"Hello and welcome to kongisking the internet fan site for the movie we're making, the remake of King Kong." "And I'm here on the set, the first night of shooting." "This is a night shoot, we're just waiting for it to get dark... and this is the Venture behind me." "I'm in front of blue screens, I'm here in the Wellington Studios." "So, well, it's exciting." "About to get started making this movie." "Welcome onboard and I hope you're gonna be following our progress... as we go through the next few months." "Thank you." "So we're on Day 4 of shooting Kong, and we're just doing the scene in the diner... where Denham is trying to convince Ann Darrow to be part of the voyage." "Very similar scene in the original film." "And so over here is the diner set." "Specials we've got meatloaf at 5 cents a slice." "Tasty." "Sound's rolling." " Twenty one delta, take one." " Background." "And action." "Vaudeville, huh?" "I worked vaudeville once." "That's a tough audience." "If you don't kill them fast, they kill you." "I'd love to just introduce you to Naomi Watts and Jack Black... playing Ann Darrow and Carl Denham." " Hello." " Hello." "This is the kongisking website." "All right, I've heard a lot about you." "It's actually brand-new." " But you're about to hear a lot." " It's good to meet you." "I can't believe they get to see me in costume and makeup." "Isn't that, like, forbidden?" "Well, it normally is, but we want to let anyone that's interested... know just a few little secrets." " You lucky sons of guns." " I love this hat." "This is actually based on Fay Wray's hat from the original movie." " Pretty cool, isn't it?" " I think so." "I think that's probably just a little tribute to Fay." " Little homage." " Yeah." "Many more to come." "So check in and... we'll keep putting little snippets on this website from time to time." "Bye for now." "See you." "So this is Day 6 of the shoot, and here in Wellington it's raining... but we're still gonna carry on shooting anyway." "We've got a scene on the Venture today." "As you can see, the boat's on the parking lot." "I couldn't face the idea of shooting on a ship at sea." "I get terribly seasick." "So we built the ship here on the parking lot, on solid ground." "We've got blue screen surrounding it, so that anything we wanna do... ocean, sky, can just be superimposed in later on." "The scene we're doing today involves Driscoll and Denham walking... along the side of the ship, having a conversation." "Take the wind up." "More wind, more wind." "A little less wind, Peter." "One of the really cool things, if you're a King Kong fan, is this." "Have a look at this." "Isn't that neat?" "I've got a feeling this is gonna go on my office wall when the movie's finished... so don't look for it on eBay... 'cause I think I've got my name down for that." "Now that looks really cool." "Now, of course, one of the skills of being an actor on this film is... to pretend that you're on a ship." "And so Adrien and Jack have been rehearsing their sea technique." "Okay..." "It's all figured out?" "You want us to give you a taste?" "Jack's gonna demonstrate for you." " You're gonna demonstrate, too." " All right." "Okay, so come down here, and we'll just have a look at this." "You have to imagine that the boat's going up and down... and it's rocking, and the horizon's going up and down." "These guys have got it worked out perfectly." "Okay?" "And action!" "And fluid." "You feeling a bit..." "A little seasick?" "Oh, no, don't expect to eat at all." "That was all right, but I think you need another drink." " Yeah." " Agreed." "One more drink, and it'll be perfect." "I think that was all right." "Okay." "So after the rain of yesterday... here on Day 7 we're actually inside the studio... although it's a perfectly sunny day outside." "That's the way it always happens." "We're in Studio B, which is not so much of a studio... as a rather grotty old shed that we use." "Actually, some quite well-known sets have been built here." "This is exactly where Bag End was built for Lord of the Rings." "Then we built the interior of the Venture." "The ship that you saw in the parking lot is just for the outside of the ship." "When you go into the cabins, we've got all of those inside the studio." "Here, it's really quite comfortable." "We're filming some scenes in very tiny rooms today." "It is a bit like being back in Bag End actually." "Doing some stuff in Ann Darrow's cabin, the corridors of the Venture... people trying to get past each other." "We're deliberately making it narrow, pokey, the ship is kind of run-down." "It's not the most glamorous vessel in the world." "Not the most comfortable bed in the world." "We figured it will take about six weeks to go from New York to the South Seas." "And it's not exactly the sort of place I'd