Sir Peter Jackson in conversation: Exeter College Oxford Eighth Century Lecture Series

good evening ladies and gentlemen I'm Rick trainer reor of exitor college and it's my great pleasure to welcome you all to this evening with the celebrated director and producer sir Peter Jackson exitor college has just completed its 700th anniversary year and tonight's occasion is the first of our 8th Century lectures and it's especially appropriate that Peter Jackson should be the focal point of exit's first public Venture into its 8th Century creativity in literature art and the Performing Arts has been a major exitor theme for a very long time examples can be found in the artists and designers Willam moris and Edward burn Jones the musician her Hubert Parry the actor Richard Burton the playwriter Alan Bennett and the novelist Philip pman our best known alumnus fits squarely into that tradition JRR toen the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings was an exitor undergraduate who was enrolled in the college when it celebrated its 600th anniversary in 1914 it's been demonstrated by tolken expert John G who's with us this evening that it was an ex ex there he is it was at exiter that tolken first produced creative Works which brought together his vivid imagination with his increasingly deep knowledge of the languages and legends of the countries of Northern Europe expertise which he acquired by reading English at exitor so there couldn't be a more suitable person for us to welcome this evening than sir Peter Jackson for sir Peter during a film career that has already brought him three Academy Awards and other major accolades such as the Golden Globe Saturn Awards and baftas is of course the creator of those famous films the Lords of the Rings trilogy 2001 to3 and The Hobbit trilogy 2012 to4 so Peter's also well known for films such as forgotten silver The Frighteners King Kong and The Lovely Bones he's been recognized as not only one of the most successful directors and producers of our time but also as one of the most creative and Innovative Peter Jackson was made a companion of the New Zealand order of Merit in 2002 and then kned by the governor general in 2010 we're delighted that he's with us tonight and delighted Al also that we have with us Peter's wife Fran Walsh a major creative force and award winner in her own right and a major collaborator with Peter I'd now like to hand you over to exitor alumnus and film critic Ed Elliot who's going to engage sir Peter in conversation prior to a question and answer session please join me in welcoming them uh thank you very much yeah thank you so much I I hate to do the sort of teacher thing of can everyone hear us but I'm hoping you can at the back somewhere can you hear us hello testing is that right a little bit louder oh great just say a little bit louder and it happens it's quite amazing very good um pie of thank you so much for being with us today I think I speak for everyone when I say what an immense honor and privilege it is oh thank you uh we're all it's a little bit overwhelming we're all going to try and keep ourselves in check for an hour but if OV excitement or ESS bubbles over I apologize in advance obviously oh no I mean it's pretty it's it's a thr thr for for me to be in be here in this amazing theater I know uh coming through those doors quite amazing quite Welling for me um so we're going to try and sort of work backwards slowly through your uh career possibly a little bit too slowly but we'll see how it goes sure um but obviously as start uh as Rick has said before uh we're all here because of talki uh talking to one of ex's most famous alumni uh You' just completed the final installment of your adaptation of The Hobbit one of his best loved books uh now that the screenings are over and the DVDs have been released is life back to normal yet for you is there such a thing as a normal life for Peter Jackson um well I mean that's one of the things that is hard to have a normal life and it's sort of one of the challenges in a funny way I mean you know you you the the movie industry and and and and the celebrity nature of it and the the way in which you are part of a of a marketing machine I mean because is because at the end of the day you know we're in the film we're in we're in we're in the film business and the business is not really ours we're the people that make the movies but the studios that pay for the films want to sell them and Market them so you find yourself sort of sucked in and swallowed and spat out sometimes by the machine of the of of of the movie business so it is a little hard sometimes to extract yourself from that and that's what I mean friend and I are trying to do that now you know we've been working pretty hard for quite a few years and so we're trying to have a quite a time now for for a bit little bit of a break oh you probably deserve it well you definitely deserve it I should say um you must have been overwhelmed by the the positive response to The Hobbit films I mean has your opinion changed since it's been out since you sort of had everyone's feedback I guess well I I mean look I it's it's you always have a strange relationship with the films that you make I mean I um I tend to not you know you you see the movies obviously intensely as you in postproduction and you edit the film and you start to see the film take shape from all the footage that you shot um and in our case I shoot quite a bit bit of footage so it's a it's a it's a long process the the um the editing and shaping of the movie and and then you attend some premieres usually two or three premieres of the finished final film and at that point I tend to never watch them again um uh because because you can never really see the movie as a movie and you know friend and I were in LA on the way over here and we um were fcking around the channels and King Kong was on which I hadn't seen I mean neither of us have seen King Kong since it was came out which I guess is must be nearly 10 years ago and uh we just kept talking about all the edits that were sloppy and how we should have cut that scene and we should have tightened this and God I wonder if we could have another go at cutting this you you sort of suddenly even 10 years and we you know it was sort of like it was interesting because I'd forgotten some of what happened you know in the very next scene but but also I was seeing all the faults and flaws so I I sort you know I'll um I'll wait till hopefully one day I'll have grand grand children and 25 years would have gone by and maybe I'll watch them again then so you're not tempted to do sort of a Ridley Scott re-edit and 10 years time with The Hobbit films of The Lord of the Ring I have no idea you have to ask me I like to I like to read to read at Kong I know that from from the Los Angeles hotel room but uh Lord of the Rings and H I'm sure I will one day but um you know when I get to see them again but uh I'll just have a you know I mean to you know in a way you you you it's a strange thing because when you're making a movie you can only even make it for yourself you can't make it for the audience because the audience comprises of you know millions of individual people with with their own tastes and you can't possibly second guess what people want so it's it's a very selfish personal thing that you know friend and I work on the scripts and direct the movie cast that you're making a film that you want to see and yet when it's finished you you don't want to see it it's a very it's just a strange thing it's um it's the way it goes yeah it's interesting you're talking about adaptation I read a really interesting article following The Lovely Bones it may have been a very off-hand comment but you did say it's very hard to make a screenplay for fans of of the book um and that may have just been the case of Lovely Bones but I mean did that apply at all The Hobbit um well you can't I I just think I I just think that's wrong it's it's a philosophy is wrong I mean you have to make the film that you want to see I mean you can't make a film for fans I mean a lot of you know a lot of Hollywood um tends to be a bit like that and and you know committee film making they call it where the studio