Happy New Year, everybody.
This is not a production diary.
But it's a warning that we start shooting again next Monday.
So, expect to see production diaries quite soon.
Looking forward to getting back on set.
We have been spending our break...
having a rest...
and Christmas. And then we... The last two weeks, we've been in the cutting room...
basically just editing as much as we can.
You know, it's very helpful to, obviously, see cut footage...
before you've actually finished shooting. It helps, sort of...
focus you and center you on where you are with the movie.
So we've got quite a bit of cutting done...
over the last couple of weeks...
and are looking forward to getting back on set next week.
We start shooting our New York scenes.
You've seen the set being built and prepared.
We've got five days to go before shooting starts.
We're very busy at the moment...
but I'm sure we're going to make the deadline.
As you can see, work is just powering on around here.
And it's all good.
So, see you next week, everybody.
All righty. Good luck, everybody.
Here we go. I wanna hear three loud camera sets, please.
Shooting, thank you.
And roll car.
And action!
So welcome to day 77.
It's our first day back in the new year...
and as we've been talking about, we're here on our New York street set.
I'm sure everyone's been going crazy the last few days, getting it ready.
The last few weeks, in actual fact.
This is the beginnings of us shooting the montage.
Jamie and I cut a black-and-white, sort of knock-up version of it...
and this is the first day that we're just shooting bits and pieces...
that are going to cut into that modern version of that vintage montage.
Down with Hoover! Down with Hoover!
- Cut there. Cut, cut, cut! - Cut! Cut.
That's great, everybody. We're going to do it again, it was so good.
This is New York in 1930. Life has become very unbearable here.
This is the time of the Great Depression. Everyone is angry.
There are fewer jobs to go by. We have been protesting.
The government doesn't seem to be helping us.
People are becoming very agitated, united.
And with concerted action, I'm sure we will get something.
But at the moment, things don't look very good. At the moment.
Move it along. Keep it going.
Keep it moving. Come on, nothing to see. Nothing to see.
Now we're trying to keep it in order.
Just show them the nightstick, they generally behave themselves.
But we're mainly concentrating on setting up ambiance...
and atmosphere of New York in 1933.
You know, to be very real. Nothing stylized about it.
We just finished at about 10... 30 last night.
You know, putting all the last, final bits and pieces, final paint touches.
We've still got a little bit of sign work going on and some dressing work...
but, you know, we just made it.
And here we are with the huge, great big crowd shots today.
So we've been very careful with the selection of cars...
and particularly colors of cars...
and there's been very careful selection of all of the colors of the buildings, as well...
to keep them kind of muted.
The sort of textural quality is quite gritty and grubby...
given that this is the midst of the Depression.
Well, this is a period that interests me a lot...
'cause I've been a history teacher all my life, and I've taught this period...
the 1930s, the 1930s in America, and the Depression...
what led up to it, time and again.
And there's a wonderful wealth of historical record...
of photographic record from there.
And see a lot of it just coming alive in the shop fronts...
and what's in the shops.
And the apple-seller around the corner there.
There's an actual photograph that I'm sure that's modeled on.
The orchardists upcountry in New England couldn't sell their apples...
so they just got shipped down.
Blokes went up with trucks and brought them down again...
and the unemployed sold them on the street corner.
And we've got them right there.
So it's an astonishing piece of work.
It's a matter of walking through the past.
Seventy-five years ago and it's all alive around us. Wonderful.
Thanks, guys. That's a shooting wrap.
Thank you very much, everybody. Fabulous day!
Thank you, everybody out there in Radioland. Fabulous day!
Can you hear me now?
Okay.
So now what we want to try and do...
pick a direction and just walk in it.
And just keep going in, like, a big circle...
like you're a bunch of ants going off to get some stuff.
Does that make sense, that you're a whole lot of ants...
just mizzling around? All right?
People all the way down there...
you can actually turn around and walk back up the street again.
That's more like it.
Hi. Welcome to day 82.
We've got 400 extras on today. We're in New York streets.
We've got a mix of about 200 men, 200 women...
and quite a nice ethnic mix, as well...
so that we can try and be as authentic to 1930s New York as possible.
Even though we're in Wellington.
Most of these guys are going to be hired for the week...
so we're hoping... We've actually put them into three costumes.
We've triple-fitted them so we can use the same people as much as possible.
- That's me. - That's you?
Dressed up to kill, there, with a fur coat.
And now look at me. I'm like a pauper.
This one's an uptown hat.
That one's a downtown hat.
It's been an exciting morning, yes.
Got up at around 4... 30...
to make sure we got here on time because our call was, what, 6:00 or something?
6:00, yes.
And then once we got in the line, which was the very end...
we tried on costumes which I've never worn before.
I don't know who I am, but I'm sure we'll discover that soon.
And now I'm in the makeup line, which is about... It's, like, about an hour long.
Down there. An hour long.
It's gonna be great. I love being extra.
They gave us the best breakfast I've had in ages.
Treated us like kings.
It was quite nice. Pancakes, everything. Got quite full.
And then they said to sign in. And now we'd better be quiet.
Now, they're nice big wide roads and there's gonna be traffic on them.
There's going to be over 70 petrol vehicles.
There's going to be a tram that's going backwards and forwards.
So treat those roads as they were roads out in the middle of Wellington.
So be very aware. And if you see anybody going too fast...
we do have a speed restriction. Just give them the finger.
- This. - Even if he's bigger than you?
This finger, all right?
- Good morning. - Yeah, just head right round the back.
All the boys are going around over there...
because there's about five makeup artists that are only doing boys.
And all the girls come through and go over to Tash...
and get a wig and a bit of paper with all their notes on it.
And then she directs them to where they're going.
We're doing a 1930s uptown lady.
So she's a little more made up and has her hair done.
The downtown ladies have cloches and have their hair covered.
So she's going to have a little lipstick and her eyebrows defined.
We are sort of casting as we go.
