Jackson on Filming The Hobbit

In a new article from NZ Stuff, Peter Jackson discusses his approach to filming The Hobbit compared to the Lord of the Rings, his enjoyment and what he thinks of the criticism in regards to 48FPS.

‘‘The Lord of the Rings is about good and evil and the fate of the world. I mean, it's about the biggest possible issues you could imagine and that's huge armies and huge empires fighting against each other, as well as the story of Frodo getting to the mountain. So, it a much more [an] epic type of movie. The Hobbit is more of a character ensemble film and an adventure story.

‘‘I'm trying to shoot The Hobbit in the same style as The Lord of the Rings, but obviously the subject matter is different, in the sense, we're following Bilbo [the hobbit] and the dwarfs and we're taking them on this adventure – which is very different to any of what happens in The Lord of the Rings. It simply isn't about such intense kind of issues and intense themes as The Lord of the Rings.’’

‘‘[It’s] in the sense that I am going on location exactly the same Middle-earth as what we did 12 years ago. In theory, I'm just taking the cameras back into Middle-earth again for telling a different story with these different characters. But the world is the same. It's just as epic in many respects as The Lord of the Rings is.’’

‘‘But since I ended up doing it, I'm having a blast. I'm really enjoying it. I'm enjoying myself probably more than The Lord of the Rings in some respect. Because I sort of feel like I know what I am doing a lot more than I did back twelve years ago. So, I'm having fun. I'm enjoying it. I think it's good that it's got a slightly different feel. I'm realising as I'm going that I'm not really repeating The Lord of the Rings, I've got a different story to tell. So, there's providing some of the freshness.’’

‘‘I've been watching 48 frames for a year and I can only go on what I believe and I certainly think it's pretty fantastic. There was a lot of people who were dubious about it when we started shooting and started looking at stuff, but everybody here is completely won over now. So, you know, rather than the experience of somebody seeing 10 minutes, I'm amongst people that have seen hours and hours and hours of it for a year. And I think that it will be good.

‘‘What I was interested in with the negative comments [is that they] were based around, ‘Well, it's so real. It's so different and it's so real’. And I think, ‘Well, that’s fantastic’ because my entire career I've tried to make my stuff real in the context of what it is. Whether it's zombies or whether it's Middle-earth or a gorilla, whatever it is, I've always tried to make it as real as I possibly can. Like, just down to the texture of the world and the costumes and the languages they speak and the performances of the actors to be authentic, I mean, real is what I'm after and if I can use a 48 frames whatever technology there is to make it more real, that's fine by me.

‘‘I don’t subscribe at all to the idea where it's fantasy so it can't be real. The best fantasy is real.’’

(via TOR)