decides what the latest greatest franchise or or or um you know fed is and they they Market they shape the films and they hire filmmakers but we we never really work as filmmakers for High I mean Fran and I have always originated the idea of the film obviously we didn't you know we don't write the Books if we adapt a book but but you know doing the Lord of the Rings back in 1995 or '96 was sort of our idea to do that we made some phone calls so we we we've never been you know hired by the studio we've always sort of come up with the idea of whatever we want to do and gone out and tried tried to get it made so from that point of view we've you know we we're making them for ourselves um but you can't you just cannot make films for an audience as a generic audience you can only make them for you and hope that there there's enough people that share your your sensibilities obviously some some do and do and some don't so that's the way it is and making films for yourself you often well i' I've heard you talk of the Battle of the Five Armies being your sort of favorite of the of The Hobbit trilogies I wonder is that something that comes out during production or during the edit prob probably my favorite because it was the last one and and a holiday was looming I mean I I I don't know really what what my favorite is to tell you the truth it's hard to say but I do you know I mean the B of the five armies was satisfying to to get made and to finish and release because it was like it was the missing piece cuz I think a lot of people um and and especially people that haven't even read the books they kind of thought The Hobbit was a sequel to The Lord of the Rings and yet in our mind we were you know trying to shape the Hobbit movies to be the first three movies in ultimately a six film series and so you know we we' done Parts four five and six you know um 10 years ago and we' done Parts one and too so the Battle of the Five Armies was kind of the missing piece that sort of in a way linked The Hobbit with the Lord of the Rings in our cinematic version so um it was always frustrating um you know with the first two hobbit movies because we were we had a a goal in sight that we were trying to create the Six film set and um and until that last film was done it wasn't really you know obvious to some people so it was a relief to get that last one down year was that part of the reason that you sort of because originally it was going to be two films and expanded three was it trying to bridge that Gap to the Lord of the Rings that caus maybe Theo shot too much footage okay um we we sort of we the I mean the the idea of going from two films which we we just arbitrarily started The Hobbit as two films because we thought that's what it would be it's a very thin book as so many people reminded me um um but you know in in um in developing the book in the way that we developed it um we just kept you know just sort of adding more detail to to to the characters we kept putting more backstory in we we we dipped into some of the um the extra writing that Tolen had done the appendices of The Lord of the Rings we we were able to to use and so we were able to flesh The Hobbit out a little bit so um by the time we were done with that and we were shooting the movie and we were well into shooting we we just suddenly thought you know what this doesn't feel quite right as two movies it it even structurally didn't feel quite right where one finished and the other be began and and so we we started to um this is Fran and Philip and myself Philip is our co-writer Philipa buyens this the three of us just privately started to knock the idea around this is while while we were filming the film um started to knock the idea around that maybe we are dealing with three movies here not two and um it wasn't until just before the end of the filming that we um had Warner Brothers came down to New Zealand to visit and um we at that point we' worked out enough of a structure that we could pitch them to say listen if we were to make three movies this is how you know the first one would finish and then the second one would begin yeah we sort of worked out a structure of how we would reshape the whole thing which was you know at that stage almost completely shock um into three and we certainly had enough material to do it so they they were shocked but um you know and they couldn't quite believe what they were hearing I think because that doesn't normally happen but um you know somebody suddenly just going from you know adding an extra movie right at the very end but um we we pitched it because we felt it was the best way to tell the story and and they agreed one of the obviously as we say before The Hobbit films came to the Lord of the Rings film films um what I've always found is one of the very one of the interesting differences between the two films they seem to have a very different uh physicality a very different sort of weight to them um almost a different sense of physics a lot of the the most loved scenes of uh The Hobbit series stuff like the barrel Chase or the chase through more even some of the battle scenes in the Battle of the Five Armies uh really great scenes but they're hard to imagine fitting into the Lord of the Rings when did that sort of decision s of change the the world a little bit come about well I mean I think I'm not quite sure what exactly what you're talking about but certainly it sounds like it's the it's the um evolution of computer yeah I was computer technology really I mean when we went into the Lord of the Rings we were in a very um analog world where there was you know CGI but it was very um very early days I mean Gollum in The Lord of the Rings was the very first time you know we'd really ever tried to do a computer generated creature of any of any realism and um and yet by the time we reached The Hobbit you know there's another 10 12 14 years of technology has gone by and um you know what you can do is so much more you know you I mean anything that you imagine now in in your mind any image that you imagine you can put on film now so you know we we weren't um we weren't constricted in the way that we were on the door of the Rings For Better or For Worse I mean some people would say it was a bad thing but um you know nonetheless I you know I I don't think the barrel scene for instance or even schmow um talking to Bilbo would have been you know as possible 10 10 or 12 years ago as it as it was now and you're so um obviously you know the larger possibilities was one fact also there are a lot of things like 3D and uh 48 frames per second which came in with the Hobbit I mean what was the the impetus behind that what sort of struck you about those those well three I mean 3D i' I've always liked we tried very hard to do King Kong in 3D and and Jim Cameron was doing Avatar at the same time and we spoke to him and he was going to try to to loan us cameras that he had developed for Avatar but we sort of we chickened out at the last minute cuz it was such new technology was so new and we were rushing towards the beginning of our shoot and so we just I mean I I really barely wanted to shoot um Kong and 3D been great I you know on on the Lord of the Rings set I had an old 3D camera a still camera that from the 19 1950s like a slides you know 3 35 mil slide camera which up two frames so I I mean I've got thousands of um 3D photographs from The Lord of the Rings filming that that I taken on 3D so I've always been a fan of stereo and 3D um so for me as soon as I was able to shoot something in 3D I wanted to do that and um the 48 frames of second thing is really that um you know the technology that exists now has so rapidly moved on from what we've been used to seeing years you know I mean 100 years ago films were 16 frames a second black and white silent you know then for decades there were 24 frames you know color C you know cinemascope came along and and now with um the the cameras that we have now you don't have to stop there you can keep you can keep going on you can shoot and huge resolution um you know you can shoot 6K which will give you sort of IMX size size images and 24 frames is you know it has a it's a limitation because it was 24 frames a second