Hello, welcome to the first of our blogs on
the making of "The Hobbit." It's amazing to be back here again. This is Bag End exactly as it was in "The
Lord of the Rings." It was actually built in our B-stage here
in Wellington, which is exactly the same stage as it was built 12 years ago. We've been shooting for a few days now, and
I just wanted to take this opportunity to give you a little look at the lead-out of
filming and some of the pre-production that lead up to the first day of our shoot.
And I look forward to keeping you up-to-date
as we go through the next two or three years. See you soon! Oh, you're in 3D - looking good. See ya. And this pulls beautifully. This look great when it's drawn - and it actually
works. And he could also go fighting with the remnants,
sort of hanging on to his body and be impaling people. We wanted to create a very non-human shape. We do need to do a little blog. You might want to say "hi" to the fans of
"The Hobbit." Shy artists... my dear, my dear.
So we're going up to wardrobe, and we're having
a look at a couple of dwarf wardrobe and makeup fittings, which is always exciting - not that
we'll show you much in this particular blog because we'll save them for the future. But at least you'll get to see a little bit
of our wardrobe department. A lot of very busy people working on a lot
of costumes. A lot of interesting textures and detail and
leather and embossing, and it's all pretty cool, yeah? It's like sort of a big wizard's workshop. Hel
lo. Oh my God - hello. You can use it like a mase. You can just swing, knocking, and cut their
throat, and whacking like this. Let me say, there's a nice bit were he goes,
and takes out about ten orcs with those. Now this is a familiar set. It's "Elron's Chamber," so it's an exact copy
of the one we had in "The Fellowship of the Ring." In fact, just over here on the balcony, is
where the Council of Elrond took place - where the fellowship was formed, and Frodo wanted
to take the ring to Mordor.
Also in "The Hobbit" is going to be a lot
of new bits of Rivendale that we haven't seen before - some really cool bits of Rivendale,
actually, that we'll keep as a little surprise for the time being. Now there's an old friend upstairs. Let's just have a quick look. Here we are. I'm sure you'll recognize the statue where
the broken sword sits. And, of course, in the time of "The Hobbit,"
the sword is going to be here. It is strange walking around here because
you know it was up about ten or eleve
n years ago, and I'm used to looking at a set like
this on film, you know, and now we're walking back into it again. It's almost like you've stepped inside a movie. It's a very weird experience. This is where we're going to be shooting. It's the very beginning of our shoot. It's the goblin tunnels below the Misty Mountains. It's a very iconic scene in "The Hobbit,"
where Bilbo has an encounter with, well, you know who it's with, don't you? If you've read "The Hobbit." No need to spoil it for any
one who hasn't. But this is a little network of caves. Look, there's a whole little set of passageways
down here. It's very claustrophobic. One of the things we've done to be able to
shoot the shots is make sure that all the different walls of the cave can be removed
so that our big, bulky cameras can actually shoot the angles that we need. Oh my God, look at this thing here. That looks like a foot, or an arm. Oh, I don't know. That looks rather creepy, doesn't it? Whew. Okay. So how many chairs
do we need? For instance, I reckon Bomber sits at the
end. And then there's a slight grapple, and when
you hop down, it's like ahhhh. And then it's like... yeah. Now, I know it's sort of safe. This is blocking. This is not really rehearsing, but we're kind
of giving the actors a walking through and we talk to them about what to do with the
scene. And it's actually fun because it means when
we come to this, we've got a plan. It'd be good if you come forward, and then
you realize that there's som
ething on your foot. And perhaps, you try to get ride of it first,
and then you... This'll be fun. This'll be more fun when everyone's in makeup
and costumes and dying of the heat. Set up on the corner of the table, we've got
Killy. Next to Killy, Filly. And then Dorry... Dorry, and then Nory... Oh my God. Orry, Dorry, Norry, Biffer, Bomber... (mumbling) This is a nightmare. We'll have Gandalf here, and Thorin, too. I thought it would be good to give you this
whole doorway to play in kind of. Th
e fire will be blazing as well... Now my prediction is that it's all going to
go incredibly well on the day, don't you agree? Um... The tricky thing is that there are 13 dwarves
on this set. The good thing is you're not in a fat suit. I am in a nose and false eyebrows, a wig,
a mustache, a beard, but you're right, no fat suit. Yeah, you're a winner. You're a winner every step of the way. And we can stick a fan up your robe just to
give you a bit of air conditioning. Promises, promises. Well that
's going to work with a little bit
of finishing. That's going to work. Good morning. Morning. Mornin'. Good morning. So I'm officially the first person in the
makeup chair on "The Hobbit?" Officially. That's amazing. Chanting... More chanting... My name's Richard, I'm from London, England. I would like to give thanks on behalf of everyone
here, and visitors for this ceremony, for this celebration, for the blessing of the
soundstage, and for the welcome that you offer to us. We are all deeply hon
ored to be here. And to everyone who has waited so long for
this day, to begin this extraordinary journey filming "The Hobbit." I'd like to wish them good luck, good health,
and good harmony. Thank you. My name's Martin Freeman. I'm in the cast as well. He stole everything I've got to say. So it's been a long time coming today, an
even longer time than we thought it'd be. So I hope at the end of this journey we are
all as close with each other as we have the potential to be. So, thank you very m
uch. Hello everyone, I'm Andy Serkis. I am standing up just to say on behalf of
the returning crew and past who have come gathered here to go on the journey. We are just very, very grateful to your incredibly
hospitality. And to have the opportunity to share the passion
to tell such an amazing, amazing story in such an amazing country with such beautiful
people. You know, for a long time I thought that going
back to the amazing experience of "Lord of the Rings" wouldn't be a good idea. But reall
y, you know, now I've come completely
around because films are stressful and they're hard to make, but ultimately what makes them
fun is the people that you work with. And the fact that we're going to be working
with a lot of the old gang, with a lot of friends, and obviously making some new friends
is really the point of being here. So I'm extremely thrilled. If somebody came up to me today and said that
we could carry on pre-preproduction for another six weeks, I'd say no way. Hell no. Let's j