We've kind of... We've got our basic list that I carry with me.
It's like a bible of everyone's name.
Michael Vowler.
Michael Grant.
Michael Ross.
Michael Whilem.
Trevor Cook.
Not to be confused with Tracy Crook.
- No. I know. - Check.
Keeping very strict notes.
Because we've already had to use so many different people we weren't expecting.
Finding people to help out in the soup line.
This morning we re-dressed someone to be a Salvation Army person.
We were in the soup kitchen, serving soup to a lot of the down-and-outs...
of New York.
And 1933 was a period of depression, so there were a lot out there.
And they were cold and hungry.
So the Salvation Army at the time must have spent a lot of time...
feeding people who had no work and no homes to go to.
Fight for work!
We tend to have more men usually on the streets of New York.
It's just sort of quite appropriate for the time, the scenes we're shooting.
We're doing unemployment queues and things like that today.
I'm starving. I haven't eaten for 10 minutes.
We've got a few kids here. But not many, only about 10 of them.
We've had a few of them at the front of the soup lines.
With children, they don't have as long a timespan on set so...
we try and just use them for one or two scenes...
and then get them home again.
Because they can't last as long as the adults...
for these sort of 12, 14-hour days.
What makes a good extra for us is someone with incredible patience...
and a good sense of humor.
Because they spend a lot of time sitting around waiting.
Well, we're doing one more shot.
Actually you never know when the last shot is going to be.
I could see us being here for another couple of hours.
And you just do the same thing, over and over again.
And you can see why the movies do take a long time to make. I can see that.
On page one now, and just, we might have one more little practice.
All right?
Day 85, hot cup of tea...
4:05 in the morning. It's a night shoot...
and we're shooting in the New York streets.
One of the great things about making a film in this period are the cars.
I mean, it's a great age for vehicles, 1920s, 1930s.
And I don't particularly know much about cars...
I'm not a "petrol head" as we call them down here...
but we have some great people like Jaffray, who has been organizing all the vehicles...
for us that we're using in the film.
We had to create...
taxis, military vehicles, police vehicles...
and civilian vehicles.
And it was easy to do that really because there's a lot of those cars around still.
Amazingly in New Zealand there's still a lot of vintage cars.
Twenty-five of these vehicles are owned by ownerldrivers...
who've donated their time to their lovely cars.
It's great and they sit round chatting on their cars when they're not working.
And it looks just like 1930 in New York.
Some of these guys are like 70, 60 and 70, but they're here...
and they're dedicated and they wanna see this movie, the authenticity...
coming out the way they can.
This is my 1919 Hupmobile.
It's really nice to be on the streets of New York with it...
because it's exactly the kind of environment a car like this would have been part of.
It wouldn't have been new then, it would have been 14 years old...
in the time depicted by this movie...
which means it would have been owned by somebody either poor...
or who had been wealthy, fallen on hard times, lost all his money in the crash.
It's quite amazing that these cars are 80 to 90 years old...
and some of them were just absolutely nuts and bolts...
nothing left, no running gear, and this team of mechanics have managed to...
rebuild these cars and make them go.
They've converted them from right-hand drive to left-hand drive...
to keep authenticity of the movie and the time.
This is the steering arm that goes to the box.
And this arm here is what just transmits it there.
This arm here has to be taken and put on the other side.
This is gonna be a parked car because it's too far gone to resurrect.
This is what was left of it when they pulled it out.
And a day and a half later it was on the trailer over there ready to be used on site.
Careful, we just had a problem with the generator.
It's not driven off the fan belt 'cause in the early cars they didn't.
They actually drive it off the timing chain that runs the valves and the motor.
So we whipped it out, done a temporary repair.
Just putting it back in.
We're about to put the battery back on, crank it over, and see whether it generates.
If you want to get into it, I'll take you for a burn.
Imagine getting out of a horse and buggy into this...
it's like getting into a spaceship.
1933, no road rules.
None of the cars have got indicators on them.
Now, before the advent of electronic indicators...
we had this hand-operated one.
Right turn. Stop.
We're getting used to now driving on the right-hand side of the road, aren't we?
Which is a bit awkward 'cause you have to think about going across...
to the opposite side of the road.
When we leave here and go home...
the hard part is now then to keep on our left-hand side of the road, isn't it?
- That's me there. - Model T behind.
- I was behind Model T. - Was I here somewhere?
- Yeah, it was up there. - I leave it to these guys.
There was nothing on that corner.
A lot of driving in circles and backwards and forwards and resetting.
But we're getting the hang of it now.
Cab's on the move.
The best thing about this car, mate...
it came from New York in 1930...
and now it's gone back to New York, 2005.
It's amazing. Time travel, thanks to Peter Jackson.
Welcome to day 87 of the shoot.
In the final film you may only see a small fraction of the detail...
that goes into the set dressing of New York.
So this was an opportunity to have a look at the streets...
and shops of New York, and see all the hard work...
and research and detail...
that's gone into re-creating New York in 1933.
165 Bravo, Take 1, B Marker.
It really came down to what parts of New York that...
we were trying to create here, in terms of the story.
Yeah, we can put a distant view of Broadway.
- It's down one of our blue screen streets. - Yeah.
So we sort of built a theater district, which is at...
the lower end of the set.
We're doing Times Square at one stage...
we're doing Herald Square, which is where Macy's is.
It's New York compressed into two blocks.
There's also a sort of a middle to lower class...
kind of part of town where it's, perhaps, more ethnically diverse...
with a lot more color and a lot more, kind of, life to it, I guess.
So the part of town we're, sort of, standing in at the moment reflects that.
You know, hardware shops and apothecaries...
delicatessens and gun shops, which they used to have.
So it's really sort of a potpourri of that sort of neighborhood.
And you can see behind me, this is a theatrical supplies store.
It's in the down-market end of town, so we've had to interpret...
whether or not it would be, you know, an up-market...
down-market kind of a street.
