Back in April, Peter Jackson treated us to a behind-the-scenes look from the set of The Hobbit, showing us some of the behind-the-scenes production processes from the upcoming two-part film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There And Back Again.
Now Jackson has released a brilliant second blog from the set of the film via his Facebook page.
In the video, Jackson tells us with these kind of big-scale films, he prefers to split the shooting up into separate blocks, which both gives cast and crew a chance to take a breath and allows some work to be done on the CGI and editing whilst everyone else is on break. We see in the blog the tail-end of the first of these three blocks, and it begins with Jackson in the director’s chair with his 3D glasses on the last day of production of block one giving two pretty exciting directions:
“Sky darkens. And… flames!”
Already, in just four words, that sounds pretty epic to me. We also see Andy Serkis at work as second unit director, and he looks quite at home. The second block of shooting begins on 5th September later this year, and whilst the cast and some of the crew are starting their breaks, the blog then takes us out with Jackson and some of the crew scouting locations around New Zealand and returning to see the ones that they liked and are hoping to use for the film.
Quite simply, some of these locations look absolutely beautiful. The helicopter shots, even with a handheld camera, are stunning, and Jackson assures us those that thought we saw all of New Zealand in The Lord of the Rings that the country has so much more scenery to offer. He also tells us that we may well be able to look forward to another video blog update before shooting starts up again in September, so you can be sure that you’ll bring you that as and when we get it.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is due out on 14th December, 2012, and The Hobbit: There And Back Again is due out a year later on 13th December, 2013, with both films being released in 3D. This video blog is more than enough to get you excited for the return to Middle-earth. If you want to watch it stunning HD quality, then click here.
