PETER JACKSON

FILMMAKER REMASTERED THE FANTASY FILM GENRE WITH DIGITAL IMAGING

JAMBOREE

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

That element of fantasy in the briefest twinkle of an eye has had a part in nary every film project since the nickelodeon shorts. The picture show captivated audiences just for the idea of live action images portrayed on screen in movie houses when a live action image of a waterfall was all the magic that was required to attract an audience.

At the time of the first motion pictures, vaudeville stage performances had been one of the few forms of entertainment available in America while the development of burlesque was the all the rage for the financially well to do class in European cities such as Berlin and Paris, particularly during the interwar years, 1918 – 1939. 

But the picture show gradually democratized the cultural arts so that people from all classes could enjoy the same entertainment. And the world became more and more unified under one culture regardless of social class.

An element of fantasy beyond the technological marvel of motion pictures soon thereafter became important with the development of the narrative. The film industry went through a first build out moving from short nickelodeon films that featured the technology of motion pictures to storytelling and the development of a narrative that eventually went from 15 minute short stories to full length feature films even before sound could be synched with live action images. 

Sound technology took motion pictures from the Silent Era into a new accelerated phase of filmmaking during which the sky and the stars soon became the only limits placed upon filmmakers. 

The metaphysical ideas behind art in paintings also became transposed onto the storytelling as filmmaking moved away from the technological achievement and more towards creating a deeper art in feature films compelled forward by a narrative.

But the film industry was still defining film genres, developing technology and creating the art of filmmaking to make movies more entertaining the first time King Kong appeared in theaters in 1933. 

Special effects was another challenge to make stories real enough to at least temporarily make people experience emotionally what was on the screen in front of them. The added layers of aesthetics were for a more immersive film experience during which people would perhaps feel the love and scream in horror.

King Kong was reproduced again and again in various spin off forms until the original story was remade in 1976.

Director Peter Jackson made a second remake of the original story using advanced special effects and Computer Generated Imaging (CGI) in King Kong (2005) as filmmaking moved into yet another phase of development involving computer technology.

An ensemble cast stars Naomi Watts as Anne Darrow, Jack Black as the movie director Carl Denham, Adrian Brody as the scriptwriter Jack Driscoll and Andy Serkis unseen but ever present as King Kong in motion capture imagining glory. Serkis also plays a member of the ship’s crew put ashore on Skull Island to rescue Anne Darrow from Kong.

Kong was still defining the monster fantasy genre almost 75 years after the release of the original picture.

Jackson was well chosen for the remake after having passed time in his youth collecting props and created his own prosthetics and special effects for ‘garage film’ projects. 

The young filmmaker had been mesmerized by the 1933 original version of Kong, but he was so disappointed in the Dino De Laurentiis 1976 film that he became determined to make his own remake, at the intellectual tender filmmaker age of 15 while still experimenting with foam molds baked in his mother’s oven.

In King Kong (1976) starring Jessica Lange, Kong was originally intended to be a mechanical puppet, but in the end, the special effects creator of Kong, Rick Baker, put on a body suit for much of the action after his 40 foot mechanical puppet refused to cooperate for most of the filming. 

In King Kong (1933) starring Fay Wray, Kong was not one, but several miniature clay models manipulated in little increments to create stop-motion animation.  A clay model would be ever so slightly moved before a picture would be taken, then the clay model moved again for another picture, and then again and again. The pictures were then run together to give the appearance of movement, a motion technique already in use with cartoon animation.

A bust was created for Kong’s facial gestures as well as a series of masks with levers to manipulate expressions. And stunt dummies disappeared in the dirt during filming after having been created to play dead under the force of Kong’s stomping giant non-articulated leg.

Directors Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack benefited from the innovations coming out of the film’s special effects department during production with the discovery of how to splice live action footage of the actors with the stop-motion animation footage of Kong and the dinosaurs filmed separately in the animation studio.

The production still struggled with the advent of sound even though that what had been accomplished had already changed the dynamic of the movie industry. Actors needed to have the added talent for dialogue as well as being photogenic and familiar with the finer acting arts. 

And the technology still had to synchronize the live action images with the sound of dialogue and special effects.

Jackson returns to the original 1933 storyline about a film about a film that collapses into a real live blockbuster. This self-referential treatment is run parallel with intertextual references to the previous two Kong films.

The indigenous necklace left on board the ship as evidence of the abduction, and the whole in the stone wall along the beach appears in all three films, as does the log bridge over the canyon where a lot of people get killed in their attempt to rescue the damsel in distress from Kong. 

Kong rolls the log to the right and then to the left to make the sailors fall to their deaths deep into the canyon. And a man must ultimately hide in a cave near the log as the female image develops in the lead role.

To distinguish his film, Jackson makes the sailors survive the fall from the log only to be attacked by giant mutated insects.

Ann Darrow is kidnapped from the boat in all three versions, although Dwan, in the 1976 film, is the only one to be rescued at sea after the movie producer’s sailboat sinks, while Ann willingly gets on the filmmaker’s ship to become a movie star in 1933 and 2005. 