ust start shooting. And roll sound. Rolling. And action. In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit. Sky darkens. And flames. And cut. That's great. That'll do. Thank you very much. Yay! That's the one. Thank you very much everybody for a great
first block, and have a great break. Everyone's having a break, and we'll see you
back here soon enough. Ladies and gentlemen of the second unit, that
is a wrap on block 1! So we're just going to get one more pickup
in Bag End. Hello. Come in. Hey Andy
. We were going to do one more pickup in here
if that's alright. This is the video blog pickup. That's right, there you go the end of block
one. Anyway, so we just wanted to say hi to everyone
since we haven't done one of these video blocks since the beginning of the shoot. God, it feels like a lifetime. Because you, the first week of shooting we
did with Andy is gone. If he loses precious then we eats it. You weren't a second unit director in those
days. You were an actor. You were an old-fashi
oned thespian. Now I've crossed though to the dark side. You've now gone to the dark side. I'm wiped. I'm completely wiped. It's all yours. Is it? Just give us a good battle. Yeah, okay, okay. I don't know how you do it. You get tired. I always just tell people I get exhausted
at the end of the first couple days and stay exhausted until it finishes. We have 250 days of shooting on these two
Hobbit movies, and I think it's a much better way to divide it up into three blocks, and
then have some ti
me to look at what you've done, look at it, hand visual effects shots
over to the CGI guys. You can completely focus on the script revisions. It's just a much smarter way to shoot these
big films. Yeah, on something of this scale, too. I mean, when we were given our T-shirts that
said 54 days down, 200 to go, I have to admit I don't know how great it was to say "wear
these on set." It wasn't a particularly moral-boosting moment,
was it? Everywhere you turn, on people's backs was
"200 days to go,
" and it was like, "oh God," I felt tired before lunch, you know? The good news is that it's over. The first day back is Monday, the 5th of September. So thank you guys. What are you guys off to during the break? My lovely wife and I, my wife Haley, and I,
we've got a holiday in the south island of New Zealand planned. And my lovely, gorgeous wife Nicole, and I
are just going to work on the house. I'm leaving, shortly after talking to you
for London, which is a long journey. By plane, and once t
here I immediately go
into production of a play I'm going to do. I'm going to America, to pebble beach, in
a week to play some golf. I'll work on my tan so I that I can really
freakin make a pic when I come back. I'm having a break. I'm having 4 weeks off. I'm just sleeping in, my favorite hobby. First, we're going to Australia to see our
oldest daughter. I'm going to run a marathon. I'm going to attempt to sort of write and
record a bit of a psychedelic sludge of rock album. Hitting the fabric
shops in central London. I go home to Thailand tomorrow. To Barcelona to meet tattoo fans from Spain. Bali for 11 days. London and Paris to see friends. Manhattan Beach because it's the closest beach
to the airport. I haven't been home for the last three years,
back in Belgium so my mom is cracking the whip. And then I'm going to Vegas and spend all
my hard earned cash. Do some more swimming and lots of golf. Probably getting a little bit drunk, a little
bit on a holiday. I'm looking forward to
getting back with my
mates and getting on the drink, where I won't get a bad reputation because they already
know what I'm like. And then I'm going back to Ireland to see
my family and to see some of my mates in Belfast for a quiet little weekend. I hope nobody phone's me for about three weeks,
at least. Hopefully come back totally refreshed and
ready to rock on the next lot. What are you doing on break Andy? Well I'm going back home to maybe have a little
time off to go on and live with the fam
ily. And then really, before you know it, I'll
be back. It's weird because you get to this point when
you're at the end of a block of shooting, and it sort of almost feels like you're going
on vacation, but it's not because on Monday morning I'm in the cutting room. And then I've got to have meetings with Alan
and John and Dan about designing stuff for the second block and then with Richard Taylor
about all the things he has to build. So in some respects I'm back into preproduction
again. But al
so, I'm in post production because I'm
editing. Plus we're in production because we're shooting
these movies. So it's like being in pre-production, production,
and post-production all at the same time. It kind of gets a bit screwy. But before I get to do any of that I've got
to jump on a plane tomorrow morning and go location scouting down the south island. So we'll take some good pictures. Since we're going to be doing location shooting
during our next block of shooting, it's really time to hav
e to nail everything down. Along the routine, there'll be about 17 of
us that go. We get around in 5 helicopters usually, and
it's quite a spectacle that we turn up. Peter Carrow, Zane, Brigette, Andrew, Dan
Hennah, Simon Bright the art director, Steve Ingram, John Howe, Ellen Lee, Eric Sanden,
Tony Keddy the grip, Rich Gasow the gaffer, myself, location scout Dave Cummer joins us,
and Pete's assistants, Sebastian, the faithful Sebastian's there. Here on the mountains, I put my hand out and
a cu
p of tea slides into it. That's what we like. There's even a Starbucks up here in the southern
Alps. It's pretty hard to walk and juggle a cup
of tea at the same time on this sort of ground. I never quite prepare for some of these things. I always somehow imagine it's going to be
dry and warm and nice. At least it's not raining. We'll be not just scouting, which is essentially
searching for locations, we're now returning to the locations we liked and we're going
to start to talk about the logist
ics. By the time you've helicoptered everyone in
and then you've got to helicopter them out before nightfall. You're not actually here early morning or
late afternoon. You're right, it's all broad daytime. On set, we're allowing approximately half
a rugby field for the essential equipment trucks. And then our marquee's crew parking and also
unit based parking, which is where all our makeup and costume facilities are. In essence, we need to create space for two
rugby fields of equipment. It's wei
rd on locations because you're standing
in the middle of a mountain or a valley or some beautiful place, and you're having to
figure out, "Where are we going to put the crew tents, where are people going to get
changed, where are the Port-a-Lou's going to go?" Because all that stuff has to be where you're
not going to want to point the camera. You can have Gandalf and all the dwarves running
up over this brow here and scurry hiding there behind these rocks, and just as they get there,