like to spend six weeks in." "But we're trying to get the day finished." "It's 6:25... and we're supposed to be wrapping at about 8:30." "We've got one more scene to shoot, haven't we, Caro?" " We have got one more scene to shoot." " Caro's our first AD." "And we're starting to get a little stretched about trying to get this done." "But we're going with hand-held cameras." "Come and just have a look at the preparation that we're doing." "Lift it up a tad more, will you?" "Lift that roof up a bit." " Which one?" "The one I'm standing on?" " Yeah, the one you're standing on." "Everyone's kind of going crazy in here." "We're taking out ceiling panels... and trying to get lights to poke through... because we're going to have the actors down here." "We can pop the ceiling down and get lights in all this sort of stuff... and everyone's a bit stressed and busy at the moment." "But let's come on through and have a bit of a look." "There's Andrew, our DP, and Reg, our gaffer." "There's Giles." "Everybody's busy trying to get this scene shot." "So, anyway..." "We'll hopefully get it done." "I need a black up there, too, to stop all this blue light getting in here." "Thank you." "So you just want one of those 650s up?" "They walked in there, chat, chat, chat, yap, and then slams the door in his face... and we're left on Preston." "Here we go please." "And action." "Just strike straight ahead, sir." "And cut." "So we got the master shot of that scene done." "We got a couple of close-ups, to do later on... but at least we got the main choreography nailed." "Very, very difficult little scene to shoot... but it gives it the mood, working in a confined space." " Andrew, wouldn't you agree?" " Yes, absolutely, Pete." "Rather claustrophobic actually." "It's like the old days at Bag End." "Except the ceilings are a touch higher." "Hey, here it is." "Day 105 at Miniatures." "We're shooting mostly trees for the jungle scenes." "This 20th-scale tree would be about 30 feet high in the real world." " And though we've had to scale down..." " Sorry, Alex, we have to go to Main Unit." "It's down the street." "Let's go down to Main Unit, where they're shooting on Day 8... and see how Carl Denham is handling his movie camera." "And action!" "Here we are... getting ready to shoot an actual shot with this very ancient camera... a Bell and Howell 2709 from 1916... which we've resurrected for the movie." "It's exactly the same kind of camera that was in the film." "Mr. Denham here is operating his own camera, as he often did." "Had to learn this magic "three turns a second" trick... of turning the crank, so he gets a constant speed." "And the trick of it is to do it without shaking the camera itself... which is really difficult." "If I slow it down I can make it really smooth, but it has to be fast, like this." "It has to be three revolutions per second, or else the characters I film... are gonna be moving too fast, like Babe Ruth around the bases:" "At the speed of light." "Cut!" "Great." "Hi, my name's Ngaire." "I'm the plane spotter." "I sit on top of the hill above Wellington Airport... and let Caro know if there's any planes coming." "That way, we know when to roll." "Occasionally, we get it wrong." "But not too much." "So the problem is, is that we're speaking, but we got Air New Zealand... and Air Qantas... messing us up." "I'm gonna have to come back to New Zealand... in May next year, to do all this again." "That's got that little sucker." "So if the planes weren't enough, tonight we're getting soaked... by these things." "They're going to spray us with water from a great height... and we've taken all precautions." "Which means we've got a plastic bag over the camera." "We're on the Venture and we're supposed to be... in the middle of a storm... so we're trying to create a feeling of boat movement." "Everyone's having to move like the old Star Trek days... falling sideways." "But once you get fans and wind and..." "We're doing it with handheld cameras, trying to keep it a very busy time." "The actors, unfortunately, are having to get drenched." "So they're spending the entire night being wet, freezing, and cold." "I'm sure it can't be much fun." "I'm so cold right now." "At least I get to go into the dry cabin and..." "I don't get wet at all." "I told you so." "Know what I mean?" "It's fun to watch." "You cut the stuff up, and you put it with these..." "All the visual effects, we're gonna have crashing waves and big ocean..." "Stormy seas outside here, and it's gonna..." "I'm sure it'll look pretty good." "Are you cold?" "I think I peed in the wetsuit." "You peed in the wetsuit?" "Well, don't tell anybody." " Okay." " And nobody here will..." "Just..." "So, here we are on Day 14... and we're inside some animal cages." "And, unfortunately, because they're