Dwan’s rescue at sea is an intertextual reference to the original film plot of a film production company making a film as if Dwan escapes the sinking of the 1933 producer’s yacht during the Great Depression only to be rescued by the crew aboard an oil research vessel headed for Skull Island during the oil crisis in 1976. Kong becomes a bit of a time portal as a result.

The giant Kong footprint is common in all three films, although the dinosaurs are left out of the 1976 version. For producer Dino De Laurentiis, oil is made from dinosaur bones and the film is set during the oil crises, with the ship going to the island to discover untapped oil reserves. Paleontologist Jack Prescott, played by Jeff Bridges, hints at something monstrous to be discovered on the island other than oil, but no one takes him seriously until the oil on the island is determined to be unusable. The focus then shifts to Kong.

The 1976 Kong is a critical take on the cultural manipulation of advertising and the Hollywood dream machine on the collective consciousness. Who could forget a 40 foot gorilla climbing the World Trade Towers/Empire State Building?

Capturing Kong and shipping him back to New York City is an oil tycoons advertising idea to justify the expense of the oil exploration that proved fruitless.

Kong is also an interesting examination of the evolution of the female public image personified by Ann Darrow and Dwan over three or perhaps four generations of female liberation.

Fay Wray plays a vulnerable, frail screaming damsel in distress as Ann Darrow in 1933.

And Jessica Lange plays the sexually liberated rock star Dwan in search of those 15 minutes of fame Andy Warhol created for everyone.

Ann Darrow became Dwan. And the character shifts from a movie star to a self-referential role as a fashion model who wanted to be a movie star, as Jessica Lange had been working fashion shoots in New York and made her feature film debut in Kong. Lange went on to have a much admired film career.

And under the director’s eye, Naomi Watts plays her character as an assertive independent thinker who is vulnerable, but she cannot really be fooled by the patriarch in the 2005 film. Ann kind of begrudgingly goes along, but then she makes the most of her situation.

Jackson creates Ann Darrow in the context of the era in which the film is intended to occur, but he also consciously develops the female character more in line with the sensibilities of his intended audience in 2005. 

Jackson’s Kong becomes a show case for CGI technology, but the audiences are much more sophisticated after a couple of generations of having film at the center of popular culture. The sophisticated audience would require a more complicated narrative and a more compelling story along with the ‘real as real can be’ images for the third production of the original Kong script.

Kong won three Oscars at the Academy Awards in 2005.

If King Kong symbolizes the New York media imaging machine, Jackson had already created that sizeable cultural impact with one of the greatest film trilogies in cinematic history.

The original Star Wars, the Star Wars prequels and the sequels, the two Batman trilogies, as well as the Sam Raimi Spiderman trilogy, corner the fantasy market. 

As well then, the Man with No Name western trilogy by director Sergio Leone, and the Godfather, American mafia trilogy by Francis Ford Coppola are compelling watches. The Man with No Name trilogy involves separate stories, but with Clint Eastwood maintaining the same western anti-hero persona in all three installments. The Godfather follows the Corleone Crime family as power is passed from one generation to the next over the three films.

Trilogies are also a form of franchise films in which a production company releases subsequent films based on the original plot and characters. Franchises can develop a continuous story or reboot the plot and bring in new antagonists while maintaining themes and establishing trademark features of the franchise, such as the Mission Impossible franchise. 

Jackson made three interlinked films at just the right time in the development of the fantasy film genre and the digital imaging technology when he made the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, based on the fantasy adventure novels of J. R. R. Tolkien. 

Lord of the Rings stars an ensemble cast in a continuous narrative, including Vigo Mortenson, Elijah Woods, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Brad Dourif and Andy Serkis.

Serkis was chosen by Jackson for the motion capture roles of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings and Kong in King Kong. Serkis provides motion capture acting, animation and voice work for characters that have dominant parts in the films, but the character’s added layer of complexity personifies the new filmmaking in the digital age in which actors must act with imaginary sets brought together often only in the editing room for the final film release.

Motion capture acting layers the spine, muscles, digital hair, make-up and costume onto the actor in the production room.

Jackson uses the same technique of layering to tell the story by introducing the characters and the narrative one thin layer at a time. In this way, the hobbits and everyone else in the cast become more endearing and more closely human to whom the audience can then connect on an emotional and intellectual level. 

Acting in the digital age is a bit more difficult for the actors, but a lot more rewarding for the audiences.

Jackson’s filmmaking art is bringing together motion capture imaging, live action acting and computer generated imaging in a seamless believable manner that removes the air of disbelief between the actors on screen and the audiences in theaters.

The hobbits got a daily treatment in the hair and make-up department, including prosthetic ears and feet. But Jackson also filmed on location in the mountain landscapes of New Zealand while also building live sets in which the actors performed. Jackson then added a layer of color to the final reels that made everything look uniformly from the same magical place in antiquity, and from the same fantasy world created by Tolkien in his novels.

Jackson tells the story with images as much as dialogue and acting. The director moves the camera from a prop ring to a digital engraved ring to a letter from antiquity to an actor, all the while running the narration over top of the scenes.

