Weaving on Hobbit in 3D, Returning to Middle-Earth

In an interview with Collider, Hugo Weaving (Elrond) spoke about his recent movies with Last Ride, Cloud Atlas and The Hobbit. While light on details, he did talk glowingly of returning to the world of Middle-Earth and how he thought "will work incredibly well" for the films. The entire interview is here, The Hobbit related portions below.

What was it like to be on The Hobbit set, for the first time? Did it feel weird to be playing Elrond again, but 60 years before The Lord of the Rings? How was the tone and world different?
WEAVING: Yeah! In some ways, it was a lot of fun to go back and be on a Rivendell set again with Ian McKellan. It was really lovely to see some old friends and old faces again, and to go back into a similar world, which is tonally a little bit different. You’re in the same world, but the story has a different tone. Peter [Jackson] and Fran [Walsh] are just lovely people, and there’s a particular frustratingly wonderful energy about working on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The project is so massive and there are so many people. It makes it frustrating for everyone because things just take time and you don’t know what’s happening. You don’t know what’s going on, despite all the best intentions, but the people are so lovely that you just accept, “Well, this is the way this particular world is.” You live from day to day and from moment to moment, doing the best you can. There’s a delightful atmosphere there, so it was lovely. I’ve literally just come back from there a couple days ago, having done post-production on that, so it was really nice to see everyone again.

What are your thoughts on the film shooting in 48fps and also in 3D? Did it help to immediately be able to see how it would look in playback?
WEAVING: Yeah, absolutely. I think the 3D will work incredibly well for The Hobbit. I don’t think it does for everything, and I don’t think it should for everything. To some extent, 3D is just a gimmick, but sometimes it works wonderfully well. With something like Cave of Forgotten Dreams, the Werner Herzog film, you think, “Why is this in 3D?,” but it’s actually wonderful in 3D. It’s a documentary, but it works incredibly well. And then, there are some other films where you think, “This might be in 3D, but the way in which it’s been put into 3D or the way in which it’s being used is too obvious or it seems gimmicky.” I don’t get a lot from the 3D experience, generally, but for certain films, I think it works really wonderfully well, and I suspect The Hobbit will be one of them. For that particular world, I think it’s probably a really fabulous natural exploration of it. With some other things, the 3D doesn’t work so well. I’d rather see something like Last Ride or a small film on a flat screen, rather than with black glasses. That’s impressive enough, as it is.