you crane
up... The last thing you want to find out in 6 months
time as you're standing on this beautiful mountain and saying, "wow, this is exactly
the shot I want to do" and you find that you've got 20 Port-a-Lou's right in front of the
camera. That's not what you want to do. So you've got to figure all that stuff out. We'll be flying over, I don't know, maybe
30 locations? We're shooting locations around the McKenzie
country around wild landscapes below Mount Cook. And we will also be shooting around D
enidum
Way. More beautiful stone, rock walled country
and that's quite exciting because it's an area of Middle Earth we haven't visited before. Where we're scouting presently for the Ancient
Murkwood and the Anduin Grasslands is south of Queenstown. We're still searching and trying to work out
how we're going to shoot Lonely Mountain, Misty Mountain paths. You can look over in that direction there. There are still a few rivers that we're scouting
for. You know, I think we're getting pretty close
to photographing every decent river in New Zealand now. It would be quite funny to have 13 barrels
all in the middle of this thing, with the guy shouting, "come on, get on with it! Come on, move it here. Get on. Go faster!" This is a floater. It's quite heavy. We're going to go into some reasonably remote
places - sometimes places that very very few people have seen. There's plenty of New Zealand that we haven't
seen yet. I think people think it's such a small country,
and "Lord of the Rings" s
aw so much of it that we must have seen everything, but believe
me we haven't. There's a huge amount of wonderful locations
still to come. That's great. It's a great spot. Well, we'll say goodbye for now, and hopefully
you've enjoyed this update, and there well may be another one coming during the break
sometime, so keep your eye out for that. Hello and welcome to our next video blog. I thought it would be good to carry on talking
to Andy Serkis about some of the fun and games we had during our
first block of shooting. Andy - ... Andy? Where is he? Andy! What is this place? This isn't Wellington. Where am I? Isn't this where James Bond crashed his Aston
Martin in 1964? And isn't this where Red Grant trained to
be an assassin at the beginning of "For Russia, With Love?" You know what? I think we should just run the blog anyway. So what we did is we asked cast and crew to
tell us a few of their favorite memories from the first three or four months of shooting. So please enjoy that, and I
'll go figure out
where I am. What are the things that stand out for you
the most from the first block? For me I think my favorite stuff we've done
so far has been Gollum's cave. The way that Pete did that scene felt like
I was watching a play. It was sort of like you could sit back and
watch these amazing guys do their thing. Him and Martin together was fantastic. It was really cool. Trying to get back into the head of Gollum,
I never told this, but it felt like kind of doing an impersonation o
f a character that
I played a long time ago. You know it was weird because it was like
having to renown it again. It was pretty cool. It was a nice way of starting. I felt sorry for Martin because he was suddenly
thrust into having to find the character of Bilbo and have to deal with you for a whole
week, going head on the whole time. It must have been a bit intimidating. With a mouth full of gollum, gollum. It's going to be a good movie. Check it out. After two years of "Oh my God, when are we
ever going to shoot this film? We had 13 dwarves and a hobbit, we might have
had a wizard as well, and suddenly it's real. Seeing the sets were, like, amazing. That's true. I mean, coming to Bag End for the first time
and walking through. It was the first day wasn't it, on the job? That was amazing. Can you name them? Name the dwarves? Ori, Dori, Nori, Biffur, Boma-, Biffa, Biffer,
Bombur, Ori, Nori, Dori... I can never remember, see that's the problem,
you can't even remember who they are! You
have Fili and Kili. There's Thorin and Snorin, and Dorin, and
Dwalin and Balin, and Biffur, Bofer, and Bomber, and then there are the 3 Dori, Nori, and Ori
- and I think that's it isn't it? I think so. 13 dwarves is one of the reasons I dreaded
"The Hobbit," and why I really didn't think I was going to make it for such a long time. But the irony is that it has turned out to
be one of the joys of the film. Oh my God. What a challenge. I mean 13 heroes - 14 with Bilbo. They will have to be differe
ntiated in a way
that isn't necessary in the book, but if you keep seeing them you want to know who they
are, specifically, and what they're attitude is, and why they're on this journey. We need to move now! Come on! Some of the best memories were getting the
dwarves ready. Everybody has kind of helped these actors
find their way through lots of rubber and lots of hair. Walking through a waiting room and getting
to see our designs and going, "actually, I look amazing. I look the most amazing of
anyone." That was probably the best day, wasn't it? When you all said, "Gee. Gene's amazing." We did, yeah. Some of them of them actually look pretty
vile before they get into the prosthetics. For some of them, the prosthetic is making
them look better, to tell you the truth which says something. Mark Hadlow, for example, comes to mind. I have this lovely bit down here and then
this mustache that comes up here - I look stunning. Actually, I should be in centerfold. One of the things quite early
on that we discovered
was that Mark Hadlow likes to dress up in costumes, mainly military type things. And the really weird thing about his sailor
outfit is that, below the waist, nothing. But again, though. He's a nice bloke, though. One of them doesn't have to wear a beard. Yes we are all very jealous of that. He's the sexy dwarf. I don't even think he's got a beard, actually,
mainly because he's not old enough to grow one. He's the hot one I suppose, if you like that
kind of thing. But if you
like Easter cardigans and knitted
mittens, then I'm your fellow. If there was a boy band in middle earth he'd
be the leader, the Robbie Williams, of the dwarf world, whereas you would be the roadie. I think Bombur, the roadie. I think when people see the beards, they're
going to come back in big time, huge. Give us a kiss, mwuh. (Dwarf language). We've all learned a bit of the dwarf language. So we all have sort of a selection of words
to fall back on - curses and battle cries. I mean, we speak
dwarfish to each other most
of the time. All the time. Okay, here it goes, and Peter can guess what
it is, and then I'll tell people. (Dwarf language). Peter? It means mighty dwarf. Well you got to do all the fun stuff in Trollshaw. Yeah we did. I had to shoot dialogue and things, and he
got to do all the fighting troll stuff. Here's the great thing about the dwarves is
that even thought there's this comic element to some of the characters, not all of them,
but some of them, when they fight the