Every scene is picture perfect with nary an inch of screen wasted with empty space, which suggests a meticulous attention to detail often the hallmark of only the greatest of directors.

This passion for detail began for Jackson as a youth and continued as a member of production crews when he brought to the movie set props he had found on his time off. This passion for filmmaking developed into 10,000 Orc body suits, Dwarf prosthetics, miniature worlds created for Isengard , Orthanc, Minas Morgul, and every form used on screen developed and tested first as maquettes for the Lord of the Rings.

To maintain realism in the fantasy films, the production company created their own smitty. The prop department found a blacksmith in New Zealand to manufacture weapons and armor in the same way the armory was manufactured in 1490.

Jackson maintained a delicate balance of all these elements to maintain realism in the new era of CGI. Instead of creating a CGI film, Jackson used CGI to supplement established special effects and filmmaking techniques, such as location shoots and Second Director aerial shots of the rugged New Zealand landscape.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-2003) (Extended Version) involves fantasy but the films also involve compelling themes of humanity, hope and glory in The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003). The extended versions, to a much greater extent than the theatrical release versions, accentuate the storytelling skill of one of the brightest directors of the digital era with greater character and story development, and even more scenes aesthetically and intellectually pleasing.

Jackson maintained a delicate balance many elements to maintain realism in the new era of CGI. Instead of creating a CGI film, Jackson used CGI to supplement established special effects and filmmaking techniques, such as location shoots and Second Director aerial shots of the rugged New Zealand landscape.

The Return of the King swept the Oscars with 11 wins, while the trilogy won 17 Oscars in total. And then Jackson added three more Oscars for Kong.

Jackson filmed over 18 months on location in New Zealand. One of the challenges for any epic film is casting the dozens of central characters and finding the cast of thousands on location. The production company also had to get the lead and supporting actors from various film locations and from different parts of the world to the location shoot in time for scheduled filming. 

The director chooses the final cast members, under advisement from the producer, after the film’s casting department canvasses talent agents for the right actor for the right role.

The actors eventually chosen for Middle Earth did such a good job that anyone else in the role would be difficult to imagine now. For example, Karl Urban as Eomer seems irreplaceable.

Jackson at one point searched the globe for his cast of hobbits and dwarves, which were many as per the opening village scenes. Even choosing Ian Holm as Bilbo involved careful calculation of height at 5ft 4 inches. On the other end, Christopher Lee, carefully chosen to perform the imposing wizard Saruman, came in at 6ft 5 inches.

The Hobbits, Elijah Wood as Frodo, Billy Boyd as the troublemaker Pippin, Sean Astin as Sam and Dominic Monaghan as Merry, are all about 5ft 6. Andy Serkis as Gollum, the transformed Gollum, was a bit taller at 5ft 8.

The actors are just the beginning of the production with Jackson utilizing a full repertoire of directorial techniques with the camera to keep the hours of film visually stimulating and intellectually compelling.

The camera pans and sweeps to create movement through time. 

And then the close-ups show the details of the transformation from actor to character.

One scene often has three layers. For example, the smoke from Gandalf’s pipe flows across the camera lens in the foreground as Frodo enters in the background.

And the music score matches the majestic landscapes in the far background to accent an important scene as the narrative transitions.

The hobbits have a mischievous sense of fun that Jackson also uses in Kong. The world is a cruel and a difficult place, but certain optimistic views of humanity continually recur, such as comradery and unison in the sense of adversity.

Jackson also contrasts civil society with the primitive world. Even the beloved hobbits must learn to behave under the tutelage of the wizard. The presence of Gollum enables a recuring morality play throughout the narratives, with Serkis even creating a digital image in reflection to a doppelganger.

Jackson then embarks on a second trilogy, the Hobbits, which are prequel films to the Lord of the Rings, with some recuring themes and characters in all six films, such as the use of magic and Ian McKellen’s wizard, Gandalf. 

The younger Bilbo Baggins is played by Ian Holm in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and then by Martin Freeman as a much younger Bilbo in The Hobbit, An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Desolation of Smaug (2013) and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014).

Jackson maintains that sense of fun and adventure that eventually becomes undercut by impending danger and the real need to survive irreparable circumstances while also introducing new characters such as the entourage of Dwarves and the Trolls.

Jackson has brought a unique style to filmmaking. The New Zealand director is not just filming a story or filming a fantasy based on the techniques of other filmmakers. Jackson must have been tempted to, but he resisted the temptation to, to more fully immerse the film project in CGI.

Instead, the director is very much a part of the narrative with the camera creating motion as much as telling a story as if Jackson is adventuring alongside the hobbits. The camera work is constantly changing from one sequence of scenes to the next and often from scene to scene within the same scene sequence. This motion creates fluidity through all three films within the trilogy.

And then at the same time, each scene has so much detail that the camera goes too quickly as if intentionally trying to move the audience through the film to experience the narrative firsthand in realtime.

Different people quite often see different details of the same event, and Jackson makes sure this selectivity occurs in the cinema as well, so much so that people may watch the films over and over again, like singing a good folk song over and over, passed down through the generations.

Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-Earth, by Ian Nathan,  London, Harper Collins Publishers 2018.