it would be was huge. I knew it would feel big, and I was right there. It did feel big. But outside of that, I had a feeling of what Pete was like as a director, but I didn’t have direct experience of him. I knew a couple of the actors but not well. It was really stepping into a different territory. Very often, you’re at least familiar with a few people from around, but I’ve never been to New Zealand before. So it was really much a fresh slate really. I didn’t know Ian [McKellen]. I didn’t know most of the people on it, by a long shot.

Once you saw Peter in action on set, what did you see in him that was different from other directors?

I suppose the ‘That’s why he’s Peter Jackson’ thing is probably his almost ‘Rain Man’-ish ability to kind of keep stuff in his head that I certainly wouldn’t be able to do. All directors have to be slightly obsessed and obsessive people because it’s a ridiculous notion that you can keep that much information in your head and know what he’s doing and she’s doing and kind of keep tabs on all that, but he’s extraordinary at that.

Also, just from an actor’s perspective – because I’m not doing all the other jobs – the thing between me and him, he’s got real shorthand with acting. He won’t spiel a lot. He won’t go into some big thesis about what this scene is about. He’ll expect you to have done the work. He expects you to know your job better than he knows your job, but so it’s a lot of trust on his side. And his direction, he’s a man of few words in direction, and I don’t mind that sometimes. Sometimes, just ‘Louder, faster,’ is actually quite an instructive direction, if you know what someone means. Like, ‘Yeah. I know what you mean by that.’ You make a quick translation and go to work on that. In truth, the unromantic truth is very often there isn’t a great light bulb moment where you go, ‘That’s why…’ There often isn’t. It’s work, and it feels like very enjoyable work. And I suppose the respect in which he is held on the set, speaks for itself.

Was there a scene that, no matter how you imagined it, once you saw the finished version, you said, ‘That’s so much more than was happening in the heads of us actors.’?

I think so, because as you could imagine with so much green screen stuff, you’re seeing the wall of a sound stage. You’re not seeing mountains, or you’re not seeing this massive valley or whatever. And you’re not seeing real Wogs attack you. You’re pretending and imagining all of that. I was so impressed when I saw the finished product because it was a massive, massive world, chock full of incredible stuff. I knew it would be that, but it was very hard to visualize it specifically at the time. There were plenty of times when we were making the film where I thought, ‘Is this really going to be a film?’ It’s almost so big, it’s inconceivable that this is actually all going to come together because you just get so used to day after day seeing tennis balls and green screens. You think ‘What is this all going to look like?’ You know it’s going to look good, but you’re not quite sure how.

Is there a sequence from the next film, ‘The Desolation of Smaug,’ that you’re particularly excited about?

I think the appearance of the dragon will be exciting. I’ve only seen what they call the previews stuff. It looks amazing. Obviously, Tolkien is quite revered in the world of making these films so everything starts from Tolkien up. But John [Howe] and Alan Lee, the artists are mini magicians. They’re incredible the stuff they come up with as is everybody who makes all this stuff appear. The production design, the digital is mind-blowing.

The Hobbit’s Martin Freeman Talks Film's Sweaty Costumes: It's Quite Unpleasant, Actually
By Alexis L. Loinaz
E! Online
March 18, 2013

Martin Freeman literally put his best foot forward to play podiatrically endowed Bilbo Baggins in last year's mega-blockbuster The Hobbit. But those ginormous, hairy prosthetic feet didn't quite leave him skipping away with glee.

Those costumes proved integral to helping him shape his performance—that is, when wasn't worrying about sweating up a storm in them.

"The big feet kind of inform part of your physicality, and your physicality helps inform how you play the part," he says.

"You literally can't walk in a way that you would normally walk if you've got this much extra on the end of your feet," he adds, noting that such large prosthetic feet "will make you walk funny."

They certainly did, and Freeman had to make some adjustments. "So you literally have to lift your feet higher, and that affects your gait."

As for getting in and out of costume, things were apparently much easier than one might think.