y really fight. We started with three months of intense training. We did stunt fighting, we did horse riding. We did the gym four times a week, we did dwarf
movement, intensely. They were trying to get us to a point where
they could actually kill us, and bring us back from the dead, kill us, bring us back
from the dead - all with CPR and stuff like that - because that's what it'll be like on
set. They did it by breaking us down. They did it by essentially reducing us to
the absolute amoeba stage
, and then building us up again as dwarves. We've come through it as better dwarves, I
feel. I do, too. I mean, I know that William has discovered
his inner dwarf. I have, but we all have actually. It's a frightening thing, but that's the job
that had to be done. If I could say key moments, and block one,
arriving in Rivendell and meeting Elrond and dining at his table, it really feels like
you're stepping into Middle Earth. There are some who would not deem it wise. What do you mean? You're not
the only guardian to stand watch
over Middle Earth. I remember it now, but later on... whooo! I love working with Hugo and Cate back in
Rivendell, that was great. I still can't get over being on set with Ian
as Gandalf and then Cate with Galadriel and Hugo with Elrond and feel like you've stepped
back into a movie again, you know? Kind of weird. Is this the new one? This is different. High points really I think was getting Cate
Blanchett with a long train. Oh, Cate, that's beautiful. They're al
l going to want one. Don't ask me to walk in it. One of the things that I like is that we're
getting a bit of the music into the movie as well, the songs. Tolkein wrote quite a few songs for "The Hobbit." I got to sing a song. You want to hum a few bars for us now? Oh it's a classic song. It's after Cole Porter, Gershwin, that type
of thing. There's an inn, there's an inn, there's a
merry old inn, beneath an old gray hill. It's after three he said. I think it'd be great if Dwalin just yelled
the
whole thing. Who is this? That's the Metallica version. Whether or not I'll be singing at the Oscars
is a different matter, but hopefully some people will sing it in the shower. I think this is a Peter Jackson question - which
dwarf would you like to invite to dinner? Well, you know, I wouldn't invite any of them
except myself. I'm afraid their table manners aren't the
best. You get your fist, and you do that! I would not want Bifur over for dinner. He would be the bottom of the line. Ori becau
se he'd be very polite. Excuse me. Well it'd be me, obviously, because I cook. Steven Hunter does pretty well with the bad
table manners because he just eats so much. Have you seen the size of him? I mean, good Lord, he's enormous. I've tried to talk to him about cutting down
his cholesterol and his butter intake. I don't think you'd invite Nori because he'd
steal all the silverware. You'd never invite Graham McTavish because
he would sit there and glare at you and show his forearms. Dwalin's a
real warrior, and at parties he
goes completely mad, like so many Scottish people. There you go! Well the words, "kettle, black, calling, pot"
come to mind. I don't think you'd invite any dwarf to dinner
actually. I wouldn't have them all together, though,
not 13 of them - maybe a couple at a time. Special person to meet here, John Reese Davies. It was fun on one of the days that we were
on Bag End that John Reese Davies came to visit. And it was great to introduce him, not only
to Gloine, who i
s his father in the story, but also to all the other dwarves. It's just like coming home to family. I predicted what John would say, and he pretty
much said it word for word. I could just imagine him saying, "Oh, you
poor bastards." That's pretty much what he went on to say. You poor buggers. When he gets you running up a hill in full
armor, you'll enjoy that. You are going to be spectacular, and you'll
be chased by women all around the world. But only if you're in costume and makeup! We've been
here since January 13th so what
is that? 5 months? And we haven't even scratched the surface. One of the biggest moments was when we all
put our gear on, and we all stood together, sort of looking around at each other into
the character's faces. Standing in a circle and looking at the guys
who were going on a quest, it sent a tingle up my spine. Thank you, that's terrific - I think we can
check the gate on that. Thank you very much. Thanks guys. Thank you very much. Bittersweet moment because i
t's time to leave. Hasta La Vista, then driving off. I'm waiting for someone, sorry. Just go. Ah really? Yeah, just go. We've had enough go. Are you wrapped? No I'm not wrapped, they're keeping the good
people. Okay we'll go now. It's a bittersweet moment, but it's time to
leave. Hasta La Vista. Well I hope you enjoyed that. I don't know if there'll be any more because
I have to find New Zealand, which I've lost. I think it's over here. Who is that odd little fellow? Action. Cut. Hi, welcome to
our new blog. This time, we thought we'd talk a little bit
about 3D. Get a good look at your opening shot. Let's get this arm in a little closer. Watch your back. Hi, I'm Angus. Welcome to the world of 3D. Shooting "The Hobbit" in 3D is a dream come
true. I mean if I had the ability to shoot "Lord
of the Rings" in 3D I certainly would have done it. What I actually did on the "Lord of the Rings"
is I had a 3D camera taking 3D photographs. Hopefully, one day maybe even on 3D Blue. We might be able
to show you some of the 3D
photos from 10 or 12 years ago. I've got 3D and I've got reading glasses,
we're all good. But now, the reality is that it's not that
difficult to shoot in 3D. I love it when a film draws you in and you
become part of the experience, and 3D helps immerse you in the film. The essence of our camera system is the Red
Epic. Really it's this thing that enables us to
shoot 3D on "The Hobbit." But, of course, to shoot 3D you actually need
two cameras. The problem that we have
in the cinema world
is that the lenses we use are so large that we cannot get an interocculous similar to
humans, which is the separation between your eyes. For us to get the two cameras as close together
as possible, they have to shoot into a mirror. We have to use a mirror system, which is rig
that is designed by a company called 3ALITY. One's the left eye, one's the right eye. One shoots through a mirror. The other one bounces off the mirror, and
so the two images are perfectly overlaid. Wit
h using two eyes, we can move the cameras
apart, and also more importantly is find a convergence point. For example, see around someone's face just
like you're looking at a friend. The convergence point is the screen plane
itself. 3D forms two places: positive space, which
is inside the box what you see behind the person who is standing on the screen - and
negative space, which is what you feel comes out into the audience, an arm, a bullet, whatever
you want. And the whole idea with these rigs i