came about in in the um the late 20s or the early 30s when they had to decide on on a motorized speed for the camera because when they when sound came in in the late 20s you couldn't hand hand crank anymore because the hand cranking wasn't a precise enough speed CU sound would go of weird like this if you were talking you know just change the speed and you start to distort the sound so they had to have a very um a set speed for the for the cameras and and they but film stock 35 mm film stock at that time was very very was very expensive so they wanted the minimum speed they could possibly get away with cuz they wanted to to have the have the stock um the lowest possible cost and and yet they wanted it just enough to for the Fidelity of the soundtrack so 24 frames was always a compromise from 1927 28 um so I you don't you don't have to have to stick with it and certainly the human eye is supposed to see things at roughly about 55 frames a second apparently so it pushes it more towards the real world um I mean we can see from that your sort of Love of the the history of Cinema um I've read so many reports of your sort of Love of Harry Howen in particular of an ID of yours the great s technical innovator um for people who maybe don't know it uh great s technical aor of the 50s through the 80s Who imped dynamation stuff like Sinbad and uh Jason the AR wonder if you could just talk about Harry Howen and what it is about his film making that sort of influenced you so much or how it did play an influence in your films yeah well I mean Harry Howen really leads into the Lord of the Rings um in a roundabout way cuz when I was a kid um I was an only child uh back in New Zealand and so I was I you know I had a lot of time time alone by myself and and used to play with um Matchbox toys in the garden and and been little stories and Thunderbirds the TV series Thunderbirds was just coming out when I was a kid so you know I I was there right at the beginning of Thunderbirds and I and I just fell fell in love with that so I I immediately kind of you know started to invent little stories and I made the cardboard Thunderbirds rockets and um out of toilet rolls and things and um and in Ray Harry hen's movies he's he does he did um stop stop motion so he did you know a puppet with joints and you move it one frame at a time take a picture one frame at a time take a frame and so and and that was a very solitary art form and so it for me being all by myself at home I was able to grab my parents super rate movie camera and uh make little wire models I made a little King Kong model and um some other strange little dinosaur type things and for me it was the perfect thing cuz I was falling in love with um with movies fantasy you know Thunderbirds I saw King Kong when I was about 8 or9 on TV and then Harry how and I was able to sit there by myself you know at the weekends and just animate these do these stop motion films and um and then as time went on anyway I became a filmmaker and then when we did The Frighteners um this is about 199 five we had um we' we'd got about 30 computers cuz it was the very beginning I think that Jurassic Park the original um Jurassic Park had just come out a year or two earlier and the D and the dinosaurs and that were amazing so I realized that stop motion is not the the best way of doing creatures that that those you know the Jurassic Park dinosaurs were just so unbelievable so I was really interested in that as a technology and then The Frighteners we gave us you know the ability to build up a little CGI company um in New Zealand about 30 Compu Compu we had as opposed to like we have about well we have 1300 people working there now probably thousands of computers but anyway in those days it was about 30 and um when we finished The Frighteners we Fran and I were talking about what um what type of film should we do next cuz you know you finish a movie you wonder what you're going to do next and um and my love of you know Ray Harry H and Jason Arona sad it was always there and um and and so friend and I started talking about a a fantasy movie but a fantasy movie where we could use the these computers and CGI and um and as opposed to dinosaurs or Jurassic Park we do a sort of a Sinbad adjacent type of a fancy film and um so we thought we would we would write an original one just um come up with some heroic story and every time we attempted to sit down and write something then we would refer to the Lord the Lord of the Rings and we' say like the Lord of the Rings or we could do a scene like the one in The Lord of the Rings in in the book and we kept talking like this for so long that we suddenly realized well I wonder if anyone's doing the Lord of the Rings I mean it's is true and um and so this is about 1995 96 and so we picked up the phone we were in a in a relationship with murx hary Weinstein at murx as a result of Heavenly Creatures it was called a first look deal which meant that anything that we wanted to do we had to ask him first if you know offer it to him first and if he said no we were free free to take it somewhere else ex me so um so anyway Fran and I called Harvey Weinstein um we were in a hotel in Sydney I think we must have been promoting the as we were on PR junket I remember we called him from Sydney and um asked him if he had any interest in doing the Lord of the Rings with us actually we we the idea we originally pitched was to do The Hobbit as one movie and then to do the Lord of the Rings as two movies if The Hobbit was successful that was our original phone call and um and but we didn't know who had the rights we didn't know anything about it we didn't I mean we assumed that maybe George Lucas or Steven Spielberg or somebody had tied up the the Lord of the Rings rights but it was still we we we were going to make this call and anyway Harvey um said okay you know well he does say that he said okay I'll get back to you and um anyway so he he phoned us back a short while afterwards and he said that he'd found out that a um producer called Soul zance had the rights to the Lord of the Rings and he had rights to half The Hobbit not the other half I don't know which half it was but um um and and Harvey said listen he says um you know you know s's got these rights he's had them for for years I think s had had them virtually since since the 1960s we talking so sold the rights um in the late ' 60s and so um hary then said well I'm making The English Patient with s an right now I'm shooting the and and he owes me big time because The English Patient was being made with Fox and fox pulled the plug on it at the last minute and Harvey stepped in and saved it so he said you know Soul owes me a huge favor he owes me a huge favor let me let me call him and and and it was literally that was the favor from The English Patient that Soul's an ed Harvey that sort of cuz Soul had rejected a lot of um offers of ly to from other filmmakers over the years to to do Lord of the Rings as a live action film but Harvey was um able to pull a a guilt card on him and um and and but but he did say hary then the next call was um The Hobbit was too difficult because the rights were sort of split between Saul and United arst I think had him and Harvey didn't want to go down that road cuz it was going to be too difficult to untangle it but but the Lord of the Rings was was okay Soul had 100% of that so we had to do that one first and that was how it all began well we've jumped all the way wasted all of the Rings um now looking back over 10 years ago it's really frightening that it's over 10 years ago um I mean it was well frightening to me I well that that phone call I just described was the phone call to Harvey was 19 years ago that original phone call was about 95 or 96 yeah gez okay um well looking back on it now I mean what what does it mean to you I guess I mean where does it where does it stand in your career your life I mean that's a sort of question other people have to answer I mean for me it's a it's a it's a film on very very proud of I mean I you know I mean we we tend to try to make the films um um as good as we possibly can to the point that we keep working on them we we keep writing the scripts as we're shooting I mean there's