"They're quite easy to put on and off—about eight minutes." he explains. "Two people sit at my feet, roll them on literally like a pair of tights—they come up to your mid-thigh. And then if you wanna take them off between lunch or whatever, you can do that."

That doesn't mean things were a walk in the park, though. "It's quite unpleasant, actually. If it's a hot day, it gets sweaty," he quips.

The next installment in The Hobbit saga, The Desolation of Smaug, storms theaters on Dec. 13.

BROOKMANS Park actor Martin Freeman has released a video aimed at Facebook fans of ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’, ahead of the film’s DVD and Blu-ray release.

The star, who plays Bilbo Baggins in Peter Jackson’s new The Hobbit trilogy, said: “Hello Facebook fans from around the world, I just wanted to say thank you for your amazing support of The Hobbit.

“[I] can’t wait to share the next two adventures with you, thanks so much”

The film, based on JRR Tolkein’s classic, is out on DVD and Blu-ray on Tuesday, March 19.

Martin Freeman Coming Back To New Zealand To Film
Stuff.co.nz
March 8, 2013

Martin Freeman has revealed he will be back in New Zealand for a two-month block of shooting at the end of this May.

"I am going back at the end of May for all of June and July," Freeman told Hollywood.com.

Freeman, who plays Bilbo Baggins, said he is not sure precisely what he'll be shooting yet.

"I don't think it feels like new demands, but then again, I haven't seen a shooting script yet, so they might have me walking through fire!"

"I suppose the thing is, this is not finished. We literally have to go and finish it. It's not a new adventure like on a television show. It's the same story. It's the same gig I started in January 2011. I think it'll be really fun because the crew is quite close and the cast are close and we like working on it. I'm anticipating it."

‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ will arrive on Digital Download on March 12th, and will then be available on Blu-ray Combo Pack, Blu-ray 3D Combo Pack and 2-Disc DVD Special Edition on March 19th. Additionally, Peter Jackson will host a live first look at ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ on March 24th at 3:00PM Eastern/Noon Pacific. Content will be streamed live and an edited version will be archived on the Trilogy’s official website. Access to the live event will be limited to holders of an UltraViolet code available by purchasing ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ Blu-ray Combo Pack, Blu-ray 3D Combo Pack or 2-Disc Special Edition DVD. Select digital retailers will issue access codes upon purchase of the film.

Martin Freeman On Standing Up To The Geek Mafia For "The Hobbit"
By Richard Rushfield
BuzzFeed.com
March 6, 2013

The screen's Bilbo Baggins discusses stepping into nerddom's biggest hairy feet.

Once a hobbit, always a hobbit. Such is the life these days of Martin Freeman, who is one-third of the way through his journey in the J.R.R. Tolkien universe, having seen the release of the first film in the Peter Jackson trilogy The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray March 19. Despite a long career in the British stage, film, and television worlds, the actor has become something of a nerd icon of late as the star of two totemic nerd franchises with The Hobbit and the BBC series Sherlock.

BuzzFeed caught up with Freeman to discuss the upcoming release and look back on the making of the first installment — plus, the films ahead, and life in the center of the geek crosshairs.

BuzzFeed: As a classically trained actor, how do you prepare to play a hobbit?

Martin Freeman: You read it, you get familiar with the source material, you find what is in you that could be hobbit-like and vice versa.

BF: What did you find hobbit-like in yourself?

MF: I think it's...very, very sexy — kidding. In the world of Tolkien and how Peter Jackson views Tolkien, it's very English. Now, of course, I am English, so I can't play English. Peter would sometimes say, "We need to make you more English." Well how do you do that? But I know what he means. There is a kind of decency and a kind of reticence about that.

BF: While you were shooting, how did you stay in a hobbit mind-set? Did you catch yourself thinking in hobbit?

MF: Never. Never. No. Never. I don't think it's like playing Lincoln. Once the cameras hit cut, and once I'm home, I'm not thinking like him.

BF: How did you entertain yourself in New Zealand while you were making this for all that time?