And what those differences would be.
And we've taken pretty much and kind of gone a sort of cluttered way...
for the more down-market places.
Like, for instance, this one over here, the little Wah Lee's...
which is a Chinese Bazaar...
which is just absolutely full to the brim of stuff.
One of the nice things about doing research...
is you often come across unexpected little details...
that you would never have thought of. We found this great sign for the NRA...
which is the Natural Recovery Association...
which always was a government sponsored...
way of generating work for unemployed people.
And there's a lot of those sorts of signs, records, and flags...
hanging around New York at the time.
So we've also got a smattering of them on our set, as well.
Lutzenberger's. We thought we were going to need...
a sort of Kosher butcher's here...
just because it's... We found reference of a butcher's.
These are molds of real carcasses.
And it took, like, a week for the mold to set.
So you can imagine how it was when he was unwrapping the mold.
We have maggots.
The, sort of, type of stuff that was used, you know...
displaying chickens with their heads on.
All that sort of slightly gruesome stuff was, sort of, everyday...
back in the '30s. They didn't come in plastic bags, you know.
It was all part of the major effort that's gone into this...
major, major, dressing theme.
We're standing in Times Square, and we've gone to...
a lot of trouble to copy a very good 1933 photograph.
And in doing so, we've tried to...
use all the same shops...
and as much of the same dressing as we possibly can.
For example, Worth & Worth is a hat shop...
that was on this particular corner...
in Times Square, in 1933.
Same with Kayser Underwear Shop.
Next door to it, again, was actually the Dolly Hat Shop.
When you look at it from a distance, it looks like a normal shop.
They look like, you know, the big blocks.
The depth looks like it's there.
You know, it looks like a functioning street.
It's just when you get inside them you see...
that, you know, we are cheating a little bit.
So we've done a lot of dressing around the windows, and things like that...
to make it feel like it's got more depth than it actually has.
And, of course, we have to be prepared for Peter.
You know, he may invent something on the day.
So we've gone a little bit further than, perhaps, we needed to...
with the dressing inside the doorways...
and further back behind the windows, just in case...
he does want to get closer to these shots.
I'd like to think that we just give it greater depth...
even though it's the background.
And people will be able to look past the actors' heads...
and maybe see some details they like.
Why is New York steaming?
I think it has something to do with thermodynamics.
What is under the streets of New York?
The steam is from Middle-Earth.
They built this here on top of Lord of the Rings.
And there's Orcs and Uruk-Hai's down there.
Well, everybody knows why there's steam...
coming out of all these gutters and holes in New York.
It's the breath of the alligators...
that live in the sewers.
The huge alligators that are breeding underneath the streets of New York.
And on cold nights, the condensation from their breath rises...
through the grilles.
It looks like innocuous steam, but it actually smells.
It's the sewer.
The heat, the steam...
the fragrance, that comes off one's poos...
is somewhat warmer than the outside temperature...
thus creating condensation of steam that oozes out of the ground.
When I think of New York...
I think of steam coming out of the sidewalk.
The initial discussions with Peter and Grant were about...
capturing this grimy, sort of, seriously depressed look.
It is a bit of a convention to have steam in New York.
It's sort of like fog in London.
And maybe it's a clichè.
You know, maybe it's not like that all the time...
but Peter did ask for it.
Is that smoke that you pumped in, that grille smoke?
- Yeah, that's what they pumped in. - I mean, it works...
to put that. It works much better than CG smoke.
How they generated the steam, I have absolutely no idea.
Boiled water, isn't it?
Low-lying clouds?
New Yorkers are probably full of hot air.
You know, we've essentially come onto a site which was just like...
cleared land.
There's a series of trenches dug all the way through the site.
And then we were able to pour the concrete paving...
and prepare all the tar-sealed roads on top of that again.
So it was built, in some ways, like a city.
Perhaps the first foot or so did have quite a lot of plumbing in it.
It's been a big job to get the pipes in.
They've been laid right from day one, the start of the building of the set.
We've had people down here putting in the pipe work.
It's taken three months prep to get to this point...
where we've got it actually up and running and working now.
Anything that came out of the drains, from the sewage system...
or it was pipes running, it was quite...
There's actually a whole load of rodents that live in the underground.
They're all smoking. That's what the steam's all about.
I think it's all the raunchy goings-on that's happening.
Yeah! Bring it on, I say.
The only real way of getting steam, real steam, is just by boiling water.
And so they've bought all these boilers and put them...
behind the facades.
This here beside me is one of two boilers that we've got...
that are supplying the steam.
We've hooked them to the pipe system right throughout the set.
There's approximately a K and a half, maybe up to two kilometers...
of pipes throughout the whole set.
And this is one of our distribution manifolds.
We've got nine of these around the set.
It's just supplying all the outlets...
with steam from manifolds.
There's 42 of these outlets, all different.
Some of them are in, like, manholes in the road.
Some of them are, sort of, grates up on the footpath.
And there's a huge grille, which I'm assuming represents like an underground...
of some sort.
I'm getting a steam bath.
Some of the steam residue had built up water in the pipes.
It comes through, and it starts bubbling up through the grate down here.
Part of my job is to go around every, sort of, 20 or 30 minutes...
and empty some of these ones out.
Luckily, it's wet here, so we can keep the roads wet...
with the hot water, so it looks good.
Steaming puddles.
To try and re-create the 1930s feel of New York...
and make it as realistic as possible.
You know, that's something that we've always found with Peter.
You know, whether it's Lord of the Rings and now King Kong...
these are fantastic environments...
but they always have to feel real.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
You know, often, when you go back and study the actual detail of these things...
it makes them better than they would be if you invented it out of your head.
The steam is sort of part of that.
I know that that's unlikely steam would be an all-day, everyday event...
for New York. And that, for our movie, it sort of suited it.
It's just one of the details that makes it come alive.
Hi. I'm Ants Ferrell.