no such thing for us as a finished script um you know we're rewriting it all the time as we're shooting we re we even rewrite the script as we cut the film after it shot um we always do pickup shooting which is that uh what people call them re-shoot but we always in our in our budgets going in into the film we always allow know 6 weeks of shooting when we're in the middle of our cut so we shoot the movie we we edit for for two two three months then we bring all the cast and crew back again and we shoot for six more weeks because you know you edit for 3 months you see things that you did wrong you see you see gaps in the story you see things you want to develop so we always so we just keep you know we we keep kind of trying to make the films um again the film that we want to see and so result is we never really have any regrets particularly we're always proud of the films we we're going to make with other people like like like them or not is almost a sort of a you know a side concern um you hope that people like them because you got to make the money back for the studio but um I think it's fair to say that most people enjoyed the Lord of the Rings St PA but um I mean one of the I mean there were so many groundbreaking things about the Lord of the Rings but looking back on it now what seems so unique was the sort of fervor with which the special features the extended editions I think I've never seen a film that's been treated in that manner where people just went crazy to find out everything about how it was made and how these things were possible I mean that must be so gratifying in terms of your directorship it must I mean must be volumed yeah well I mean I think I think you probably find that the Lord of the Rings the special editions and the and all those behind the scenes um features were sort of the first time that that had really been happening because the DVD you're also going back in time where VHS which never had any of that stuff really VHS um tapes got replaced by DVDs and suddenly that was a sort of a new opportunity um just just coincided sort of you know exactly with the time that we were we were doing our first DVDs of um Fellowship of the Ring so look I I mean I just grew up that those special features and and um you know the behind the scenes and everything were really just a result of me growing up as a kid uh trying to find out as much information about Ray Harry house as I could as stop motion animation King Kong special effects and it was just so hard to find anything and you know I I I would get some tiny little snippet in a magazine or newspaper and cut it out and put it in a scrapbook and there was nothing available in those days to really teach you how how this was done you had to kind of either guess or or or or there was some few real spe specialist magazines that you could subscribe to but um so so I just thought well you know I was as a kid growing up hungry for that sort of information and I just thought well if I can you know put a sense of the making of the film as part of the DVD set maybe some you know young kids who are watching this will get inspired to become filmmakers in the future and and and and as a sense of showing people what it's like to make a film and then the extended cuts which I think were also you know the first time people were doing extended Cuts was when we did our ones and that that was just because you end up cutting things out that you don't want to cut out and you you know there's a certain sort of there's a certain audience expectation in the cinema we we we think that we're you know I mean God knows our films were long enough these were talking about three hour films aren't we so you're right on the edge of long super long um and and so we we cut the movies uh down as much as we could to get a length that we felt would be you know EX able in a in a theater but we usually you know that resulted in in 25 minutes or 30 minutes of of scenes being cut out and um normally in the old days that would just get thrown in the floor probably just bined and and um and completely trashed and you know and yet they weren't you know most of them weren't too bad as SCS they they were they they were a lot of backstory and a lot of explanation which just didn't make the the you know the final theatrical cut so it's like well why don't we just put that in a in a DVD and extended DVD put it put it our back again so you know I mean why not you've got the two versions and and the people that want to see that extra material it's a it's a it's a um voluntary choice you know if if you want to see it um one of the special features that always has always stuck in my head was um Alan Lee the great talking illustrator talking about Rivendell and how how to conceive of a civilization that's been there for thousands and thousands of years and how to design that just the mental process of there obviously know was the building and all of that business but um I mean not much question but i' I'd love you to sort of talk about that process and also what it was like to work with Alan Lee and John I look it was fantastic I mean I was um in going into the into the the film of The Lord of the Rings right at the very beginning you know when we were First beginning to write the script we wanted to surround ourselves with images um of of of of talking's world you know just as as we were sitting in you know just just just forand myself to start with cuz Philip had joined us a little bit later um you know you want to sit there and write you know by yourselves in a room with Cups of Tea but you want to have things pinned on the wall to sort of you know to inspire you so we started to look for what was available and there wasn't a lot of illustration of talking available obviously he himself had done um illustrations but you know in terms of being being cinematic they're not really that helpful in terms of the you know the lighting and the mood I mean they're great for from a design point of view and to see what what's what's in his head but um they're not what you're going to end up within the movie so um Ellen Lee had just released right at the point that we were starting this process alen Lee had just Illustrated a three volume edition of The Lord of the Rings sort of Illustrated with his with his watercolors um which were beautiful and and and we' never met him of course but we were just like you know fans of of and and and that was the edition of the book The Three volume alen Lee Illustrated Edition which I think his 50 watercolor paintings of his was the Edition that we actually wrote the script from that was the one that was currently in the stores at that time and um and and in doing the script the first draft we just fell in love I mean I just couldn't actually see the world any other way than through Le um pictures and then John how um likewise there were calendars um that had come out of obviously annual annual talking calendars and John had Illustrated a few of those done some book covers and and he had a much more of a um a touch for the Dark Side of talking you know for the for the for for the for for Mordor and the Black Riders and S I mean he he had that side of it was more John and hadn't met hadn't met either of these two guys so we got to the point when we were moving from the script work into some early very early pre-production so I very nervously um very nervously wrote a letter to to to Alan this was in the days before emails and everything else and um we found out where he lived in some Tiny Village down in Dorset somewhere and he was fairly reclusive apparently so we've been told and um and anyway we we wrote a letter and we CED it by by fedix or DHL or something and we monitored it we had the DHL tell us us yes we've arrived we we're 20 minutes from his house yes we're almost there yes we've delivered it to him and then we were waiting and waiting because I said if he was interested said here's our phone number and sure enough the phone rang and you know and and as soon as he got the letter and read it he called up and said said that he love he L Lov to be involved and then John Hal followed and then and then alen Lee and John Hal we we flew them both to New Zealand and we sort of kept