s that
you can change the interoccular and the convergence as we're shooting. We can see that separation on a 2D screen
with a left and a right eye overlay. So we can do this live, throughout a shot,
changing our 3D effect the whole way through. Roll sound. Rolling. We're watching the 3D movie as we make it. It looks so good. You almost feel like you're in it. Action! A lot of people have an image of 3D being
big and cumbersome, and that's true, but we've got a lot of different rigs that we've b
uilt
for a lot of different purposes. It's actually easier in this weird, 3D world
to have different camera systems for different uses. So this is a camera we built to go on a crane
that can move around, and it never comes off the crane. This is the TS5 in a handheld mode. It's our main workhouse camera. It's light, it's small, so it allows Peter
to get into very tight, narrow corridors and caves as if he would with a 2D camera. Mobile camera work has always been very important
for the films tha
t I've made, and the last thing that I wanted to do when we went into
3D was to restrict or change the shooting style. So with the camera doing this as well, you
don't need me to do much. It was very important for "The Hobbit" that
we feel like the same filmmakers who have gone back into Middle Earth to tell a story. We're shooting at the same speed as you would
shoot in 2D. The dollies, cranes, steadicam, we put it
on the shoulder, and we shoot handheld the same as we would always shoot a movie
. Of course once you've got 3 or 4 cameras for
main unit, you need 3 or 4 cameras for second unit, which is 8 cameras, which is really
16 cameras. This is the world of the camera department. We have 48 Red Epic cameras, and they're on
17 3D rigs. This one's called Walter, which was my grandfather. This one is Ronald, my uncle, Emily was Fran's
grandmother. Perkins was actually Fran's dog. Whitchipoo, Frank, Bill is my dad. Fergus is the name of one of our Pugs. Tricky Woo, that's the name of our
Peckinese. Stan is another one of our Pugs. This camera's called John and Paul, George
and Ringo, who were not relations of mine. Are we having fun? Yayy! We're not shooting film. We're shooting digitally. We shoot onto these cards, which slide in
the side of the camera, and each one of these is 128GB. On top of that, you're shooting at 5K resolution. A very sharp, clear image. You need like a chart, but 5K is there, 4K
is about there, and then you're 1080 home TV is down there, so that gives y
ou an idea
of the amount of information we're capturing on these. Let's do another one of those. We're shooting "The Hobbit" at a higher framerate,
at 48 frames/second, which is twice the normal 24 frames. The human eye sees 60 frames/second. So 48 frames is more of a natural progression
toward giving the viewer what they'd actually see in the real world. The people who have seen scenes from "The
Hobbit" at 48 fps often say it's like the back of the cinema has had a hole cut out
of it where the
screen is, and you're actually looking into the real world. Once you add stereo, and it gives you that
extra ability to control depth, you can devise ways in which it can become part of the story
telling of a film. For instance, in Murkwood, we really play
on the fact that it's a forest that's kind of hallucinogenic almost. It draws you in. It makes you part of it, and you may never
get out. We just want you to stay where you are, and
then - Stay back! Stay where you are. Murkwood is a big fores
t, and it's full of
vines and sinister-looking trees I suppose you'd say. It has a lot of things hanging down, things
coming from all sorts of angles, and it helps us with the 3D to be able to push into that,
and try to get the audience to feel that they're actually trying to move into the forest with
the cameras, and give it that dark and look-over-your-shoulder feeling. Color-wise, with the Red camera, it tends
to eat camera a little, and so we add more color. If you look at the ungraded foota
ge the trees
look incredibly psychedelic. They look like they were painted in 1967. We wouldn't normally be quite as bold as this,
even in Murkwood, which is an enchanted forest, so it's like we oversaturate. In the movie, they won't look anything like
that. They'll be graded down and you'll just get
the barest hint of color in the finished film. They're coming back! 3D, 48fps is pretty unforgiving,
and we have to change our whole way to go about coloring these things because what we've
found ou
t in early test is that if there wasn't enough red in these pieces, they would punch
up yellow and react differently than normal skin with blood running through it. So, here's an example. This is Graham McTavish as Dwalin, and we've
had to add a lot of red tones to his makeup. So if you notice, if you stick your hand up
next to your face, how incredibly pale this man is right now. I've barely seen daylight for the last 6 months,
which is why. So we have to add the blood and the paste
to make him
look like a normal flesh tone. It looks freaky now, but on film it's going
to read beautifully - fingers crossed. With the 3D HD stuff, it is amazing how when
people's hair moves around on the wigs, it has to actually be the real thing. It has to be real hair. And you find that because the number of frames/second
you're using and so forth, if you've got real hair moving around, it just look real. I've never worked on a film that's 48 frames/second
and uses the cameras that we're using. It's cha
llenging to look for fabrics that
work. I know full well that a fabric we bought ages
ago for a dressing gown for Bilbo would probably make people feel sick if they saw it on camera. It's got spots on it with a little spot inside
it, and it would just be like someone throwing stone at your face I think. I've avoided that fabric like the plague. It's in very poor taste! Others are just a joy to behold, and the camera
picks it up, and the audience can see every last detail, so in that sense it's r
eally
exciting. This film is really breaking new grounds in
many ways as far as the technology of the filming goes. But John and I are still working in our time
honored methods of pencil and charcoal, composing pictures in 2D. We thought we'd try to come up with some way
of actually incorporating a 3D aspect into the way we were producing the concept art
that might communicate more clearly to Peter and to the other technicians. So what we're doing is two drawings. One is in red, one is in blue,
and the 3D
glasses have a red lens and a blue lens, one for each eye. This is probably the first cinema production
where the concept art has been done in 3D. Rather than just sharing the same office,
we're actually sharing basically the same vision. There's been a bit of a tendency for me to
take on the blue, and obviously sitting on the righthand side of the picture it's easier
to actually get your head around the left side. It doesn't make sense when you try to explain
it like that. It's a hug