MF: It was lovely. They were about as welcoming as it's possible to be. They are very laid-back but they are also very can-do. Which is not a quality the Brits have much of anymore. We kind of lost our can-do about 30 years ago. They're up for anything. They want to make everything work. They'll work round the clock just to make stuff happen.

BF: Knowing what this character means to the geek world, did you feel the weight?

MF: Of a million geeks! It's probably like feeling the intimidation of the mafia. It was like pissing off the Crips. The geeks are going to get me! But no, I think I tried not to think about it, really. Like with anything I've done ever. I've had a few parts that are very beloved to people from literature, and I can't play that. I can't play their expectations. That's not the screenplay you're making. It's not a democracy in the way that I'll go and find out what Russell thinks out there in Oregon. I'm afraid he doesn't have a say. He's either going to like it or he's not going to like it, and believe me, we want him to like it. But we have to get on with the job of making a film. But Peter is a geek. He's an absolute self-confessed Tolkien geek. So you have one at the helm.

BF: You feel you're protected?

MF: Totally. You're in safe geek hands.

BF: Are you familiar with the Tumblr movement you've inspired?

MF: Yeah, I am. I discovered that in New Zealand. That's where I really first used a laptop in my life.

BF: Are you familiar with Smauglock ?

(Ed note: the Sherlock/Smaug mash-up that has swept the internet.)

http://worlds-only-consulting-dragon.tumblr.com/ Middle Earth's Only Consulting Dragon

MF: Pictures of me and Ben (Cumberbatch) crossed over? Yes, I've seen all that. With the little Sherlock scarf on. Very funny.

BF: What can you tell me about the two Hobbit films ahead?

MF: Well, I think the dragon will be good. Really. Good. There's not much I can say because genuinely, I don't actually remember everything. It's the truth — it was about two years ago we were shooting. And we were shooting out of sequence, and it was going to be two films instead of three. So where the first film ended when we were shooting is different from where it does now end, so I don't really know all that happens in the second film.

BF: You should read the book.

MF: I have! Honest!

OSCARS: 'Hobbit' Production Design
By The DeadLine Team
Deadline.com
February 16, 2013

Diane Haithman is an AwardsLine contributor

Production designer Dan Hennah—nominated for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey with set decorators Ra Vincent and Simon Bright—says that this set for hobbit Bilbo Baggins’ comfy parlor is one of few that did not require a CGI extension to accommodate both fantasy elements and the movie’s large band of characters, who tend to appear together in many scenes. And even the simplest of sets required finetuning to meet the demands of 3D. By phone from New Zealand, Hennah talked about this scene in which Bilbo (Martin Freeman) talks with Dwalin (Graham McTavish) as the dwarf slurps his way through Bilbo’s carefully hoarded food supply. 1) Bilbo’s parlor had to be built twice: Once in “hobbit scale” and once in a .76 “wizard scale” for Gandalf (Ian McKellen), so Gandalf would appear to be too tall for his surroundings, whereas for the hobbits it would be, as Goldilocks might have observed, “just right”. Hennah says the less dramatic difference in size between hobbits and dwarves was taken care of by casting: Most actors portraying dwarves are taller than Freeman.

2) Hobbits hate adventure, so Bilbo’s home is full of things that make him feel safe: A warm teapot, a full larder, his favorite books. “This is 60 years before The Lord of the Rings, when he was sort of an old guy who had accumulated a lot of stuff and was sort of untidy; this was more (for) a casual, homely bachelor”, Hennah says. For The Hobbit, Hennah’s team took advantage of the fact that New Zealand can boast more traditional craftspeople than a Renaissance Fair. “We had potters and glass blowers and pipe makers and book binders. New Zealand is a great place for alternative lifestyles, and that often translates into making something that you can sell”, he explains. The designers created their own fantasy era rooted in 17th-century England, but “once you make up the rules, you have to stick with them or you break the spell”, Hennah says.

3) That’s no rubber fish that Dwalin is noshing on: It’s the real deal, caught by one of the prop dressers who’d been out just that morning trying his luck in the local bay. “There were probably quite a few real fish, we were cooking them up” to use on set, Hennah says. Since dead fish are like houseguests (best if they don’t stay around too long), the crew kept plenty of ice on hand to keep them fresh.