them in New Zealand for about a decade decade and a half um they've only just been allowed to to be to go home um we've finally set them free but um um alen Lee and John how had never met met each other and they met each other on the plane coming to to coming there but coming coming to our to our work on the film was the first time that the two of them had met um but they showed up in New Zealand and they were just a great team and and we worked so well together and they the sweetest nicest guys in the world and it's just was an amazing privilege to be sitting in meetings with them both and you know just like I'm with you and and we'd be talking about a scene and talking about the sort of visuals and talking about what we'd like and they would just be sitting there in real time with the pencils sketching and by the time I'd finished describing what what what was in my head they both had drawn things that was in their head and it was always better than what I was imagining I mean that's that's the greatest thing that you can ever hope for with with you know with conceptual artists like that is that is that whatever you think is a great idea in your head that they're going to come up with something that's a hell of a lot better which happen all the time and so the look of these movies is totally Ellen and John totally obviously I mean you came together because of shared love talking which is why we're all here um I mean what well before I get to asking you about talking himself we're here I guess in the home of talkling uh a lot of talkling Fanatics in the city are you worried a little bit about the questions to come or is there pressure being well I'm not I mean look I'm I'm going to be the first to I'm not a talken expert and and I I would I would never claim to be I mean you know I I you know we tried to respect his work as as best we could I mean we tried to not americanize his stories which was you know we we were being financed by American Studios and um some of the conversations with mirx who didn't survive the project the project went to new line after about 18 months but you know mirax were going to americanize it um and we sort of had to fight them and we ultimately got divorc from them in terms of the um you know they they they were no longer the studio but we we tried to protect um you know the Integrity it was work as much as possible at the same time we had to make our movie that we you know you couldn't you couldn't Faithfully um just translate every single word of the books into into a film I mean you just you could not you know but for the reasons which seem good at the time we changed things maybe they're right or wrong you know it's that was just our our decision but we um we have huge respect for him but certainly I I didn't grow up being a talking fanatic sort of as a as a you know as a historian knowing everything he did so I'm be hopefully I'll learn some stuff tonight rather than have to pretend to know more than I really do well oh you've kind of preempted me a little bit because I I was given a great anecdote by John G second mention of the day um about hain's time here at exter and he was a member of a a debating society around the same sort of time as Cinema was first being sort of the first in in Ox about 19 1914 123 a little bit later in Ox takes a little bit of time to get to this place right okay um but uh there was a debate in the debating Society the the title of which was uh the cheap Cinema is an engine for social corruption because cinemar at that point in time was seen a little bit like video games 10 years ago a little with a little bit of Suspicion and from the notes we think that Tolen might have voted in favor I that Cinema was bad for society right so what do you think Tolen would have made of your [Laughter] people ask me that question a lot what what you think talking would have thought of your movies or made you know the films I mean look I I just um look I mean to to answer it honestly I mean I would obviously I would love to to to show him our films I would be terrified um and and you know I mean realistically I I would imagine there's a hell of a lot in the movies that he would not like at all and he would be he would Grizzle and Grumble about a lot of the things we did I'm sure um but hopefully we we there would be some aspects of the films that would go as same as the alen Lee and John how experience with me that would go beyond what was he was imagining and maybe you know maybe some of what we did would would delight and surprise them as well so hopefully you'd be a little bit of both I'm sure there would it would be I'm sure there'd be a few few grumbles too well well we'll never know I mean there's there are there's a few great in the letters book you know with the about about the mail that he wrot there's a there was that um FY FY aaman who was a guy who actually knew far eaman he he was an American agent so fan genre fan he he he came to visit Tolen and sometime in the 1950s to or late 50s maybe to try to um persuade him to sell the film rights to Lord of the Rings and um there's a little bit of Exchange in the books about the changes that they were going to make and the you know and toing ultimately refused and also the Beatles were going to make the Lord of the Rings heard about that too cuz I I I I did meet I mean i' read about this this in books about the Beatles wanting to do who was meant to be Rings kuri was meant to D was yeah no well I I I I mean I didn't know what was myth and what what what what I what I wasn't and then and then once I you know the only time in my life I've ever actually met Paul mney the first thing I asked him CU I wanted to know the truth is about about um the Lord of the Rings and yeah he said that um he said that the four of them wanted to do Lord of the Rings after um help I guess and that they had they first went to Stanley kubric to um get ask him to to want to directed and he was sort of vaguely interested but they weren't really sure and then as soon as Tolen who still owned the film rights at this stage she hasn't sold them yet um as soon as talking got wind of The Beatles wanted to do it he just flatly just said no I mean I mean Paul said they they didn't really even get past first base it was like yeah they just got the big nose stra straight away yeah um well I'm getting kind of the the roll on Fingers um the time is running out but I need to talk um ask you a question about Heavenly Creatures I mean it's such a beautiful sutle and subversive film um it's such a different film as well as the rest of your your work and because it's a true story I mean uh how did the project come about and um yeah I mean why did you think that was something you wanted to tell well I mean um that was a we're talking about 199 what two three um Fran and I were just finishing up the the the post-production on braind dead which is the film that we just been making and you know I made um was a bad taste feebles and brain dead so I was sort of known as a lowbudget genre filmmaker but um but Fran had had L Hadad an interest in this New Zealand um crime story from the 1950s about two girls that kill the mother of one of the girls and um you know it's a very tragic story but uh and in New Zealand you know history it's a very it's a it's a notorious story it's very much like the Moors murders here it was the sort of the it was you know very dark and very kind of don't talk about it just pretend it never happened is just not something we want to ever tridge out because it the murder happened in 1954 so this is you know 1992 um and and yet you know the more that um I learned about it because Fran had had and sort of reading um newspaper accounts of it and she said you know what there there's more to this than what the the methology is that these girls you know they were human beings and we should try to come up with a you know a structure for a film that sort of somehow not as not excuses what they did but at least puts makes people understand how someone could be driven to this absolutely horrific point that you kill one of your mothers or two two friends and um and and so just approaching it from the point of view of not the the Tabloid um um headlines but but