Join me in a night of the life of lighting continuity.
Jesus Ants. Come on man, you're late for work. For God's sakes, get out.
Reg's been looking for you. Come on.
Shit. Not again. What are you doing? You're killing yourself!
Okay. That's a bit loud.
At the beginning of this job, Andrew asked me to...
sort of put some sort of lighting continuity together for the film.
So Ants then came into the pot as it were.
And he'd worked on The Lord of the Rings before.
He knew, basically, what Andrew wanted.
- Hi, Ants. - Hi, Andrew, listen, do you have...
- Hi, how's it going? - Good.
I feel lucky. It's only a hand this time.
Lighting continuity is basically gathering information on lights.
If it wasn't for lighting continuity, it would make it slightly more difficult...
for other departments, i.e., Weta.
Our second unit manages to match what we've shot on set.
So we put together a system whereby we could do photographs...
with a digital camera.
We also needed to be able to download to a databank at any time.
So we needed to put some sort of system together that we could...
carry around on set with us, as well...
so we could just log in at any time.
So we both sat down and devised a program.
And, basically, Ants has sort of taken it under his wing...
and, basically, has expanded it a lot more than when we first started off.
I'm taking photos of lighting positions and camera positions...
and getting lens information from each of the cameras...
and what they will be marked as.
Important for anyone that's trying to match up information...
with a particular camera shot.
Obviously, some setups are bigger than others...
so some challenges are bigger than others.
Hi, Helen. What lens have you got?
And what will you be marking the camera as?
Don't talk to me.
We've only got three on hotel, one on golf.
- I think here Matt is on 65mm. - I got lots of insulators to see.
- 32, 65. - 65, yeah.
Big camera...
Happiness?
Yep. You have to put the most confusing setup for me to be on film with.
So now having gathered all that information off the street...
so to speak, I can now enter it into the continuity software here.
We've been given the information of 65mm, so I'm gonna...
slot in a 65mm lens.
We've got a lot of lights working on one set.
I've got to, basically, make sure I've documented them all.
Nobody laughing or smiling. Remember, this is just not fun.
Thank you. And, background!
Go, theater people!
Here we go.
It's quite tricky to actually try and get camera positions...
and all the main players light-wise...
in the same shot.
But sometimes I'll pull it off, it makes my job easy.
I think, at the last count, I was up to about 1,800 photos.
And on these photos, I've labeled the pods. They've all got reference numbers.
And you can relate that back to the plan.
For instance, that's Pod 3 on the plan.
And that's Pod 3 on the photo.
5:30, last setup. Reckon that's 6 on paper, so this'll be the last setup.
This is our last move for the night.
Train's coming.
It's stuck on the tracks.
See how the crew can fix it and help sometimes.
There's a really big gorilla lodged right over there.
Are they all late for work or something? Or what?
- Stop! - Cut!
And so completes the day.
It's been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster...
but, hey, it's called filmmaking.
If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
Billy? Billy, are you out there?
Quit fooling around, you guys, and put the lights back on.
All right, here we go, in front. And roll camera.
Here we are at the end of the week in Times Square.
Over the weekend, this is going to be turned into Herald Square.
So Monday night, when we walk up into work...
it'll be a different part of New York: 1933.
We've got teams of people working for the next 48 hours...
day and night, moving the big pieces...
We've got a huge crew. We're all working through the weekend...
Saturday and Sunday. I think there's two hours in that period...
where we won't be working.
They'll probably come and ask us to work overtime on that.
We'll be running 40 men during the day, 20 men at night...
which will include painters and carvers...
because a lot of the facades, when they come off...
will have to be cleaned up a bit.
And, of course, there's quite a big set change to be done...
between Times Square and Herald Square.
But they both share the same road, Broadway.
And so, the configuration of the set didn't change per se.
It's just, we did building changes, and signage changes...
and dressing, in the middle of the square, changes.
We've got the Horn & Hardart building facade...
coming off to expose Macy's in behind it.
Lots of canopies...
the Gaiety...
the News Reel, The Mayfair. All canopies that are coming off...
and different awnings going in their place, signage, and so forth.
Directly behind me, here, we've got...
the underground subway, which will be covered over...
by the Herald Square monument.
Gonna take my tree for a walk.
We had to know exactly what we were doing before we started.
And we've had a model that we've had floating around...
for probably, must be getting close to a year.
You know, if you have it looking more like a reverse away from the theater...
or down there is quite nice. I like the reflection really down there.
Yeah, whichever side of the line we ended up on.
We've done a lot of work on the set designs for these...
so that we were able to change them from one sort of building...
to another sort of building...
in a very short time span...
mainly by putting one set directly in front of another.
We also did some, quite a lot of taking away...
of the canopies that are more typical of Times Square...
and making it into more of a Herald Square...
sort of shopping area.
That's where a lot of the big department stores are.
What's wonderful about this set...
is the attention to detail...
and there's something about this that does exist in certain areas.
There are old parts of Queens and Brooklyn...
with the elevated subway tracks...
which I grew up a few blocks from...
that this is very reminiscent of.
We still have the same structure in my neighborhood.
And at Herald Square, in theory, is a railway station there.
So we've got to build a big staircase.
There's no actual railway station...
but we built a staircase.
Right. Stairway to heaven.
The film, we've been standing very close to the wind all the way through the film.
This was another one of those instances where we've, we had to be...
very much on our toes to be able to pull it off.
I'm absolutely thrilled to get here.
It was touch and go for a while there...
because we've had weather hold-ups in the last three days...
but, as usual, our fabulous construction...
three sling, and set-finishing teams, they've made it.
The reason we're in this tent is because...
it's raining cats and dogs outside.
We have a taxi cut in half, we have Jack Black...
and Colin Hanks performing Scene 17.
Step on it!
Yeah, cut it.
We really didn't know...
if it was going to be a wet-weather call until the afternoon...
so we were powering through this, assuming it's all got to be done on Monday.
