Yes, you are absolutely right. My wife has been addicted to the extended version documentaries for 3 years now. I've only had the opportunity to watch some of them, but I got the impression that most of the work was Kiwi-made. Your more in-depth scrutiny supports that impression completely. In the case of LOTR, it appears that cost savings were not the primary reason for off-shoring the work. Jackson had New Zealand in mind for the Middle Earth set for years. It turned out that quality and convenience merged in a truly serendipitous way for this work. I had my quibbles with their decisions on changes, but I understood their reasonings. The elves still were a bit too dour for my taste, but I loved Shore's musical score. The new super duper edition has an extra DVD that deals with the musical score, btw. You also get a Minas Tirath paper weight!
Happy New Year everyone! Mike ***************** Michael O'Connor [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of David W. Fenton Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 5:47 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [Finale] MIDI transcriptionism On 30 Dec 2004 at 13:05, Michael O'Connor wrote: > In the one case that I know anything at all about, the Lord of the > Rings trilogy used a large number of New Zealand tech folks as well as > extras, (and some credited actors). The rest were UK people, so I > don't know if American work rules had anything to do with the entire > project. of course most studios are international companies now ... Having just gone through the extended editions of all three movies and all the documentaries that come with them (11 hours of movies, 15+ hours of documentaries), the New Zealand connection was much greater than you are suggesting. So far as I can tell, *all* extras were Kiwis, as well as all the production crew with the exception of the management-level roles. All post-production was done in New Zealand with the exception of music recording, which was done in London because it was done by the London Philharmonic (easier to go to the orchestra than to bring the orchestra to NZ). The remarkable thing about the whole endeavor was that Peter Jackson (the director) basically created the whole production mechansim from scratch, for the purpose of making his films. He built a new sound facility literally from the ground up for the purpose of mixing his films (the last two were done there). Weta Workshop basically ramped up its staff to whatever level was needed to support the film, and brought in whatever expertise was necessary to get the job done (as well as innovating on their own in a number of areas). Even the digital FX were "home-grown," with Weta Digital doing almost all of it (New Line, the distributors of the films, was not confident that Weta could successfully animate Gollum, and had to be convinced before signing off on turning over the wholesale creation of an entire critical character to the digital animators). At the end Jackson remarks in one of the documentaries that the three films were basically made by amateurs. There was, in fact, very little Hollywood involvement in the production. The cast was the most "Hollywood" part of the entire endeavor, and even that was heavily UK-based. And, no, my eyes didn't fall out after watching all of this. I did this in the evenings over the holidays, and was riveted. I first rewatched the original versions of all three films. I then watched the extended versions with commentary from the director and writers. After each, I watched the 5+ hours of documentaries associated with that film before going on to the commentary for the next film. Last of all, I watched all three extended editions in succession (though I basically watched half a movie each night, as by this time, I was pretty worn out). It's a pretty amazing accomplishment, over all, comparable, in my opinion, to Wagner's mounting of his Ring Cycle the first time at Bayreuth. I think, though, that I'm going to wait a while before listening to the other commentaries! -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