e help for Peter because we're actually
proposing the full depths. I mean, it means Peter has to wear glasses
when he looks at our art, but - My God, coming at ya, look at that! If you have a pair of these glasses at home,
you should be able to see the artwork in 3D. You look great - very 3 dimensional. You've definitely improved. So I hope you've found this blog interesting. I know it's a bit frustrating because everything
we've been talking about you can't actually see at the moment. You can't
see the 3D, you can't see the 48
frames, you can't see the 5k, but you will. December 2012, you'll finally get a chance
to see what we've been talking about - anyway, I've got to get back to set. It looks like they're almost ready for me
down there. We're actually shooting today Pine Forest,
although as you can see it's not really Pine Forest. It's a polystyrene and plaster Pine Forest. Very shortly, we're going to be leaving the
studio and moving onto locations for a few months. So the next ti
me we see you will be from a
location somewhere in New Zealand. Catch up with you soon. Dwarves and boats, everybody thinks they're
a sailor. Welcome to our new blog, which is about the
logistics of location shooting. We've been traveling pretty much the length
and breadth of New Zealand shooting locations for "The Hobbit." It's been great to get outside. It's been great to get that texture of Middle
Earth into the movie after many, many weeks of shooting in the studio, we've established
our cha
racters, we've established our story, and it was finally time to get on the road
and establish the landscapes of Middle Earth. So they're currently moving 500 of the crew
to Hemington, and then about 200 2nd unit crew to various parts of the country. We like to call it the biggest logistical
move in cinematic history. Just the size of the fleet, plus 240 vehicles
- as you can see, we're moving around a huge surface. I think everyone is secretly scared, but quietly
excited. The main reason for go
ing on location on the
project is to capture the scenic beauty of New Zealand. Peter's often said one of the things that
won the fans over so much in the "Lord of the Rings" series was the unbelievable vistas
and scenics because they were so magnificent. People are really excited about getting outside
and taking this on the road. These are our changes for the main unit crew,
so this is how big we actually are. We have probably over 500. Everybody's got to be in the right vehicle
at the right tim
e, they have to travel to the right place, they have to have rooms to
be able to sleep in. I can't begin to imagine the logistics involved
with shifts the crew, the cast, the equipment we have on "The Hobbit." It's pretty mind blowing. You have to take everything with you to produce
the films. We're having to provide our own electricity,
areas to cook food, areas for people to sit down and eat. We've got to provide water, the bathrooms
and the toilets that people need. You have to have weather c
over, heat when
it's cold, and you've got to provide cooling when it's hot. The daunting aspect of that is that it's all
got to get into trucks, it's all got to be on wheels, and it's all got to be ready to
roll. We're about the try and cram all of this,
and all of that, all of this, some of that, most of this, both these trucks, most of these
people, but not that scissor lift up there. That stays. They're going to go into some of these trucks. These guys here are going to go in these trucks,
to
o. One of our biggest challenges on the production
is actually shooting all the locations in one hit, for both main unit and second unit. You can certainly start here. We're away for about 7 1/2 weeks if the weather
holds up, so we're basically praying that every spot we go to in the country is sunny
and beautiful. The first location is Matamata, up in old
Hobbittown. So we're returning back to the first sop from
"Lord of the Rings," which is pretty exciting. We do a fantastic job, and we're out
of here
at 4 o'clock in the morning, and as you can see we're totally under control. Why aren't you helping? Well I've got to carry this. We go to some of the remotest locations in
New Zealand, and if there's one things grips can't live without, it's their latte, soy. That's right. We're getting ready to go away, and so far
we haven't packed anything, and tomorrow's our last day. The hobbits are doing a big scene against
green screen on the Hobbittown. This is my little hobbit and my sonny hobb
it. So we need the largest team on because they're
also going to try to pack. And they're going to say "where did you put
it because I'll need it," and "where did you put that wig? Did you put it away? No we need to put it on his head now." We'll be here until midnight trying to load
up the boxes because they leave at 4 o'clock in the morning. Be sure to pack scotch, tequila, wine and
beer, a heap of plants, sixty kilos of toilet paper, a few artificial trees, socks, and
some jaegermeister. We'v
e got a stock truck coming in to take
our 49 mixed age sheep, 15 chickens, 9 goats, 5 free road steers, 4 pheasants, 2 moscove
ducks. We've also got Michael Jackson, the walking
chicken on the lead. We're just going to take you through, get
your contracts done. We've got lunch packed for you to take on
the road, so just follow me. The keys are in it? The keys are in it. We've got ups units installed in all of the
trucks, purely so we can watch what's happening as they move up and down the countr
y. If you don't arrive, we can't shoot. The last truck should be out of here in half
an hour, and then Hobbittown. Just remember that the reason you're on this
plane is because you're so valuable to the production. Our main unit had over a hundred units on
wheels traveling to the first location. That was quite a feat in itself, having that
amount of drivers on the road. Once we get in, we arrive and it's about an
eight hour turnaround from when the first truck turns up to when the unit base is a
ctually
functional for filming. They've got to get these trucks level for
working in. They've got to get them all powered up, and
get them all functioning so quickly: prosthetics, makeup, costume, catering. It's not just a case of a small crew going
into very out of the way places. We're literally occupying the space of a football
field - I think it's actually two football fields. We've moved 7,000 cubic meters of dirt to
accommodate everything that goes along with making a film of this size wit
h this many
people involved. It's very much a mini city. It's amazing how they went home on Friday
night in Wellington, turn up to work here on Monday morning, and then everything's here,
packed up in order and looking good and working. It's okay. Rough day at the office today mom. So after 110 days in the studio, we finally
make it ou into the sunshine. But I'll tell you what, Hobbittown is looking
fantastic. The arts department and the greens department
have been working for nearly two years.