'Cause it had to be done on Monday. We didn't know...
if it was going to rain or not. We had also prepared...
a wet-weather cover set just in case it wasn't...
and in the end, they didn't shoot the wet-weather cover set or Herald Square.
They ended up shooting something else completely.
We just had to be prepared for things like that...
because that's the business we're in.
So it's most difficult in movies when you have actors driving cars...
and there's a number of ways that you can cheat that.
One of the most common ways is, obviously...
you sit in a studio in a car...
but you have a blue screen behind them and they're stationary...
and there's people rocking the car...
giving it some movement, and they're talking...
and eventually, you put a moving background in behind.
But there's a particular sequence in New York...
where Jack Driscoll, Adrien's character...
has to drive somewhere very quickly.
And Adrien, as it transpires, is a very good driver.
Very good. That looked like so much fun.
- That was fun. - That one just ran out.
What's interesting is, tonight...
art is imitating life, because here I am...
in New York doing this car scene...
where I'm driving like a madman...
and I grew up in New York, driving like a madman...
preparing for this day.
So it's really exciting.
We had no idea that Adrien was going to want to do his own driving.
In fact, we hadn't really even planned for it.
Originally we were going to do it all with stunt men...
and when I first arrived on the scene I heard that Adrien...
was quite a good car driver. So I took him out and checked him out.
And it was true. He was an excellent driver.
So instead of using the stunties, we used Adrien...
to do most all the close-up shots.
He's doing his own stunts now, so I'm unemployed.
It was partly Adrien's idea. He says, "Listen, you know...
"as long as the car's safe, why don't you just give me a go...
"at driving it, and just stick cameras on the car?"
And so what we did is, we harnessed Adrien into the car real safely.
We had roll bars built into the car...
so that if he should roll or anything happen to him...
he would be safe inside the cage.
And we put four cameras actually physically strapped onto the car...
He's got the say here, so...
I'm honored that he trusts me...
with hundreds of thousands of dollars of cameras on the car...
as I weave in and out of these streets.
Here he goes. Oh, he might take a camera off the side of the car yet.
Adrien drove really well...
through the streets, slid the car sideways...
reverse spins, 180s...
Did a really good job.
And we just had Adrien driving as fast as he wanted to around our King Kong set.
I mean, he just drove, and took corners, and went up alleyways...
and he did it a number of times.
We changed the camera angles...
'cause at some point he whacks into something and half the roof comes off.
I'll tell you one thing, the taxis have improved since Giuliani was in office.
- Was that miked? - Yeah.
We were able to achieve a lot of the sequence...
a way that's not normally done in films...
which is the actor actually physically doing real driving.
Normally it's the last thing that happens. Normally you fake it somehow.
But this is a case of the actor driving for real...
and driving reasonably quickly, I have to say.
Adrien got up to some fairly healthy speeds...
at certain times.
If you're capable of doing it, it's more believable.
The way the lights reflect against the windshield...
and the G-force of me sliding across the seats.
You can't really replicate that as much unless the car is on some moving rig.
Basically what we've got is a fantastic sequence...
with our actor doing 99% of it...
and it was a fantastic stunt.
So thank you, Adrien.
This is probably one of the most exciting days...
for me, thus far.
So, today it's Day 100.
After 100 days of shooting, it all tends to be a little bit of a blur.
I'm very tired. It feels like 100 days of shooting.
A lot of people have asked if they could see what a typical day in the life of me is like.
It's kind of typical. I mean, every day is different.
For instance, it's 8:42 in the morning...
and we don't start shooting till 1:00 in the afternoon...
'cause at the moment, we're on half-day-half-nights.
But I'm rushing to Editorial right now to sit down with Jamie...
our editor, to actually cut the animatic I'm gonna be shooting tonight.
Peter's schedule is a mighty beast of a thing.
We schedule as best we can and things tend to get pushed.
But we do get them done.
Sorry I'm late. I would've been on time but these video guys was here...
- and they were totally disrupting me. - What's the plan?
The plan is to look at the previs for the scene with Ann and Kong.
This is a scene where Kong, instead of killing Ann...
he has a curiosity about her.
And she senses that that curiosity...
is the one thing that may keep her alive.
So, we've got till 10:30 to cut this.
- Plenty of time. - Yeah.
So, it's 10:41 now and we didn't get our previs cut.
Next week, Universal are flying...
200 exhibitors and distributors down to New Zealand...
and we're gonna present them with the first footage of King Kong.
Some visual effects shots are finished. A lot of them are unfinished.
So, I'm gonna shoot a little introduction to try to explain to people...
that we're gonna see this reel...
that they're gonna be looking at unfinished shots.
Stand by.
And, camera set.
Now, it's very important to me, obviously, as the director, that you understand...
that King Kong, we are still filming it.
The film's coming out in December and believe me...
there's a huge amount of work still to be done.
But nonetheless, we're hoping that this reel is gonna give you a flavor...
and the tone of the film that we're making.
- Great. - Okay.
- I think that was all right. - Yeah, it was perfect.
I'm just gonna go to cue stage toward the Second Unit...
and make sure they know what they're doing today...
in the vaudeville routine.
The real day begins right now.
Okay. So, what can we do to help you guys?
Well, actually, I just wanted to go over, you know, the...
Well, the basic thing is to just capture the essence of the routine.
Shoot it very simply. There's nothing fancy about the camerawork.
Shoot two cameras so you can get a wide and a tight. Okay?
- All right. - Thank you.
All right, guys, so you guys just call me if you have any problems...
or any concerns or questions at all.
Thanks, mate.
Can we clear underneath this, please?
We're about to shoot our first shot of the day.
It's 2:00, an hour after we started today.
So, the first thing that we're doing is a shot of Naomi's stunt double, Min...
being thrown onto the ground.
Looks like we can shoot it and finish up, just like boom.
We're on our way.
