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Subud Member to the Oscars!
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1577
Reads
)
Posted by
emmanuel_pleshe
Wednesday, March 06, 2002
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From the Subud World News website:
==========================
OFF TO THE OSCARS Hammond Peek, New Zealand Subud member and Zone 1&2 Treasurer, has just been nominated (in a team of four) for an Academy Award (Oscar) for the category "Best Sound" for "The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring". Hammond and his wife, Renata, are off to Hollywood for the Oscars on March 24th.
Congratulations and Good luck!
And good luck we have certainly had because Hammond has written a very entertaining article on his Lord of the Rings experience, which you can read by clicking 'read more'. (see below)
One Ring to Rule Them All by Hammond Peek My heart beats faster than normal as I watch the approaching figure labouring a little in the hot Matamata sun. As he strides purposefully down the grassy slope to where we are setting up a crane shot for Gandalf arriving at Bag End I see my chance and intercept him. "Hi, Hammond Peek, sound recordist I just need to put a radio mike on you for this shot."
He stops, eyeing me somewhat suspiciously as I take in his waist length bushy grey beard, long unkempt hair, ankle length grey wizard's garb, wide brimmed crooked felt hat and dangerously gnarled staff.
Where can I successfully place this radio mike I wonder as I delicately lift his beard to get a good look at his chest area a favoured spot for rigging mikes on actors.
"DON'T TOUCH THE BEARD!" he booms out in an unmistakably English authoritarian voice. I reel back, instantly withdrawing my hand from his cat-sharp reaction. Uhh oo, not a good way to kick off my relationship with Sir Ian McKellen with a year's filming still to go.
It's never been done before three feature films shooting concurrently over 14 months, NZ$675m (US$290m) budget, 1500+ crew, 4+ shooting crews filming simultaneously in different parts of New Zealand, all to bring to the screen Tolkien's epic vision of "The Lord of the Rings" and I get to be head of the production sound department and I still haven't read the books.
My wife Renata has the 3 volumes of the trilogy that she lovingly cloth bound when she was seventeen, and she is mortified that I still haven't read them even though I worked on the production for over a year and have seen "The Fellowship of the Ring" 3 times.
My job was to record the sound at the filming (production) stage which means recording the actors dialogue, plus some sound effects and atmosphere tracks. I recorded with the main unit covering main cast, while a 2nd sound team worked with our '2A' unit covering mainly battle scenes and chases - like the ringwraiths chasing Arwen on horseback.
Filming about half our time on locations throughout New Zealand and the other half on interior sets in studios in Wellington, I recorded around
367 x 95 minute tapes, and the rest of the sound team another 233. All up about 600 hours of material to make 9 hours for you to listen to.
As is the case with most films, a big chunk of the dialogue recorded on set turned out to be unusable (wind machines, special effects motors etc), requiring actors to re-record some of their lines and have them synched in during the editing (postproduction) stage. Add to this all the music, extra effects and atmospherics put in during postproduction and blended expertly by 3 audio addicts in control of a 75 track mixing desk, and you have the completed sound track, a labour of love for 30+ sound folk.
What really blows me away is that myself and the 3 final mixers have been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Sound "The Fellowship of the Ring". I'm really thrilled but I have trouble fitting my head inside my small office.
Peter Jackson is great to work with, a chubby hobbit-like director whose Armani clothes sense dazzles the world media. Peter has a very clear vision of what he wants, does a huge amount of prep, is very encouraging and supportive with his actors and earns huge loyalty from his crews. I have enjoyed working with Peter on two previous features: "The Frighteners" and "Heavenly Creatures".
During Lord of the Rings he often had three video monitors in front of him showing filming taking place simultaneously on three separate locations one picture beaming in via a satellite communications system set up for the production. Peter in his video village was like a commander in charge of a huge behemoth, yet he never lost his cool, never had a sharp word for anyone, and thoroughly lived by his own maxim "one job at a time every job a success".
He always wore shorts. Even when we spent all day on a snow covered mountain filming part of the 'Pass of Caradhras' scene where Frodo tumbles in the snow dropping the ring, which is picked up by a tempted Boromir. There was I kitted out in my purple thermals and layers of cold weather gear while Peter was wandering about in the snow in his sorrells and shorts.