The grasses have grown, the flowers are out,
and the plastic ones have even bloomed. It's weird when you come back to a place you
literally thought you'd never see again. This is a great spot. To be standing there with Elijah dressed up
as Frodo, it was the nearest thing I think I'm ever going to come to a time machine. This is actually the first time I'm stepping
foot down into Hobbittown. I'll never forget that feeling of coming to
Hobbittown for the first time, so much time spent in this univ
erse, you know with these
characters and I keep referencing the fact that I turned 19 when I came to Hobbittown
for the first time. 11 years ago. I'm 30 now. I don't know, there's so many feeling of nostalgia
and history. We'd been searching pretty much the whole
country for this rolling, green countryside. We were up here scouting around and found
this place called Buckland Road, and sure enough when we flew over it we found the round
tree, the hill, the lake - it was all meant to be. Of course
, then it was a matter of talking
to the owners of the land, getting their permission to shoot here and build here. Well it was a Saturday afternoon during a
rugby game that he came and knocked on my father's door, and he said they wanted to
make a movie, and my father actually said, "Lord of the what?" And I kicked him under the table quietly,
but that's how it all started. This time around, they built it for real. So before, all of these hobbit holes were
built using polystyrene. When the film
ing was finished, they tore it
all down. Even though it's been available for tours
and for people to look at, we didn't have any of the hobbit holes. Doing "The Hobbit" now, it gave us the ability
to rebuild hobbit holes out of permanent materials. Materials that won't deteriorate and that
we can go around showing people what's involved with making a movie behind the scenes. It's all, I mean that's actual rock, stone,
it's pretty amazing. Hobbiton's going to stay exactly as it is
today, which is
fantastic. There's real wood, there's real stone, real
bricks, and it's hopefully going to be here for decades to come. It's a great gift, and as the minister of
tourism, I'm right with it - so well done. It's some prime real estate - hobbits. Hello, you guys having a good day? Yeah. How're those feet treating you? They're alright. Are they? When you're at Hobbiton you forget that you're
on a film set. Seeing it like this kind of living model village
is just extraordinary, and you just totally
believe this place exists. And that's because it does. Maybe I've smoked a little bit too much of
this now. It's an authentic village. It's 100% 360 degree look-wherever-you-like
little hobbit village. You can imagine just being a hobbit in this
environment, get up and have a cup of tea on the doorstep, listen to the birds and the
frogs, the children running around... go to the market and buy a big bottle of beer and
drink it - and loving it! You're not really running a film set, you're
trying t
o put yourself in the mindset of a hobbit, and figuring out well where you'd
like your house to be. There are 44 personalized hobbit holes, and
each hobbit hole has a different little detail depending on their location. That's kind of amazing the door actually open. Hello? Hello? No one's home at the moment. They must be at the market. Welcome to the set of "The Hobbit." So how did you get involved in this? My four daughter auditioned, and they all
missed out - and I got in. So, I wasn't a popul
ar father at that point. You guys are up for stealing, aren't you? Big, bad hobbits! Check this out. Oh yeah, I like to get a nice combover. Is this going to be in the movie? We can cut that, it's fantastic, we've got
that. So we just finished our first week on location. I just wish I could move into one of these
hobbit holes. I mean, this would be an absolutely ideal
place to live, it really would. This is the sort of place I'd very happily
retire to. In fact, I might think about it tonight, or
the next day. Good retiring here, that'd be quite nice. The end. I hope you enjoyed the first part of our location
block. The second part will be ready very early in
the new year. And in the meantime, we've just shot the last
shot of "The Hobbit" in 2011. So it only remains to do one last thing, which
is to wish you all a Merry Christmas! Welcome to the first blog of 2012. We're shooting part 2 of "The Hobbit" today. We're here in lake town, but I can't show
you anything. I can't show you the a
mazing set that's over
there, and the incredibly thing that's over there because you're not allowed to see that
until 2013. But what we can show you are the continuation
of our location adventures, so if you remember from our last exciting episode we were in
Hobbiton. So let's pick up from where we left off and
travel around the rest of New Zealand. So we just finished our first week on location. So it's goodbye to Hobitton and hello to our
next spot. Here is the weather in Pipui today. It has,
of course, been raining. Welcome to the bluffs people. We've brought the weather with us, which is
great. We don't have the umbrellas in the movie,
by the way, just in case you're wondering. No because the colors clash. What's kind of weird is that you're on the
sets in the studio, and they look so real that you come out on location and it almost
looks fake. You just think, "this can't exist," it's just
weird. It's a trick. It's mind games. It's a very nice environment. Some nice stuff up in the
re, just going to
be a bit lumpy getting stuff around and building stuff on rocks and bits and pieces, but it'll
be nice. It's a good location. I'm just worried about the dinosaurs. So here we are at the Turoa Ski Field, on
the flanks of Mt. Ruapehu. This is the second largest national park in
the world. Very ancient vegetation, magnificent colors,
magnificent textures, but very fragile. And hence we've gone to exceptional lengths
to make sure the impact on the site is minimized. So it's about s
caffolding, it's about elevated
boardwalks to keep people off the vegetation. We built the world's largest ramp as far as
I'm concerned to get down to the thing. When everybody sort of walked out to the edge
this morning, we sort of looked at it and jaws dropped, and we were like, "Wow, okay. So that's how we get onto set today." So this is my favorite location. It's beautiful - there's a mountain, there's
a waterfall, there's a beautiful view across the valley there. It's one of those sort of a
rchetypal New Zealand
locations where you think, "God, New Zealand has such amazing landscapes." It's a bit sad when the grips are going faster
than I am and they're carrying heavy things. Andy Serkis jumped in the icy cold stream
to chase the fish as Gollum about 12 years ago - just over there. So welcome to the first day on location with
2nd unit. I've spent quite a lot of the past few weeks
in a chopper. Because a lot of our stuff was arial coverage. We'd take off and choose our line and choo
se