And action!
- And cut. - Cut!
You see? It's that quick.
Cut.
I think we should move on. I mean, is Naomi ready to go? She's...
She just hasn't got her wig on.
I have to put her wig on, but, apart from that, she's ready.
So, remember. This begins after you run...
and you run over his leg, over his foot...
and trip over.
And then he confronts you and that's as far as they got.
And I think we're ready to shoot.
We put a mike on Pete so that he can be broadcast onto set.
- I have so many mikes that I... - Yeah.
I don't know what to do. I try to remember to turn them all off when I go to the toilet.
That's better, thank you. Here we go, please. Shooting!
- And roll sound! - And rolling.
Playback and action!
Throws her down.
She lands. He's suspicious.
She looks dead.
And he prods.
Another prod.
He's not sure. He sniffs.
Sniffing. One last, big prod.
And cut.
Okay, good. That was good. Let's just try one more for luck.
That's good, we'll do another, please.
Good. Should we try one more for luck?
That was good, Naomi. We'll just try one more for luck.
Once more please. Once more just for luck.
This is Victoria. You've met Victoria before. She's our script supervisor.
Hi.
You had a whole video diary about you.
And you haven't had one piece of fan mail yet.
- One. Not one. - I'll write to you now.
Where are the girls of the world that would have just, like, gone crazy for you?
Even if it was one guy, at least it would be something.
I see. Okay.
Okay.
The boxing ladies are going for it.
It's a knockout.
One of them got one clean in the jaw, did they?
I think, let's get them to beat the hell out of each other.
Give them more muscle. We want bleeding noses.
It's 6:10. I've been going since 8:30.
Feeling a little bit tired but I have to keep on going till midnight.
What I have to do is find time to run back into the Cutting Room...
and finish cutting the animatic that I never finished.
Okay, gang. Previs time.
Let's try and trim up the first few shots in this sequence.
No time for pleasure whatsoever.
So we should get that rotation to them so they know that's what sort of...
What do you reckon, Pete?
So, it's this shot here. You're on the ground, you back away...
and then you accidentally just stumble.
That doesn't have to be a big fall backward. That could just be a stumble and a kind of...
- a half fall. - Right.
Because there's just enough to engage him.
Here we go, please. Shooting, thank you.
And playback!
And action!
You're terrified you're gonna die!
His rage is building. He's gonna kill you!
He's getting angrier! He's gonna kill you!
- Here he comes! And cut! - Cut, cut, cut.
Yeah, that's good. I think that was fine.
People are always trying to get to Peter.
There are always people sort of waiting in the wings to get answers.
And quite often I'm the sounding board.
And I go back and forth between those people.
It's my job. I'm the go-between.
This one, we're doing a couple of little tweaks again...
but this is more for a temp. You've seen a couple like this before.
But this is just the next one in the series.
This one, there's a long head angle on.
Sorry to interrupt, but Second Unit need to play down a couple of shots for you.
Okay.
They've got a full shot. We've got a close-up, too.
It seems very red. I think it would actually look better if it was against black.
- That's good. Let's do that. - Yeah.
- Okay. - Okay.
- Thanks. - Sure.
All right, no worries.
Matthew, could you please ask Peter to come and join us now?
Thanks, Carol. I'll just get him for you.
...head angle on. - And then...
Peter, they're ready for you on that stage.
Okay, there's about three more shots to go.
Carol, Pete's got three more shots to look at on the laptop...
and he'll be with you. It'll be pretty quick.
Maybe you should get Andy's sound thing on...
One of the jobs that a director has to do is to answer questions all the time.
And you have different departments coming at you constantly...
wanting meetings and information about this, that, and the other.
I found exactly the same thing on Lord of the Rings.
At the end of Lord of the Rings, I was so tired...
I could only concentrate on one thing at a time.
And, you know, it's getting a little bit like that on this film. Not so bad...
but it certainly gets pretty exhausting.
One last look at Kong and then go, go, go.
- Yeah. - Cut!
Checking and wrapping. Thank you.
Pack up that, please.
Well, there we go, the end of Day 100.
Congratulations.
Yes, here we go.
It feels like 100 days, too.
Doesn't feel like 99 days, doesn't feel like 98 days.
It feels like 100 days.
And it's the Second Unit's 50th day tomorrow. So, I've put a note on...
50th day? Well, they've got, they're only...
I put a note on their call sheets.
They're only half the men we are, Carol.
Thank you, everybody. I hope you've enjoyed this look at what...
a Day 100, like it is for me, I'm gonna go get some sleep.
And take my microphone off...
and say goodbye to you all. And see you at the next video diary.
Here's all your gear. Thank you.
Well, big day for us.
It's day 200 of the miniatures shooting schedule...
...which is day about 100 and a bit on the live action.
We're a little ahead of them because we've had to shoot a lot of material...
before the live action started.
So we're getting ready to shoot...
...what is the actual first production film rolled on King Kong.
Action!
Peter played this out yesterday, actually...
but we were highly honored that we actually get to do this.
Peter's a real hands-on filmmaker. Always has been.
I think he just loves the fact that there's a process involved in filmmaking...
and part of that process is shooting miniatures...
that somehow enhance and extend a live-action set...
so you have a small built set that's full-size, where they actually interact...
with the bushes and the trees and the vines...
and then we're doing everything outside this.
In effect, we're creating an entire environment...
within which these actors perform.
So it'll be a combination of matte paintings and miniatures to bring it to life.
Cut!
The main miniatures are made by Weta Workshop.
We then have to transport them over here from Weta Workshop.
Obviously, they're huge, as you've seen.
And a phrase that got coined on Lord of the Rings was "bigatures."
That doesn't seem to have changed. It's still bigatures.
And, no, they're not little. They have to be huge...
because they need to be enormous.
And park it over the yellow line, towards the wall.
We've got a few sets running at the moment. Normally we have two or three...
but, presently, we have five.
