New Zealand home of Middle-earth

How did you first come to be involved in The Lord of the Rings?

I was working on The Matrix when I got a call from a friend of mine to say that they were doing The Lord of the Rings in New Zealand. I was excited about that idea because I had worked in New Zealand before and loved it down here.

I thought I could afford to take off for a weekend and fly to meet Peter [Jackson], and I had a look around WETA Workshop at the wonderful craftsmanship that Richard Taylor had produced. The armour, prosthetics and weaponry was just as good as you could get anywhere in the world.

And then I had breakfast with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh. They wanted to watch a film playing downtown, and they complained about how it took 15 minutes to get from the suburbs from the city. And I thought to myself, okay - Peter wears shorts, he's got bare feet and it takes 15 minutes... I think I can put up with this after spending an hour-and-a-half on the L.A. freeway to get to work.

What was it about New Zealand that made it the right place to make The Lord of the Rings?

I was familiar with New Zealand having worked here a long time ago on a Disney movie, and I had a feeling it would work. Peter and I began discussing some of the locations he had in mind, and I agreed with him entirely that we should go to these fairly far-flung places. We decided to film everywhere from volcanic islands like White Island, to the wonderful Fjords of the South Island to Lake Wakatipu, and I agreed with him that the investment of logistics would pay off. It's an epic novel, an Herculean undertaking - which is what it took to make a movie of The Lord of the Rings. I felt very confident in the locations we picked, and that they would accurately portray what we wanted.

How did you come to film the Hobbiton sequences of the film in Matamata?

The town of Hobbiton symbolises what Frodo is leaving behind when he goes on this journey, what he is fighting for and what he's coming home to. We wanted this lush, picturesque land and we found it in the centre of the North Island, in a town called Matamata.

We found this wonderful farm, and the farmer was kind enough to let us build Hobbiton on his property. Peter felt strongly that Hobbiton had to have a feeling of having been there forever, so he actually built the set a year ahead of time and let it grow into the landscape. We planted the gardens and vegetables and they were tended for over a year, as though it was a growing community.

Did the New Zealand locations used in The Fellowship of the Ring live up to your expectations?

I think almost all of the locations we filmed in seemed so natural and so integral to the film and to the story. I remember, for example, Paradise, which is near the town of Glenorchy, outside Queenstown. Paradise is this wonderful Beech forest covered in a thick layer of moss. We did a couple of sequences around that area including Lothlorien and the climactic battle at Amon Hen, and it just had this magical feeling. Amon Hen is evidence of a ruined civilisation, and to capture that we laid in some architectural elements of statues, pillars, stonework and had this moss grow over it and engulf it and it felt really quite wonderful.

What are your thoughts about New Zealand as a filmmaking environment?

I think New Zealand has a variety of wonderful scenery, and in addition, there's a very ingenious technical crew that worked with us on the film.

As I mentioned earlier, Richard Taylor is one of the best in the world at what he does. In fact, our swordmaster, Bob Anderson, came to New Zealand and met with Richard and said to Richard for every day that we'd have stunts on set he would need five copies [of each sword] made out of aluminium, because they would break. And Richard did the math and realised that would far exceed his budget, so he invented a new way to mount the pommel on the sword. We didn't break one sword throughout the whole movie. Bob walked away saying, "Why did I have to come to New Zealand to find someone who could make a sword? I've worked in England and I've worked in the U.S. and this is the first time anyone's made a sword that's really worked in film." So that kind of ingenuity is something that's priceless.

I think that there's a lot of talent that's grown up here through the increase of production over the last 15 years. There is infrastructure that's gone into Wellington as a result of our film including what Peter's done to upgrade the National Film Unit - the mixing stage there is about the best in this hemisphere - and WETA Digital has computing power comparable to any other effects shop in the world.

What effect do you see The Lord of the Rings having on the New Zealand film industry?

The Lord of the Rings has done a lot of things for the industry here, including building up The Film Unit, which is the laboratory and sound mixing facilities. WETA Digital is a state of the art facility. It has also done intangible things, in that it has built the level of confidence in the crew. I remember early-on, one of the key people on the crew asked me in a private moment if they thought we could actually make this film in NZ and I said "Yes, by all means" and then looked around to see who was behind me. By the end of the film I think everyone knew we could make it, and make it well.

How do you think the international film industry will view New Zealand after The Lord of the Rings?

I think the film speaks for itself to the global filmmaking community, that you can indeed make a film like this in New Zealand. It certainly has built up a lot of confidence in the film industry and I expect that it will stimulate a heightened interest among the global community about New Zealand as a location worth considering for films. So I think it will lead to increases in production here.

What are some of the innovations that New Zealand companies have contributed to the making of The Lord of the Rings?

WETA Digital has produced a number of innovative techniques. One of the things that comes immediately to mind is the way we've created [digital] crowds with intelligence, so that 10,000 soldiers on the field can all walk with a different gait and a different style, and each one of these soldiers has artificial intelligence. It's a very innovative program written by a New Zealander.

In addition, some of the work we did with CG animation - the Cave Troll, and the Watcher in the Water - is pretty advanced in terms of muscle movement and shading textures. You'll see a lot more of that in The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Peter has said that this should feel like history. We want to make even the animated creatures as realistic as possible - make them feel as though they were prehistoric creatures that did exist in another part of the world.