the human side of it of trying to trying to get under the skin of those two girls we started to do some research and it slowly you know it it just became a fascinating story and we for a while before we even wrote the script we were like in you know we would go to Christ Church which is the city where it happened and we would interview a lot of people that knew them that a lot of a lot of those those people are dead now but um we were lucky enough to to to speak to some very old people who were alive and who were key we spoke to prosecutors defense um attorneys we spoke to school friends we spoke to um people you know neighbors we spoke to uh just we we spoke to every single person we could find that had anything to do with those girls and we started to paint a picture of the human beings on the story not just the girls but the parents and and this and the film so slowly started to grow in their minds I mean we had to convince ourselves first that there was a movie so we did the sort of the research first and and as a research came about the film sort of almost started to to form itself and um it just you know after three splatter movies it was a it was a little bit of a splatter movie at the end but um it was it was it was a lovely uh break to to just go to something completely different and um you know and and certainly Jud a Fran that um that that film happen and um there a good question to close on would you ever go back to making a film like that or indeed like the I guess you call it splatter I call it great fun uh movies like brain dead and yeah I mean I mean yes to both I mean what you know coming out out of the hobit you were asking you know what it's like to finish and everything I mean it's um I mean we are taking a break but I I don't really feel a rush to want to jump back into the Hollywood uh machine at the moment you know I I sort of it's it it is you know the Hollywood's become a very franchise driven place and obviously you know people would say the hobbits is a franchise now too so we're proud of that but um it it's not really a lot of the movies that are being made there now are not the sort of films that I particularly you know enjoy so what friend and I probably going to do is just after we've had a bit of a break make make some some smaller movies make some New Zealand movies cuz actually Heavenly Creatures was the last newal story that we made and it's the last time we've made a story about the country that emanates from the country we live in so we want to do a couple more New Zealand stories um smaller films and so we are that is probably the direction we're going to H in in the next few years yeah can you give us any information as what they might be no stop asking ex question sure well maybe that's a good point and I've also got the danam Busters too which is a film that um I mean I know that a lot of people you know seen that I'm associated with that which I am and um I've been working on a script with Steven fry um over the last few years on on on an off as um and so you know that that's a possibility too but um you know we're just going to sort of just take a little bit of a break but but but we're not you know I think whatever we do in the next few years will be be quite a lot smaller well you thoroughly deserve a break but not quite yet because you got some questions no problem right thank you if we hand over to the re well so Peter's answered a phenomenal number of questions in 45 minutes but um I suspect there there are a few from the audience the people would like to put so we have a roving microphone if somebody would like to indicate their interest here somebody back hi uh yeah okay hi so I I really love Heavenly Creatures as well and I just wanted to talk about uh special effects in relation to Aesthetics um because there's been a big shift from practical effects to digital effects and I think the use of practical effects in Heavenly Creatures is very apt because the fantasy world that they live in is so intimate and the latex costumes and those things just seem very appropriate for that type of world whereas the scope of something like the hob is so much larger so I'm just wondering if if when you're choosing what types of effects to use how the Aesthetics of the or the the meaning of the effects and how that interacts with the story uh comes into play yeah that's a good question um I mean there's a lot of there's a lot of people that you know there's sort of a a sort of a a um two schools that kind of form as like people that love practical effects which is means that you do it you know however with with prosthetics or makeup or or or just however you do it on the set and there's the CGI effects which um you know which is the other side but for me I don't I mean I don't really adhere to either School particularly I just think you know as a filmmaker I I'm looking at what's written on the page of a script and I have to put that on screen um in in you know in the best way I can and I have to do that one as a director so so as a director I'm thinking well what's going to look the best is what directors do um and as a producer which I'm also producer of these movies I've got to think well what's the most cost effective you know what's the biggest bang for your buck and also what's the most practical and obviously you know you get to a point um especially with the sort of films we've been making recently where you know if you have if you have a an army of 2,000 Orcs you know you've got a choice really you're going to put 2,000 people in costume and rubber masks and and you know as soon as you get to the 57th head the guy who's first head gone on needs to take it off and go to the toilet you know I mean it's just really hard to work with people in rubber mask I mean we had people on The Lord of the Rings we did have a lot of people in rubber mass and they were fainting in in the heat you know you had to have people rushing in with air to stick down the the the rubber mouth to to to I mean it's a big logistical nightmare um to do that and it's also you end up with people tired and exhausted and so you end up with Orcs that look tight and exhausted and so you know and and then you have the sheer numbers um you know it's hard to put it's hard to get 10 or 20 people into or costumes and let you've got thousand so you know you make you make your decisions and and sometimes we mix it up because the other thing too is that the best possible way you can do any effects in films is to keep changing it all the time keep you know you know so sometimes it's practical some I mean we did certainly on The Hobbit we had lots of lots of Of Orcs And costume um for shots we had um lots of elves in costume but then again you know you also have lots of C CGI you have some is real some's not some is real and fake you know you extend you use real in the foreground and fake in the background you know CGI in the background so for me it's never about um a philosophy of which is the best you know philosophically it's just simply about the practicalities and driven Always by the script how how on Earth do I show this on the screen um and certainly you know golum for instance to me Ian you can imagine a million different Golems which were an actor wearing makeup you know with a with an animatronic mask or anything but we just wanted him to be so thin so scrawny and thin and so misshapen that that you know we were never going to find a human being like that so so that that pushed us into the CGI realm for golom it's like well and we never done that before our company had never done that no one had ever really done a CGI creature back back in that you know two 2000 um and and yet for us you couldn't imagine Golem any other way really um so we just went down that path you you just make your decision based on a number of factors my question is the following um I'm wondering in which environment you most creative and does the creativity happen more in the preparation or on the spot what's most creative the preparation or on the spot is that the question sorry creativity which environment are you most creative and where does the creativity happen on the spot or in preparation of the filming um well to I mean to I'll sort of