It's actually more than five, because this stage is doing...
two shots, so we've got six set-ups.
I'm doing the boat mixture in here.
Put a rock wall here, a sea wall here.
I figure we really either need to get roller skates or scooters or skateboards...
because we're really just racing back and forth.
This is Motion Control Stage K.
We're shooting a broad shot here that has to be out by pretty much today.
We shot it yesterday, but it's a reshoot, so we're picking up shots 37 and 40.
We're in this set for a long time, a couple of hundred shots...
and, of course, it's built at tenth scale, so it's one-tenth of full size.
But at that scale, it means the camera's very, very close to everything...
so you have to do a lot, a lot of precision detailing...
on the plants, on the moving trees...
on the wind, on the way the rocks look...
the way things have fallen down, and so forth.
The greens department have done an amazing job...
of making these little miniature ferns.
We've had these things for a year and two months.
We started in December last year, and they would've been twice that size now...
if we didn't cram the poor little bastards into a small pot.
They can be on set for anywhere between one day and two months...
...and my job is to try and keep them alive in these extreme conditions...
intense light, intense heat, and intense wind.
The trick is that, because we have wind in these shots...
the trees are blowing around in the wind together...
but they're miniature trees, so you have to run the camera fast...
so that we can make... Slow them down enough so they don't just go... Like that.
And to help with that, I'm putting little lead weights on them...
which are little fishing sinkers, which we're clamping onto the leaves...
to give them a bit more weight so they actually move...
and look believable when we shoot them at 64 frames a second.
Whatever's not behaving properly gets the lead shot treatment.
So we're putting more wind on it, but now it's got more weight to it.
Because you have to use this for so many shots...
it pays to get a very high level of detail, so no matter where you look...
you've got the coverage.
Live-action units will be wrapping here in a month and a half...
and we're gonna be shooting till October of this year, way down at the very end...
because we have this enormous number of shots. We've got around...
let's say, around 1,400 shots to do still before we finish.
I figure that in King Kong...
we've probably got twice as many shots...
as we had in all the three Lord of the Rings films put together.
I think one of the really special things about Peter Jackson as a director...
is his use of miniatures.
And now, we're all very thankful that he uses so many miniatures.
And I think he's absolutely right when he says, also, that there's something...
about a photographed image, be it a live-action plate...
or a location plate or a miniature plate, that somehow plucks a responsive chord...
in our hearts, and we say, "Yeah, I believe that."
- Scene marker. - Attack.
It's a scary day when you come to set and you have grown men attacking you...
in bright green and blue suits.
Hello. Here we are. It's Day 105.
I've had some decent sleep since my Day 100 diary...
where I was so exhausted I could barely stand up...
but I'm feeling much better now and that's good because...
we're doing some pretty complicated stuff at the moment.
It's in an area of the film that, in a way, demands the most imagination...
because we have no sets.
It's a sequence in which Naomi is being carried by Kong...
in New York.
And, of course, the way we'll do that, opposed to the old Claymation version...
is to shoot it all in front of a green screen here.
A lot of the rest will be built in the computer at a later date.
We have something that looks like a green tire...
I guess you could call it, and we have a rocking base.
And although, looking at the shots and looking at the way we're gonna shoot it...
it seems a pretty crude method...
it's actually gonna be fine. It's gonna give us everything that we need.
The Kong rig is a pretty amazing and important part of the film.
It's the iconic image that we're about to see...
of Ann and Kong's connection.
This is where the action really starts. This is where the fun starts.
Just keep it kind of... Don't be too shy.
And we have Andy Serkis on set to play Kong...
and to work with Naomi.
Naomi's stuck with looking at someone dressed like...
I'll tell you. A ballet dancer on steroids.
- But it seems to do the trick, doesn't it? - Yeah, it does.
But thank God for this.
- And it's what I focus on. - Yeah.
I could feel, like, completely transported when I look at his face.
I'm not looking at him wearing a funny suit.
I'm looking at him with all this behavior...
and all this feeling...
and I can't imagine who else could make me feel what he is making me feel.
That's really something.
Just because we can't touch each other...
doesn't mean that we can't really look, you know, inside each others' heads...
which is why I'm here.
- And then... - I saw you laughing at him which was fun.
Playing with it is really good.
That was great. That was really great.
So everybody knows when we hit Central Park...
which is a lighting cue and a cue for Naomi as well.
The slow passive scenes with her and Kong...
having a quiet moment together...
and then is obviously much more action-orientated scenes...
as Kong is being pursued by New York, by the military.
Explosion!
And sometimes he's running, sometimes he's protecting you...
like he's running and protecting you here.
Sometimes I might be into his chest.
Sometimes he's stopping and looking over here.
She's really good.
Yeah, she's much better at performing than me.
I get to train her.
It was good. That was nice stuff. We'll just try one more for luck, eh?
Okay.
Look for the explosion. Screaming!
Help me!
Search lights sweep past! More search lights sweeping past!
If you say at the beginning of the day, Naomi's gonna be in this green hand...
you're gonna be on top of a scissor lift...
and you're pretending to be galloping through the streets of New York...
being chased by the military, you think, "Okay, all right."
But I'm gonna see what other elements put in.
I mean, for me, having lived through that scene now...
to be able to take you to the next level with motion capture...
and given that I won't have Naomi there probably, but it'll be Barbie...
you know, that'll be great.
Thank you very much. It was good. You all right?
- That was kind of fun. - The whole day riding the hand.
Yeah. Many variations on the hand.
- That's right. - We covered the spectrum.
How many people out there would have liked the day in Kong's hand?
- It's like going to the fairground. - It is.
That's gotta be one of my most challenging days on a film set, I have to say.
Cut!
Cut that!
Hi, there. It's Day 108 today.
And we're doing a few more scenes on the deck of the Venture...
which you can see behind me here in Studio B.
But what we are actually gonna do today is a production diary that's based on...
a lot of requests that we've had from fans.
