Peter Jackson, RED and sheer enthusaism
A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of being involved with Lord of the Rings museum exhibtion that was being staged at the Powerhouse in Sydney. In the process of that a tenacious manager from the Powerhouse named Leonie Crane (who happens to be my wife) managed to do the un-imaginable that no one else thought remotely feasable... She convinced Peter Jackson to break from shooting King Kong (which was in full production swing at the time) take a week off, come to Sydney to give a big public talk and Q&A on filmmaking and LOTR.
The long held key to persuading someone to do something you want them to do is simply to find what it is they Really want... What was it that Leonie found that Peter Jackson REALLY wanted? Wanted bad enough to stop shooting and fly across the Tasman sea to get? World War I Aeroplanes! And in particular aeroplane engines...! Leonie found the weakness and made Peter and offer he couldnt refuse. It just so happens that Powerhouse Museum has a huge collection of such engines and Peter Jackson was dead keen to get his eyes on them and I found myself in the fortunate postion of showing him around. As it turns out he is an absolute World War I aviation fanatic, so when I read that Peter Jackson had shot a short film with the RED camera set in world war one and using flying WWI aeroplanes I was not in the slightest bit surprised. I'd already seen the joyful glee in his eyes that comes with this theme.
On the RED website Jim Jannard has posted a transcript of Peter Jackson's comments on RED and shooting the short film test with the RED camera from the New Zealand filmmaking magazine - Onfilm. Peter's comments are not only astute and informative but they burn with the enthusiasm of a first-tme filmmaker; an enthusiam thats infectious. May all the camera technologies of the future instill such excitment in filmmakers.
You can read the transcript here.
Posted at 01:00AM Jun 19, 2007
by Mike Jones in video |