answer your question in a roundabout why because I know what you're trying to you know I know what you're asking but it's it's the thing with film making is that you you have three distinct phases you have the the the the writing and the pre-production um and then you have the shooting and then you have the post-production and each of them has a whole different energy a different field to it um you know the the the the fun ones for me are the writing and the postproduction the shooting I don't I don't like at all the shootings um my least favorite the filming of it um you know the writing of it is fantastic because because generally when you start writing you have no budget constraints you don't think you know you don't write to a budget you know initially um that comes crashing down on your head at some point in the process but but you know first up you've got total freedom and it's usually just you know Fran and Philipp and myself um drinking lots of Cups of Tea and trying to come up with you know ideas and one idea feeds another idea if feeds another it's it's a really exciting creative um I mean I I love I love um wrri wring scripts with the three of us because we we just you know one idea from somebody then SPS another idea from somebody SPS another so it's a really kind of it is a true collaboration and and it's exciting and you feel the sort of energy in the room building and you're not concerned about anything other than just the creativity you have got a blank slate you know you're not worried about the weather the budget the actors you're not worried about anything the crew it's just simple it's just the three of us in a room and then um you you know you gradually have to then rationalize that with the budget of the film and look at the script and can we afford it and how are we going to do it and we generally don't cut our script to um suit the budget we generally just think of ways to pull to to to do things so if a you know if we have a script and and the budget is too high we generally tend to think of ways that we can still shoot that same script for the budget we have not not to cut pages so which we don't like doing um as you probably know with three-hour movies um so we we tend to just sit there and think okay well how are we going to do this for the price we've got and you really start to do tricks and do things as simply as you can and get second unit and third units involved and shoot things at the same time and sometimes on the Lord of the Rings I was shooting two units at once like there was actors on one set stage actors on another and I would cycle between the two shoot one shot here set up the next one go to the next stage shoot that one set up the next shot run back to the other stage shoot that shot was was I ready to show you know sometimes I be I be like doing two films at once which was just two two different scenes with two different sets of actors but that was a way of actually getting through the stuff where reasonably cost effectively um so we come up with those ideas and then you but you hit the shooting of the film the shooting of the movie is where it's for me it's the nightmare because one is you get tired very very quickly you know you you're just waking up you have to get up at 5:00 in the morning and you're usually still awake at um 10:00 or 11 at night so hours asleep and it's very intense and everybody's um looking to you for you know answers cuz directing is really answering questions is what directing is um it's not it's not much else it's like you just I'm just bombarded by people you know who need to get answers from me for to do their job and so I'm having to make decisions all the time and I don't know whether they're the right or wrong ones but I just got to make a decision quick fast get on with it and um somewhere in there you shoot the movie but also the weather is a big constraint you know you honestly the wake up in the morning the first thing that you look at if if you're shooting outside the first thing you look at is is the weather it's like oh my God is it going to rain cuz right raining could be a disaster it's going to push you behind schedule and if you go behind schedule if you start falling behind schedule that's when the studio who are paying for the film get really upset the one thing that upsets them more than anything else as in a you know Fair way is that when you are not shooting the pages that you should each day when you're starting to fall behind schedule and they extrapolate and say well you know you didn't get this scene shot today and if you continue this for the next 200 days you know you're going to be 57 days behind schedule they do all this mathematics and it's kind of and so you want to stay on schedule and sometimes the elements work against you sometimes people are sick sometimes just you know things go wrong cameras break down so that's the real tense time because that's the time where you're spending you know I don't know a million dollars a day or whatever it is whatever you're shooting a big bucks are being spent each day and the real press is on and then you suddenly wake up one day and the film's finished shooting so now you're in postproduction and it's a little bit like the the writing where I'm just in a room with in with the editor and it's sometimes just me and me and him the the two of us jab is a person I cut the films with the two of us are in a room all by ourselves there's no there's no 200 crew out there anymore there's no it doesn't matter if it rains cuz we're inside and suddenly that's sort of the the pressure is is off again and we can look at this footage that we shot um in these sometimes adverse conditions and you just try to carve out the best movie you can out of what you shot but the movies what what there there three different movies I mean the movie that you write in your head is one movie and you I can see that film playing in my head as we write it and then you you go onto the set and somehow when you're shooting it half the time it's a compromise half the time it's never as good as it was when you imagined it because you imagined us to be on a sunny day with a beautiful sunset and you're in the middle of rain and you got to shoot it anyway because you can't you can't delay it so you're going to have to shoot the scene in the rain instead of a beautiful sunset you know so it's not what you want but the other half of the time the actors are are doing things that are much better than what you ever imagined they're doing much more powerful performances and and better and so the shooting is a really strange time where you're sort of what whatever you're shooting is not what you wrote not what you had in your mind not what not what was in your head when you wrote it it's it's a different film you know you don't really know what it is because every day there's a momentum and a p and so you're really not able to even pause and and think about it nor are you actually cuz I don't cut the movie as I shoot it I always just cut it when it's finished so I never really know what I'm shooting I just you know take one day at a time do the best I can and then in post production um you look at what you shot you can't really think of this the the film that you had on your head when you were writing the script cuz that's long gone you've actually got to look at the reality of what you shot and what you got and um you know just say okay well we've got to now make the best film we can out of this the best story and and that almost becomes like a third film which is obviously the final film um so you know some Sometimes some scenes are close to what you're imagining you know way back two years earlier sometimes they're completely different and and they're often different in a good way often different because you know the actors would you know came up with ideas the dop the production designer people are are feeding in ideas I mean I just love collaboration and the reason why I love collaboration is I want I want people to come up with with better ideas than than than me I mean I I have to as director I have to come and present an idea to everyone cuz there has to be a plan of what you're going to do but then I just I'd love it when