animals... we have to deal with the very unfortunate subject... of waste matter." "And I'm very sorry to introduce the toilet aspect to this video diary." "I feel very embarrassed to do that... because obviously we want to keep this as artistic and highbrow as possible." "Nonetheless, the art department have had... a very difficult mission to accomplish this week... to prepare for this scene." "Try this quick quiz." "What do camels eat?" "To make sure that we got good-looking poo... we went and did some research." "So I've got the Various Animal Manure reference folder." "So we just headed round and researched up at the zoo... and got a whole lot of references of animal droppings and things." "So, yeah, this really is doing what our idea is of some camel poo." "I'll probably get the job to do the Kong poo now, if they like this stuff... which'll be huge." "So, this is Tony's fabulous poos... that I'm butchering." "Could do with a bit more salt." "All right, so outside the other day, you saw a camel poo." "We've moved on." "Now on to the big cats." "A bit of tiger poo going on here." "I just had Jan, the producer, around with some kids... and they were all gagging." "I thought, if I can make the producer gag, then I'm not doing too bad, am I?" "What on earth have we got here?" "Look at this crap." "Oh, yuck!" "I'll have the doggy doos." "Or shall I have the mouse poops... or the big turdy bits... or the really sloppy muddy turds?" "No, thanks." "Andrew, you haven't got a shot, have you?" "Yeah, I've got a shot of the poo." "We should make it, kind of, go all of the way into the cage... like it sort of dribbles out the side of the cage here... not the edge of it, because of the thing." "I think we should, obviously, leave a bit of a clear space around here..." "Just kind of have it around here, but this is going to work, Simon." "There's little bits of straw and stuff, make it look like it's old." "It'll look good in 3D, actually." "3D. 3D poo." "Smellavision." " Hello, fans." " Hi." "We're gonna be dumped on by the dump tanks." "What are these dump tanks?" "Those ones over here mate." "See those..." "The derricks got water in them." "See what I mean?" "Oh, right." "And so?" "When the water comes down and comes and lands on top of you... and makes you quite a lot shorter." "And wetter." "Shorter and wetter." "I can't really get where you're going." "Who do I talk to?" "So it's day 16 and we're continuing the storm scene that you may have... seen a little bit of the other night." "But the difference tonight is that we have dump tanks." "These are these things that are behind me which contain..." "I don't know, hundreds, thousands, of gallons of water." "They're basically big buckets that we release... and they drop this huge slew of water over the ship." "And, of course, over the actors." "The idea is to simulate the storm." "This is a little bit further than just the rain that we were doing the other night." "This is kind of the sea smashing against the side of the Venture." "So we're gonna have these things going and instead of using stunt people... we're actually gonna use our actors tonight." "They're all standing around, I think, terrified... 'cause they don't quite know what's gonna happen." "Anybody feels worried about anything at any time, simply yell out... to me." "Call my name very loudly." "Sorry about that plane." "And safety at all times." "Danger's my second name." "Stephen "Danger" Hall." "I live in danger, fear, and pain." "I say, "Come in, danger, sit down, put your feet up, have a cup of tea." ""Relax." "Stay a while."" " So, Jack?" " Yes." "The idea here is, we're gonna dump water on a couple of stunt guys... so you can watch and see what the damage is." " Okay." " So you know what to expect." "All right, cool." "I don't understand this dump tank thing that you keep talking about." "Action!" "Looks like Mr. Jackson's mounting a one-man invasion." "Damn!" "I got hit right in the..." "Have you ever had so much fun in water with your clothes on?" "I can think of a couple of times." " Yes, I know." "I'm sure." "You're young." " Yeah." "We're into Day 18 today on the shoot and it's the second day for our dump tanks... putting the waves up over the boat." "The dump tank's basically consisting of huge boxes of water on pivoting cradles... at the top, that we can release from ropes at the bottom... or even up on the tables." "These are their firing mechanisms." "We have a safety pin in all the time when the tank's full." "When we're ready to shoot the safety will come out." "The pin will come out when it's ready to fire." "The ropes pull back and it fires the tank." "The wave's created by a kicker at the bottom of the dump tank... which we alter the angle on to either make a wave coming out steep... or at a shallow angle." "Set the kicker up and you got a higher wave that will go right up over the boat." "Flatter angle for not so much." "So it's all totally adjustable." "We have three dump tanks at the moment." "We're running around about 8,500 liters... on three platforms ranging from nine meters down to six meters." "It takes about three minutes to fill each tank." "The least one of these tanks is 1,000 liters, so that's a ton." "And we've got bigger ones below us, and they're about a ton and a half." "We're running fairly small dump tanks compared to... a lot of the overseas movies which are able to build them in the studios... with big, fixed steel towers." "We have to keep ours on portable towers... 