Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson
Sir Peter Robert Jackson ONZ KNZMis a New Zealand filmmaker and screenwriter. He is best known as the director, writer and producer of The Lord of the Rings trilogyand The Hobbit trilogy, both of which are adapted from the novels of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien. Other notable films include the critically lauded drama Heavenly Creatures, the mockumentary Forgotten Silver, the horror comedy The Frighteners, the epic monster remake film King Kongand the supernatural drama film The...
NationalityNew Zealander
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth31 October 1961
CityPukerua Bay, New Zealand
People regard CGI as a gimmick; they almost blame CGI for a bad story or a bad script. They talk about CGI as if it's responsible for a drop in standards.
Over 55% of all shots using animals in 'The Hobbit' are in fact computer generated; this includes horses, ponies, rabbits, hedgehogs, birds, deer, elk, mice, wild boars and wolves.
One of the best things about growing up in New Zealand is that if you are prepared to work hard and have faith in yourself, truly anything is possible.
Obviously, with a CGI character, you're building a character in much the same way as a real creature is built. You build the bones, the skeletons, the muscles. You put layers of fat on. You put a layer of skin on which has to have a translucency, depending on what the character is.
Obviously, movies, you're often on location, out in the rain or the sun, in a real place where the trees and the cars are real. But when you're on stage, as an actor you're imagining the environment that you're in.
My dad always told me that the principal reason he chose New Zealand to emigrate to after World War II was the high regard his father had for the Kiwis he encountered at Gallipoli.
It's almost like an optical illusion, 'The Hobbit.' You look at the book, and it is really thin, and you could make a relatively thin film as well. What I mean by that is that you could race through the story at the speed that Tolkien does.
In the old days, you cut out a scene that might've been a really great scene, and no one was ever going to see it ever again. Now, with DVD, you can obviously... there's a lot of possibilities for scenes that are good scenes.
If you're a filmmaker, and every time you finish a film, you just naturally go, 'Oh, I could have done so much better,' that's not much fun, is it, really? You might as well go pick another profession if that really is how you derive satisfaction from it.
If I'm lucky enough to be involved in the Academy Awards in the future, I'll just let people make up their decision without being involved in any politics. Because it shouldn't involve that.
I'm not going to head off and do a Marvel film. So if I don't do a Marvel film, I don't have any other choice - I've got to go make a small New Zealand movie!
I used to send away for eight-minute Super 8 movies of various Ray Harryhausen scenes advertised on the back of 'Famous Monsters of Filmland' magazine.
I thought that there might be something unsatisfying about directing two Tolkien movies after 'Lord of the Rings.' I'd be trying to compete with myself and deliberately doing things differently.
I think we're going to enter a phase where there's less interest in the CGI and there's a demand for story again. I think we've dropped the ball a little bit on stories for the sake of the amazing toys that we've played with.