Lunch was a visual feast enjoyed each day with anything from 100-450 other hungry orcs, uruks, elves, hobbits, dwarves, actors, gaffers, grips, goblins and other crises cases. I would often sit down at some fantastically picturesque New Zealand location to restaurant quality dining and look out at some gorgeous lake or snow capped mountain vista and think 'I'm getting paid to sit here and eat lunch in this great spot wow!' Organising 1500+ crew is more akin to running an army than a Subud Congress. As my son Ferand said during a visit to the film set "These guys could run a country". A clear line of command pyramid structure is the only effective way to run a film shoot. I shudder to think what would happen if we had group meetings or testing sessions to decide/feel what we should film the next day- chaos!
I found the whole experience amazing. The actors were really friendly and great to deal with. Even feisty Ian McKellen turned out to be a great old stick. "Hammond you don't really have to put another radio mike on me do you?"
"Come on Ian you'll be okay, you won't feel a thing."
John Rhys Davies (Gimli) with his booming voice, a resonant Christopher Lee (Saruman) with his interesting tales, a quietly spoken Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn), a happy/loving/totally unaffected Elijah Wood (Frodo), and Sir Ian Holm (Bilbo) a consummate actor who when I asked if he actually enjoyed acting replied with a wry twinkle "I just love it."
Ian Holm is a brilliant actor, he gave great performances as Bilbo, each take was subtley different and each a gem. Cate Blanchett's acting as Galadriel was classy authority, while Liv Tyler (Arwen) had all the macho guys in the crew flexing, preening and trying to keep their jaws from hitting the floor. Sean Bean (Boromir) constantly impressed me with his 'flawed character' performances and gentle charm.
We had a core stunt team of about 30, including Lani, an attractive lady and very ferocious orc/uruk warrior, to do all the key fight sequences with the lead cast.
One day during a sword fight sequence Sean Bean accidentally slashed Lani's cheek. She needed stitches and earned a week off, but Sean was so upset and just mortified that he had hurt her, so he brought her flowers and apologised profusely for his heinous crime.
Viggo Mortensen constantly impressed the stunt guys with his vigour, stamina and gung ho attitude.
During one of his sword fights a stunt guy (I'm sure it wasn't Lani)
accidentally clipped about a third off one of Viggo's front teeth. He immediately found the broken piece of tooth and asked if anyone had any super glue so that he could stick it back on and finish the fight sequence.
One of the trickiest parts of the filming was to make you believe that hobbits are only 3 foot 6 inches tall, when obviously they are just normal sized modest actors. This needed a subtle mixture of careful placement of actors in shot, some forced perspective, blue screen shooting and filming on scaled down versions of the same set. We used two Bag Ends (Bilbo's hobbit home), one normal size for the shots with Bilbo (it's his home so has normal head height for him), and one that was about a half scale exact replica down to every tiny prop detail, an amazing set for Gandalf's shots (because he is bigger than a hobbit therefore has to stoop while moving around Bag End). Then we mysteriously knitted the two elements together in postproduction and hey presto, Bilbo invites Gandalf into Bag End, takes his hat and staff to hang up and toddles merrily off down the corridor to make them both a cuppa but each character acted his part of the scene completely on his own, in different sized Bag End sets.
Watching edited scenes for the first time showing humans and hobbits together I was totally drawn in and convinced by the trickery, even though I knew every deception we used to create the illusion. At that point I knew we were creating something special.
When I finally got to attend the premiere of "The Fellowship of the Ring" with Renata back in December in Wellington, New Zealand I was just blown away. It was only on my second viewing that I was able to really put aside the technicals and just soak up and be thoroughly engrossed by the richness of an epic story well told.
And for the future? Well first I'm off to the Academy Awards on the
24th of March 2002. New Line is flying me and Renata first class (whew!!) to Los Angeles with three nights paid for at the Four Seasons Hotel Beverly Hills, and a limo to the event - gads! I have to wear a tux for the first time ever (but first I have to find out exactly what a tux looks like) and Renata's brother Roderick is busy creating a dress 'to end all dresses'.
Then in May/June I will be back behind my sound trolley recording Ian, Elijah et al for extra filming on the second film "The Two Towers".
An epic project and a fantastic once in a lifetime experience, with lots of happy, funny memories, plus a few prized T-shirts.
-------------------------
To see the photos, go to:
http://www.subudworldnews.com
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