'cause we're moving them around all the time." "We have in the past used tanks the size of shipping containers... where we've dumped 120,000 liters of water in one hit." "So there's..." "If you've got the facilities, no limit to what you can do." "So basically that's the anatomy of the dump tanks." "And hope we get in another successful night of wave-making." "Cheers." "So here we are on Day 20." "We're finishing off our dump tank sequence tonight." "So I thought today would be quite fun to give you an overview... of other things that are happening on the production... because, of course, while we're here shooting this sequence... the art department have to prepare... for scenes that are coming up in the near future." "There's a huge number of people working very hard at the moment... to get ready ahead of us." "It's like laying the rails in front of a steam train... that's bearing down behind them." "And we're basically building sets, big sets... for the next three, four weeks worth of shooting." "We're at the village wall on Skull Island." "In the old movie, you may recall, the gates through to the jungle... where Kong comes bursting through." "So..." "That set in there with the steps and gap... that's where we're putting our gates." "That's where Kong's going to... come in to the village." "We're forging it here under extreme pressure." "We'll have it ready for shooting in five weeks." "The real pressure was just the time." "The set that we're building for some of the jungle... with some cliffs' faces that we need, is gonna be shooting in about two weeks... two-and-a-half weeks, I think it is." "Today, it's not looking remotely finished." "So we have 14 days to finish this set." "It's a huge action scene here... lots of business on Skull Island... and we'll be working 24 hours a day for the next 14 days... to get the set finished." "So, it's gonna be a bit of fun." "We're having a few problems." "There's a shortage of containers in New Zealand... and containers are the building blocks... of these big structures that we make... and for some reason, there doesn't seem to be any left in the country." "This boat here, which is a fake boat... is being replicated on a real boat." "The Louis here is a boat that we purchased six to eight months ago... and we designed The Venture to fit on that superstructure." "So the design of this boat is actually based on the real boat... that we bought first." "It's like putting the cart before the horse." "And then, we are now... turning our real boat back into a fake boat." "And then, when we've secured the whole thing and painted it up... we'll take it to sea as The Venture." "We've had to build a huge new concrete sound stage that..." "We've actually just been building the sound stage... and building a set inside the sound stage at the same time in order to get it ready." "This is Kong stage." "We're building this specifically for the Kong movie." "We're building a set inside because we can't wait for the studio to be finished." "We're shooting in here in a week and a half." "So..." "You know, it's just..." "Even after your film-making..." "There's all these pressures everywhere." "Here on the set, we're just waiting for our actors to arrive... trying to get this finished tonight." "There's one form of pressure but... there's a lot of other people who are desperately working... trying hard to get their departments sorted out, ready for us... to arrive on the day that we're supposed to be shooting." "And action!" "So here we are on day 22." "We're inside our tiny little sets on the ship." "And we've got John Sumner, over here, playing Herb, the cameraman." "Kyle Chandler's playing Bruce Baxter." "Hello." "And this is the mess in the galley of the ship, The Venture." "The best person to give you a tour of the galley... would actually be Lumpy the Cook." "Well, I hope Lumpy gives a better tour of the galley... than he does preparing the food." "Hello." "What are you doing here?" "Who said you could come in here?" "What're you doing here?" "This is my galley." "This is my private galley, my domain... and if anybody