the way we were going to shoot it and how we were going to reveal the landscapes. So we're using the space cam on all the arial
stuff on the show. This particular rig is set up for 3D. There's a chopper behind me, isn't there? The bonuses of being on 2nd unit is that we
do a lot of locations that are too tricky or time consuming for main unit to go, so
a lot of our locations were helicopter only access. So we got very good at loading in and out
of choppers. So you've got literally 2 units who
are now
crisscrossing the country, both the north and south islands. About half way through our location shoot,
1st and 2nd units met up at what happened to be exactly halfway through the entire shoot
- day 127, and we commemorated that with a hoodie, a halfway hoodie. It's 127 days, and it's two films. Now I've got a 133 day "Lord of the Rings"
jumper that was for 3 films. So 133 days for 3 films, and 127 days for
2 films. Easily explained. How? Well we're all ten years older, so we're going
a
little slower. One of the challenges was showing P.J. what we'd been up to. So every day, I would then do a kind of edit
of the takes that we'd done and put them together and make some selects, and that would be sent
off to Pete. We are a long way from most of the infrastructure
that we know and love, so we've had to rely on satellite technology to do all of our connectivity. These are the three dishes that we're setting
up today to provide internet for the crew. We're providing wireless and et
hernet. We've also got a separate setup that's up
at the director's tent that's beaming in footage from second unit that basically takes the
feed that's coming in from the cameras, compresses it, sends it over the internet all the way
through, down to Pete's tent. So far, we've probably used about 6km of cable
on the job. I'm not sure where it's all gone, but we keep
on ordering more of it. Strath Taieri, Central Otago. So this is a location where you can literally
shoot 360 degrees, every direc
tion. We've had some incredibly skies, what we call
close encounter of the third kind skies. Warehouse skies are a little boring. Because we've shot over 3 days, we'll probably
replace them with these cool skies. I'd love to do that, get some real mood into
it. One of the days of shooting at this location
was actually up on the hill there, called the rock and pillar range, if you just look
over there. It's pretty much that distant ridge line between
those two rocks. So that's the rock and pillar
s, where we had
to have ten helicopters carrying crew, cast, and equipment up the mountain. This is Adam Brown's first helicopter ride. Oh my gosh. Are you so excited? I'm well excited. You should be. And action. Amazing! So we're picking up at the end of our location
shooting here, and going to Queenstown. Here we are at beautiful Queenstown. We're just at the base outside the Earnslaw
Burn, which is the most spectacular shooting location I think we've been to yet. We're shortly going to do a r
endition of "The
Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music," starting with Mark over there. See, he's getting into his Maria position,
there he is. It's snow! Bare feet was a bad choice. Now we've been to Paradise before. That's where we shot a few scenes of "The
Fellowship of the Ring" mainly, back in 1999 - Lothlorien Forest. Boromir's death. The great thing about this job is you see
beautiful, beautiful places like this. So you don't have to feel sorry for our actors'
leaving home for 7 1/2 wee
ks. We're very well looked after. The catering on this movie has been sensational. The numbers we've been doing on location were
between 300 and 400, and then we were doing 570 to 580 because we had quite a few extras
there as well. We cook 100 at least kilos of meat each day. One of the guys pointed out that we'd been
through a ton of oranges already. It's Formal Friday today, so we're dressed
in suits - one of the only ways for the crew to know what day of the week it is. Every morning, we cra
nk out about 200 or 300
coffees. We're heading off to the hills to look after
a crew of about 100 people who are all being choppered into the mountains. It being in the mountains, there's snow around. It's cold. So sometimes in formal dress it's not practical,
so as you can see here, Andrew has gone from a three piece to a four piece with the addition
of a nice, cozy puffer jacket - because you can't always look good. Sometimes you have to be sensible. Sometimes you take for granted the scenery
in the country where you live, so to come out on the road was really amazing. Good morning. Thank you. I can't believe how nice it is. We're the luckiest high-restricted people
in the whole world. I think it comes into high-restricted. New Zealand, looking at its spectacular best,
and a lot of really happy actors cavorting around in front of it. Braemer Station was pretty difficult working
conditions for the cast and the crew because the grounds were uneven. This is a New Zealand native thorn bu
sh, which
is everywhere you ever want to walk. You can't just parade through the rocks and
the pebbles without looking and suddenly realize that being out of doors in Middle Earth can
be a difficult business, particularly when there's a pack of orcs or wogs. Dances with wogs. Heavenly wogs. The boy who cried wog. Aliens vs. wogs. I was a teenage wog. Enormous amount of running. Scene 88, I think, is actually going to be
a third film that will be coming out between the first and the second. It's
actually, for the most part easier working
inside a studio. But, of course, you know the studio doesn't
have the incredible vistas, and that's what we were there for. 8 km from the mount. Unbelievable. This is a glorious bridge over the glorious
river where we are shooting today. I think my favorite day on set unquestionably
was floating down the river in barrels. We're finally going to put our dwarves in
barrels. Looks like fun. I could do it myself if I wasn't busy doing
other things. Today we
're swinging over the river. We've got some dwarves coming down in barrels. Keep going everybody. That's good. That was way cool. And if they ever make that a ride at any of
the Warner Bros. movie worlds - lifetime pass please. While we were there, our location shooting
came to a pretty dramatic end because the police arrived and said they were about to
issue a severe weather warning. Okay, we need to shoot, please, because it's
raining, so we need to get going. And I've never seen a crew pack u
p their gear
so quickly. So the very next day, everywhere where we
were standing, everywhere our equipment was, our cameras, our actors, the director, was
under flood water. It was incredibly dramatic. The rise in the river level was 20 or 30 feet. And that's location. So that's the end of our location shooting,
and we are about to go into our last 100 days, what we're calling block 3, and I look forward
to talking to you again very very soon.
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