April 2006    
Peter Jackson Interview by Scott Essman

One cannot imagine a more meteoric rise for a major motion-picture director than that of Peter Jackson, director of the new Universal Studios Home Entertainment DVD release of King Kong.  Starting on low-budget horror films in his native New Zealand, including Bad Taste (1987), Meet the Feebles (1989), and Dead Alive (1992), Jackson scored an artistic success with Heavenly Creatures (1994) and moved to a larger canvas with The Frighteners (1996) before gaining international superstardom with his Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003).  Now, with Kong, he faced new technical and aesthetic challenges in both the execution of the classic story and in updating the timeless 1933 original film.  In this exclusive interview, he discusses those challenges and being Kong’s guiding light.

1. Not being a computer person yourself, how do you find you most effectively communicated with all of the different computer-based departments on the film, including green screen tracking, motion-capture, CGI and animation?

You don’t have to understand anything of the computer technology in terms of having to sit down and do anything yourself.  But it is relatively important to know what they [the computer people] are capable of.  I’m not really a director who wants to put the creativity of a shot in the hands of the special effects supervisor.  They can tend to do that, but I don’t want to be surrounded with that sort of advice, so I do make it my business to know what the technology can do.

The key thing is the directing of the creatures.  In that case, I’m dealing with the animation department and review the latest shots at what we call turnover meetings.  I often find that I end up giving direction regarding the creatures much the same way that I do giving the performers – you should see a change in Kong’s face here or an expression reacting to Ann there.  Rather than purely make it a technical exercise — I don’t direct it like a puppet — I talk to the animators and animation supervisors as if I’m taking to an actor.

2. When you are shooting a great deal of live action principal photography that included elements with green screen in them – with Kong, other creatures, and digital environments to be added later – how did you know that you had exactly what you wanted in a shot?  When did you know it was time to call print and not do another take?

One, you have a lot of creativity happens before the shot is shot.  And it [also] happens in post-production.  The shooting is in the middle.  What we do during pre-production for most of the key sequences is that we create a lot of artwork (that you can now see in books).  This is the first creation of the image.  We often do several pieces of art of each sequence until we get an amalgam of what we want.  It drives the design of the set, the shot, and has quite a bit of impact on what you’re shooting.

 For some of the very complex sequences, we do animatics – very crude storyboards.  They’re getting less crude so that the animation done in the animatic becomes the foundation for the film.  We build a pipeline for the animatics that has a use beyond the storyboarding.  The animatic gives you all of the camera moves and gives you all of the elements in the frame.  The animatic is the best way to see Kong moving around.  You’re able to watch it during pre-production and this drives your live-action camera.  We don’t have anything completely locked to the animatic in terms of motion-control.  We looked at the animatic, but then we shot our own version [of each animatic] live each time.

 You also have an enormous flexibility in post-production.  You can change your mind and start all over again.  You can do things during post – change the artwork, the surroundings and change the atmosphere.  Also, the digital color timing allows you to make changes.  And camera moves – you can stabilize the actor or whatever is in the shot and you can move around the elements of the shot.  With the techniques today, there is a huge amount of flexibility involved for the director.  It is not nearly as locked down as it was just ten years ago.

3. With Kong as a stop-motion creature with a few full-size live action pieces in the 1933 film, and with him as Rick Baker in a gorilla suit with a few full-size live action pieces in the 1976 film, how and why did you determine to create Kong as a fully CGI creature?  Did you get exactly what you wanted from that decision?

I couldn’t think of another way to do it.  I wanted the flexibility that a CG creature allowed.  I think a CGI creature looks better than any other technique that’s available now.  You can see into their soul as much as a human actor.  It also allowed us to make Kong into a true gorilla’s shape and proportion.  Even the best suits have to fit into a human’s bone structure.

 The key thing from the director’s point of view is that putting a CG creature in a shot is a very quick process [during principal photography].  You can speed through the live-action shoot without worrying.  With a guy in a suit – you have to shoot motion-control and repeat your moves to make it match [with background elements].  With CGI, you can shoot hand-held and Steadicam and later track the CG creature.  The performance is also not locked in to the specific shot while you’re shooting live-action.  In this film, we got what we wanted from Kong.