wants to come in here, they have to ask me." "So what do you want?" "Oh, I see." "You want a little tour, do you?" "Right, okay, come on in." "Right." "Well, we've been at sea for quite a while now." "We're running out of veggies." "This is kind of what we've got left." "I'm probably gonna have to make something like a fricassee... or something out of these." "As you can see, they're a bit dodgy, but... but we'll sort them out, don't worry." "Yeah, I'm saving that for, you know, a special occasion." "I mean, the thing is, the secret about cooking on board... you can get away with anything, right?" "You just gotta make it taste nice." "So I always add things whenever I can... and the crew... most of the time can't tell the difference between good or bad food." "So I take differences with cheese... like, they're used to the consistency of cheese, so I... tend to get a piece of soap... and mix it up with egg whites, put it out in the sun... add a little bit of prune juice to it, soak it... marinate it out in the sun... and it comes up this nice kind of smoky flavor." "It was rather beautiful." "Well, no, that's the secret of the job, really." "'Cause you don't have the best things to cook with." "However, now I've collected these spices from all over the world." "These come from Africa, India, Asia, Mexico..." "Bolivia, and of course..." "I met this bloke in Mexico... and he gave me a whole stack of walnuts and I've got hundreds of them." "So, at the moment, I tend to be quite walnut based with my cooking." "Yeah, see, Choy hasn't done his washing up." "Someone hasn't finished their dinner." "I mean, see, that's a waste." "That's what I call waste, you know?" "I mean, this ain't all that bad." "That's a lot of vitamins in there." "So..." "I'll have that." "See, that's one of the nicest..." "That's a swordfish pie with walnut." "And..." "That's really..." "Do you want some?" "Jim is our medical officer." "So, a lot of the young sailors, when they first come on board... haven't got a clue." "They stand in the wrong place... they get the ropes strapped round their legs... and, of course, you know, sometimes these come in handy for a quick amputation." "Other things, yeah." "We did have a couple of sailors obviously die on trips and all that." "I'd do the embalming... of the bodies and we give them a nice burial, we chuck them off the side... and all that." "So, that's all right." "And, that's about it, really, innit?" "I'm gonna have to relieve myself." "So I'm gonna head over to the... to the little boys' room." "So, this is the sacrosanct place of the entire vessel... where you can pamper yourself, make yourself feel a little bit jolly." "Take a nice relaxing bath." "If you shut the door and turn on all the taps, you can get a little bit steam going and... get yourself clean." "And people do that every month or two." "This doesn't actually work at the moment." "The flush doesn't work very well." "So it does get a little bit on the smelly side... but we all grew up with that." "This soap is something that I made again with raisins and... odd bits and pieces." "People wash themselves with that." "They like to clean themselves up every now and then." "I don't know why, though." "And if people want to fancy a little bit of entertainment... we've got a big stash of these." "I sell these as well... which I'll get when I go on shore." "I find out all the local shops... that sell this kind of literature." "There's some very..." "There's some quite nifty stories in here." "And..." "Very nifty stories, actually." "Very nifty indeed." "And so, I'm gonna actually have to... say goodbye to you at this point... and I'll see you later on." "This is a slate that we're using in the movie." "And as you can see, it's a Denham picture." "It may be a Peter Jackson film... but it's a Carl Denham picture." "So this is the slate we're using for King Kong... and it's an important part of the production." "It syncs up our sound and our vision." "And roll sound." "Speed." "Shot speed." "62 Alpha, take two, "A" marker, guide track." "The part of the slate that's important for the sound department is... the verbal ID of what actually, what shot it is... so that when it comes down to editing... they can actually sync up the correct sound slate with the correct picture tape." "The clap is because, it's maybe the only bit of applause... that the actors will get for their takes." "So they give them the clap before so they don't have to get it afterwards." "In case they don't." " "E" Camera is on a 20 mil." " Yeah." " Roll number E283." " Yeah." ""B" camera on 40 mil, roll number B152." "Okay, so we'll go to Bravo." " Thank you." " Thank you." "See you." "That's a daily occurrence... times 100." "They'll come and tell me they've changed lenses or they've changed