people say yeah yeah but you know but we could do this or have you thought about doing this Peter or how about this and and if if it's a good idea God I I grab it like a a drowning man but then but that's that's you know that's exciting that that the collaboration is great and that leads to surprises so the movie is always evolving it's always organic it's never ever locked in place that just changes the whole time I hope that answered your question hi uh thanks for coming to talk to us today um my question's about well um your the pair of trilogies you made in the talking Universe are often sometimes compared to the uh the pair of Star Wars trilogies that George Luke has created um is this uh in terms of their sort of cultural impact and impact on the film industry um is this a comparison that you think is valid and invite or do you think it's sort of a bit sort of lazy journalism almost um I don't know I mean I I don't know I mean that's what you're describing as obviously some people's interpretation and other people's have different interpretations I mean look George Lucas's Star Wars I mean that the thing with Star Wars and and um you know I don't really count myself as a huge Star Wars fanatic but but I certainly I was the perfect age when St when when the original Star Wars came out in 1977 I was 16 years old and I was in the cinema standing up cheering like crazy when Luke blew up the Death Star you know I was right at the perfect age but but what what George Lucas did Beyond making Star Wars and you know that that film is that he all the profits that he that he made of Star Wars he put into into technology and you know he as a result of the of the success of Star Wars we got we got digital sound we got digital um Ed editing you know from from from cutting a movie on a on a steam with 35 mil we were able to cut on an abot or on on a laptop on a computer I mean that's because of of hermit you know the CGI um the the special effects the you know you know he he put all of his profits back into the industry for the good of the industry because it just allowed directors to to get closer to what was in their imagination to be able to put that that on on screen and so I'm always than thankful to him for that um and and so to me the George Lucas thing in Star Wars to me is I always to me it always impacts in what he did for the industry not not particularly on the actual films that he made thank you very much s my name is Kai I'm one of the fellows of college thanks for coming and ushering in our 8th Century uh I have to admit that I'm a huge fan ever since I saw bad taste I was far too young to see you got you got very good taste I was far too young to see it and very scared but it was a very memorable experience thank you um I'd like to ask you a question about the film industry and uh it's my impression that over the last couple of decades so that there's been a mushrooming in film schools and since there are lots of young people here who might become filmmakers in the future I'm wondering whether you would recommend a formal so Film School experience some people argue that it's very formulaic it turns out formulaic filmmakers or would you say go would you recommend that uh young people go your way which is to become a genius filmmaker by by trial and error by starting in your back Garden um well it's I mean it's hard for me to argue to answer the question in in a in a fair way cuz obviously half of that half of what you described is something I've never experienced which is film school I never went to film school so I don't even know quite what film schools do to tell you the truth um which probably gives you a clue as to what my answer is going to be um I mean look to me I I'll tell you what cuz I you know obviously a lot of people come up to me over the years and say I'm you know I'm you know young people say how do I become a director how do I get into films to me a really important part of of um being a film maker whether it's a director or you know cameraman or producer whatever it doesn't really have to be just a director is that you know you have to be able to just just get out and do it you know you have to have a sort of a drive you have to have a passion you have to have a um a uh sense of just you know there's nothing in the world you want to do more than just make a film and and so I I always think that it's actually a test to tell you the truth of of not that you don't go to film School you you just get whatever the technology is available in my day it was super rate silent super rate having to chop it up and glue it together to do cuts you know nowadays it's um I've just tried to not sound like a Monty Python sketch you know young people have it so good these days in my day but but you know with the with the you know these I mean people shoot shoot feature films on these now and you've got all the editing technology you know virtually for free and and and your computer and the sound I mean to me it's like why go to film school why why what's the point of going to film school when you can if you really want to be a filmmaker go go make go make a film but but but you know beyond that flippant remark to me it's also a little bit of a test that if you can't go out and make a film off your own you know get your friends talk them out of um you know going to parties and and get them to have to spend their weekends helping you make your film that that's an important thing too you've got to be able to generate you know the the the Loyalty of a group of people and and and um collaborate with a group of people so you know to me it's always a big test of if some young kid says well I I I've made this you know this 20-minute film would you see it I you know you know I'm always going to see it I'm always going to watch it cuz I just think yeah well you've actually done it you've done it it doesn't matter what the film's like you've actually passed the first test which is to go out and do something it's sort of there's something you know people that say I want to be a filmmaker should I go to film school well I don't know I mean I you know you don't don't have to you can just go out and make a film and if you really want to be a filmmaker that's what you would be doing you wouldn't be thinking about Film School you'd be just going out and doing it I mean that's my answer I I I I don't really know what film schools do to tell the truth so I can't really be about that well like the consumate uh professional that he is so Peter has finished right on our allocated time in the the sheldonian um I'd like to give some thanks to my exitor colleagues who've planned this occasion for our uh alumnus Tim Dunn who's with us this evening for initially putting us in touch with s Peter uh to add ellot for his very able dialog with s Peter uh but above all of course to Sir Peter himself I think this has been a remarkable um set of remarks both the main body in the dialogue with Ed but also in the answers to questions um I don't think I've ever heard um a famous person speak in such modest and collaborative terms about um their work um or nor have I heard anyone of Sir Peter stature um respond to questions in such an expansive and informative way actually telling us what it's like to make a film in various ways and giving us some idea and he became more eloquent in this as he went on I think as to what the inspiration and the drivers that lead somebody like him uh collaborating with bran to to make these wonderful films I talked about creativity in my introduction as being a theme running through uh the history of exitor College Oxford well we've certainly had a remarkable uh demonstration of uh creativity here this evening so I'm sure I speak for you all in wanting to thank sir Peter very warmly indeed for coming to speak with us this evening thank you thank you thank you

Channel: Exeter College, Oxford

Views: 59,817

Keywords: Peter Jackson (Film Director), JRR Tolkien, Exeter College Oxford (College/University), Lecture (Type Of Public Presentation), Public Lecture, interview, The Hobbit (Film Series), The Lord Of The Rings (Film Series)

Id: 9XDsSr3sGSI

Length: 60min 0sec (3600 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2015