So for Lucie, Roy, Jeremy, David, Anthony...
Andrew, Cathy, Chris, Roxy, Josh, Hilary, and Brurah...
we're gonna do a day in the life of the makeup department.
Today I have the manitou.
And the manitou is a pimple that's so big, that it's not just a pimple.
It could be a living organism inside growing...
in a fetus inside my face.
So we might need to operate.
And then after nine months it pops, and the devil comes out.
It's the devil's child, the manitou.
Hair and Makeup are there for the director.
They're there to realize his vision.
And we're there to help the actors and actresses...
portray the parts they're playing.
One of the good things about being in Hair and Makeup...
is the fact that you get a big trailer like this.
The makeup trailer can be a fun place.
Oh, yeah, everything happens in the makeup bus.
Hello.
All roads lead back to the makeup bus.
We are the first people that get the actors in, in the morning.
And, you now, not everybody gets a great night's sleep.
I didn't shave, because today, I have to have two days' growth.
So I'm not unprofessional if that's what you're thinking.
"Dude doesn't even shave."
A lot of my job is research.
To search for information about a period.
And there's no point putting lipstick and eyelashes on...
if you don't know why you're doing it.
I've had the same crappy haircut...
since August.
But he means that in the best possible way.
And I'm not saying that you gave me a bad haircut.
- She gave me a great haircut. - It's just 1933.
Exactly, it's 1933.
I think I had the same haircut when I was, like, seven.
As far as King Kong goes, we want to sell everything as if it actually happened.
The theme we're aiming for all the time is realism.
We also keep extensive continuity records...
which means that we'll take photographs and take notes...
so that when we do have to reproduce it, we can do it quite efficiently...
and very precisely.
It's been a while.
- And we need to shave you. - Oh, no.
Andy Serkis shot scenes today...
that we initially shot before Christmas.
And so there was a little bit of continuity bringing him back to Lumpy...
and we had to retattoo him and lots of dirt and grime...
and all those kind of things.
You'd eat the food cooked by this man, wouldn't you?
Sometimes people are... Oh, the wounds are healing...
'cause it's a couple of weeks after. Then reducing the wound or so forth...
or the wound then disappears. All that sort of stuff.
It's great putting people through torture and pain and then making them look silly.
It sounds so cool. Yeah, it's great.
I use hair and makeup as tools.
You know, you arrive at work in your normal fashion...
and then you get into character...
and you use makeup and hair to help you get closer to that.
Jack did a very smart thing and went wig...
so that he could have his normal Jack hair.
It wasn't really a move on my part to get a wig...
but it worked out to my advantage...
'cause you throw in a wig and it gives me a 1930s hairdo.
And then you take if off, and look what's under it:
Rock 'n' roll.
Yeah, the wigs, I mean... My company makes the wigs...
because we weren't satisfied with the wigs that were around...
and trying always to achieve them...
so that people don't know that they're actually wearing wigs.
Half the day, at least half the day, maybe more is...
keeping the artist looking exactly the same.
Let's say we started at 5:00 a.m. And we might shoot that one scene...
for 14 hours.
So we have to keep everybody looking exactly the same for 14 hours.
What's happened by the time she's sitting in this chair...
until the time she's on the set, a lot of things can change.
And so I always have to go up and check and make sure everything is just perfect.
Final checks.
Okay, jumping out of there, please, gang. I need to get Naomi in there.
We're going to shoot.
It's all about people's personalities as much as the makeup skills and everything...
that everyone gets on well and works well together.
- See what they do to me? - It's such a glamorous business, isn't it?
You have to have very good chemistry with the people...
that are doing your hair and makeup...
because they're the last people to touch you before you roll.
And I don't think it would be possible to do it...
without feeling those good vibes.
Okay, here we come.
Rick, Naomi's on set. We need you.
- Gotta go, bye. - Stop talking, come on.
Hello, it's Day 110 here on the shoot.
And what our production diary is going to be about is the recent Summit.
Which was a visit that was arranged by Universal Studios...
who got a whole lot of people down to New Zealand to have a look at some footage.
The Summit is different to the press junket which we showed you earlier.
They were cinema owners, exhibitors, people that own distribution chains...
they were people associated with the merchandising deals.
And it was basically Universal's attempt to...
give them a very early sneak peek at what we were doing.
And from our point-of-view an early sneak peek is fine...
but obviously it led to a huge amount of hard work...
because in order to get a piece of film ready to show...
while we're still actually making it, is obviously a big ask...
and it wasn't like a trailer, two or three minutes...
it was 18 minutes of footage that we wanted to screen for these people.
So we went into overdrive to try to, at the very last minute...
pull the surreal together.
I think although people were as positive as they could be...
about the idea of the Summit...
the implications on their schedule were pretty difficult.
So the guys have been going great guns on building this...
fairly sizeable chunk of miniature.
And we have a very short deadline to get it delivered.
It's almost an urban myth that things turn up on the back of an envelope or napkin...
but we actually got handed this design this morning.
It's definitely impacted us in animation.
Put it this way, I don't think they were prepared to get stuff on film this early.
We've got quite a few effects' shots to do...
which is somewhat daunting, and we try not to think about it too much.
But we'll just keep slamming through it and get there.
What I'll do is I'll grade up scenes...
that we knew that were going to be in the summit reel.
We didn't necessarily know every single shot...
so I just had to grade all the shots in all these scenes.
And send them over to Editorial, and Editorial had to put it in the cut.
It really put pressure on the whole Editorial Department.
So it was one of those things sort of right to the wire...
before we could actually get ready to screen.
This will be the first time that an audience will see our work.
So it's exciting for us, and we are really hoping that they enjoy it.
I think everyone was really excited to be in New Zealand.
Some of them were a little bit tired but the first day they were...
so excited about what they'd toured around, and what they'd seen.
First up, we went for a visit out to Seaview with the New York setters...