rolls." "Usually they may have changed lenses with regard to a new shot... so then I give them a new slate number." "Basically, I get the slate information from Victoria... which is the scene number... which I log onto the board with a marker pen." "Very simple technology." "As we move through a scene..." "And action!" "And cut!" "...each shot will be nominated an alphabet letter... which will just basically differentiate which part of a scene we're shooting." "We'll start off with "A," Alpha... as it's conventionally called." "Assassin, take two." "62 Bizotten, take one." "57 Catchier, take six." "Delinquent, take one." "Denial." "Derelict." "Diablo." "Decomposed." "Destruction." "Decay, take six, "A" and "B" markers." "And the main difference between this and the ones that they have now... is that now, you clap it up here." "Clap!" "You know?" "But here, you, like..." "It's really primitive technology 'cause you clap it like that... but you could easily get your fingers caught in the..." "The other information that I've put on this slate... which is mainly for people who watch at rushes and the editors, is... a lens tag." "Say for example I'm on the 20 mil for this shot." "So I'll put a 20 mil tag on there." "It's a visual effects shot... which means there's gonna be something done during post-production later." "I'll have a visual effects sticker on it... and that just makes it easier again for the editors to compile this stuff." "We've been shooting a lot of wet-weather stuff, so... it's really hard to write in marker pen... or to write anything basically when your hand is wet all the time." "So we've devised a system where... we put numbers and letters on a slate." "Another thing we use also is... a little tag to just, to indicate which stock we're on." "Also the roll number." "Our "A" camera at the moment, which is what I'm on is... in shot five... on 285." "This is where we generate the information." "So if it's wrong, it's wrong all the way down the line... and that's problematic." "Because we're here to make it right." "When they've got the clapper there... it is a great time to make faces at the camera." "To make everybody laugh in the dailies." "So here we are on Day 27, and we're on the deck of the Venture... in the middle of some fog." "And those of you that know the story of King Kong will have some idea... what the significance of the fog is." "We're actually doing a scene that we did an animatic of." "That's an interesting experience because I've lived with this animatic... for two or three months now and it's really kind of ingrained in my head." "Today Peter's gonna be shooting..." "Jack and Ann on the Venture set." "And before he can go and shoot them... we have to do a previsualization so that we can work out what needs to happen." "Let's just copy what these little guys do." "You know, it's like you've got an acting teacher here on the screen." "Right." "The basic concept behind previs... is a small group of people working very hard... to help Pete plan out his film." "He turns over the feeling of the action and the choreography he wants from the scene... and we'll go through several revisions, blocking it out in 3D animation... and then he'll start asking for shots." "All right, well, let's just experiment with it and try it." "We go through that process until we have an animatic... and it basically gives everyone a really good bedrock... for the sequences that are going to be in the film." "That's that crane shot we took of that building... and that's the over-the-shoulder we took of that building." "And they fall into each other's arms." "It's been just a terrifically powerful tool for Pete... and has actually replaced storyboarding." " And that's exactly what you want?" " Exactly what we want." "I mean, yeah." "You just don't want too much emotion." "This little tug, I love the squeals, I love it." "When we're working on previs... we don't want to spend too much time working on the human characters... because they're gonna be either acted out on the scene or animated later." "And they don't define the cameras a great deal... which is what we're really focused on with previs." "So we tend to keep them really simple." "You put the emotion in later, like, in a computer?" "Well, yeah, the computers can do anything." "We can do anything later." "So don't..." "No reactions?" "I mean, just see that..." "I mean, just show me that face." "The incredibly strong tools for us has been motion capture..." "It's a good look." "...and we're all dressing up in spandex suits... and putting little balls all over us with a bunch of infrared cameras around... and put it into the computer in 3D so we can go out and act out scenes." "Pull the handle!" "That's a lot of hard work." "But it's fun, though." "Pete's been giving us a