4) Often books on sets have authentic bindings but blank pages. But Bilbo, Hennah says, “is sort of a learned chap” who loves to read, so his books can’t hide on the shelf. Plus he’s writing his own book, There and Back Again, using a quill pen. A calligrapher with quill expertise was called in to create the book pages. And the calligrapher worked overtime on a document used in another scene at Bilbo’s home, when he reads over the alarming contract he must sign before accompanying the dwarves on their dangerous quest to reclaim Lonely Mountain from the dragon.

5) The Hobbit was shot in 3D using a high-speed 48 frames per second (normal 2D speed is 24 fps). Some film critics thought the images created by the high-speed process were too sharp, making The Hobbit look more like a videogame than a feature film. Critical taste aside, Hennah says that extra clarity required more careful attention to items in the background or middle ground that would have appeared out of focus in regular 2D. Plus, 3D tends to desaturate colors, so everything had to be made in brighter colors than it appears.

'The Hobbit': Weta's ongoing quest for the digital face of the future
By Geoff Boucher
Inside Movies: EW.com
February 13, 2013

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is a tale of two risky quests. The first quest is the one on the screen, which sends Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), and 12 compact compatriots off toward Lonely Mountain. The second is the filmmaking odyssey for the cast and crew led by director Peter Jackson, who won fame and glory in Middle-earth with the Lord of the Rings trilogy but found a different combination of challenges in adapting this earlier Tolkien epic.

A key figure in Jackson’s odyssey is senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri, the director of Weta Digital and a four-time Oscar winner (Avatar, King Kong, and the second and third Lord of the Rings films) who may add a fifth thanks to his latest Middle-earth nomination (which he shares with Eric Saindon, David Clayton and R. Christopher White). EW caught up with Letteri to talk about the changing face of digital effects and its unexpected journey toward the spiritual center of acting craft. Also, check out a new sizzle reel of The Hobbit, a film that racked up $956 million in worldwide box office, which among Tolkien adaptations bows only to Return of the King, the 2003 finale of the first trilogy that took in $1.1 billion and won the Oscar for Best Picture.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: The first Lord of the Rings film opened a little more than 11 years ago but it’s amazing how far digital effects have leaped in that span. For you, when you look back at your path, what do you see that’s unexpected?

JOE LETTERI: The nature of it, the true nature of the work. We’re just in the early days of understanding what facial expression means of how people relate to each other. I know people focus on the technology, like the motion capture, but really when you look at a lot of this and you try to tease out what the meaning is, you figure out that it comes down to trying to understand expression and the way people relate to each other. That’s drama, that’s the heart of what actors do. We work with actors to distill that and to bring it to these new characters. With Hobbit we had a chance to do it with six characters with speaking lines — there was over 20 minutes of dialogue for these characters.

As you’re saying that it makes me think about the way visual effects are most often summarized as spectacle but this is about nuance. There are the visual effects that make you lean back but these are the ones that make you lean forward…

Yeah, that’s really true. It’s an intriguing challenge and the lessons we learned from Gollum is you want to work with the actors to do this. I know a lot of actors are sort of afraid of that process but if they can get an understanding of what they are doing as stripping away everything from the performance except the performance itself, [they can view the] challenge as the engagement of an audience without being seen. We give them this one amazing advantage in that we can create a character around that performance that is unlike anything that’s ever been put on film before, and so they have this ability both emotionally and visually to engage audiences in new ways that intrigue them. Anytime you present something familiar in a new form, people get interested in it. When you first see a character like Gollum, you hear the voice, you understand there’s a human element to all of it, but you’re seeing that’s he’s not human looking yet it looks like he was there when the camera was rolling. That gives your mind an incredible focus and allows you to free up or, well, it’s not even freeing up so much as it is what you said before, it allows the movie to draw you in at heightened level because there’s nothing ordinary about it.

Earlier you mentioned you were “Middle-earthed out” — back when you finished up the first trilogy I know there was such a sense of finish-line relief. You didn’t know then that you were only at the halfway mark of your Tolkien marathon.

No, not at all, I had no clue at the time. None of us thought there would be more. Especially since The Hobbit is a prequel story to the one that we had told and none of us even thought about coming back to tell the smaller story. And it turns out that we haven’t — we did come back to tell the bigger version of the smaller story.

It is bigger, but it’s also crowded. The number of characters who need to be introduced is a challenge just on its own…

It became part of one of the really bigger challenges — you’ve got 13 dwarves to keep track of and you have all of these interwoven storylines — and how do you [handle the needs of that and still] make it compelling so that every new scene is something audiences want to watch. We’re making two more Hobbit films and that obviously is the challenge that continues as we get into the second part of the story. This next one centers around the story of Smaug and we’re just getting into working with him and acknowledging him as a character. In the first film you just got fleeting glimpses of him.

You were talking before about a sort of digital distillation of performance. Do you think the work of Andy Serkis as Gollum and as Caesar [in Rise of the Planet of the Apes] has crystallized that possibility for true students of acting craft? I ask because Smaug is portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch, a bright talent on the rise and one of the smartest actors I’ve ever met.

He’s a tremendous talent, and yes, I would say that is what we’re seeing as we go forward. There is this unfamiliarity and this “What is this thing?” but once they actually see what’s going on, there’s a shift we see. They are acting without costume and on a very minimal set — it’s like workshop acting — and when they know that we can take that and turn it into a creature that no one has ever seen before but still hold on to the performance that they are conveying, they warm up to it. They can shed things that they’ve never shed before. There’s no hair and makeup, they are not limited by the way they look, and they are the focus of the whole team. Everyone is working to capture their performance as authentically as possible and then amplify it by changing the “reality” it exists within.

The reality you drop them into, Middle-earth, has become a powerfully distinctive landscape in the mind of moviegoers. But there’s still terrain left to visit. Is that fun for your team to think about?

The book is a journey and we have a few more places in Middle-earth to travel through and because we’re getting away from familiar territory now — we’ve seen Rivendell, we’ve seen Bag-End — now we’re going into places where we have some creative license to create new places straight out of the book and do everything we can to make those pages come to life in a way that matches expectations but is also not predictable or derivative.

When you look around at the other movies this year, is there something out there that you’ve circled in your mind as being especially intriguing as far as the visual effects? Is there a movie that someone else is doing that you really want to take a look at to see how they handled a particular challenge?

There are a lot of movies out there that are looking great and they are being really well done, but as far as the technical or the techniques? No, I don’t there’s anything. We’ve been able to crack a lot of what’s been done before like with Rise of the Planet of the Apes. We’ve gone and done lots of very realistic creatures and we’ve had chances to do big explosions and big landscapes. And in fact if you look at the Oscar nominations this year, out of five nominations we did work on three of them. In addition to Hobbit, we did some of the work on Avengers and also on Prometheus. So if you go in and look at some of the creature work like the Engineer in Prometheus and the aliens at the end, those are our creations, so we’re getting the creature/character work that we like to do but also handling the things that go around it like the big water simulations and pyrotechnics and forests and landscapes. We like to stay ahead of the curve.

The Hobbit picks up early Oscar
Ellie Walker-Arnott
Radio Times
February 11, 2013

The first film in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy has won a technical Oscar at an early ceremony in LA

The team behind The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey have been recognised at a pre-Oscar ceremony hosted by Star Trek stars Chris Pine and Zoe Saldana.

The film - which stars Sherlock's Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen and Hugo Weaving, and is the first in a trilogy by Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson - picked up an Academy Plaque for Scientific and Engineering. Simon Clutterbuck, James Jacobs and Dr. Richard Dorling, who have made huge advances in the technique used to bring computer generated characters like Gollum to life, were the award's recipients.

The Scientific and Technical Awards recognise those who have made significant contributions to film making from behind the scenes.

The full Oscars ceremony will take place on 24 February 2013. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is up for three Academy Awards for best makeup and hairstyling, best visual effects and best production design.

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