lot of flexibility." "And in fact, in some ways we've actually designed this film for him." "Okay, now blank it out." "Blank, robotic..." "You can copy this, here we go, and action!" "Good, the jerkiness." "Yes, it's good." "Yeah, that's fantastic." "It's good." "Excellent." "That brought tears to my eyes." "Exactly like this." "It's fantastic." " Really?" " Yes, thanks, guys." " Feels a little stiff to me." " No, but it's the modern world." " Yeah." " You gotta get used to it." " I mean, this is the future of filmmaking." " Really." "Welcome to Windy Bay." "Pete's nice and warm and dry in the studio." "The guys are out here trying to get ready for him." "This is the man-made part of Skull Island." "Man-made 3,000 or 4,000 years ago by an ancient culture who've since died out." "As you can see from the rock forms... not natural rock forms but hand-hewn and placed." "So, pretty much a part of the culture of Skull Island." "What we've got here... these are our polystyrene paving slabs." "What we did was we poured concrete, we laid in layers of polystyrene... thin layers of polystyrene, shaped them to get the rock shapes." "The idea here is to lay a slurry down with cutouts of pavers and 40-nil poly." "The reason we're going over it with a blow torch... is to take away the hard edges so they don't break when people trample over them." "And basically just get a movement on each individual paver." "And then a coat of concrete to get enough strength." "And then a little paint, and the sand, a bit of dressing." "What I'm doing here is making the base parts of the rocks... which are going up on the walls outside." "This part is just the polystyrene carving." "Once the rock is carved with a saber saw and knives... shaped up, which is then all glued, cut back... then that goes up on the wall." "And that's really the sort of... the basic building block of what we're doing here." "This is our stunt rock." "What we do is we take a cast of real rock, we use that as our mold... and then we pour or spray foam rubber in... and when it sets, we're left with a softer rock... but very much true to the original rock form." "So, rock shape, rock form... but you can roll on it and you don't break your elbows." "Well, here we are at Whidbey Point." "It's great to be outdoors." "We've got a view of the ocean... grass underfoot." "We've got the sky." "It's really good for all of the crew and cast... to get away from Stone Street." "People were starting to get... a little bit crazy." "So here we are on Shoot Day 33." "Interesting number because the original Kong was made in 1933." "And, after 32 days of shooting... it's the very first time we've shot anything outside of our studio lot." "The construction boys have been... surviving out here for weeks and weeks... building these sets in the wind." "Just about every day it's been blowing." "And the film crew came out here, and it's... serenity." "We're on a set, but we're also outside in the real world." " I know, the first time you're out." " Combo." "We had no room in our back lot to actually put a set like this... so, this was a convenient space." "As you've seen on these video diaries... everyone's been working around-the-clock over the last week or two... to get the set built." "It turned out to be a little bit more elaborate, I think, than what we quite imagined it to be." "Just doing a bit more finessing." "Trying to get the mosses and dangly things off the vines..." "Just trying to break those up." "They're not quite convincing." "Just general detail." "We've got dripping water here to give a dripping look on the set." "We're doing wet-downs and everything prior to shooting, as well." "Of course, one of the problems with locations... is that you're at the mercy of the weather." "Which is why they're actually quite scary." "Ten minutes ago, we were here in the sun." "I was thinking of getting my jersey off." "Now, I'm thinking of getting my raincoat on." "There's a southerly front about to hit us." "I won't need my drippers." "It's all going to happen naturally." "I'll be out of loot, but I don't mind." "There's some serious rain in those clouds." "It was a beautiful morning... about five seconds ago, wasn't it?" "Hold me close, Scotty." "Hold me close." "I'll protect you." "It's sunny over there." "That's right." "Why don't we go over to Stone Street and shoot?" "There you go." "There's no rain over there, is there?" "And within half an hour of arriving, it started to pour with rain." "But fortunately, it was just a brief shower... and we managed to get most of our shooting done okay today." "Beautiful." "Beautiful." "Yeah, that's it." "That's the money." "Oh, yeah." "It was good to get outside... good to get a bit of UV rays." "I'm sure we're all going to be a bit healthier at the end of today... after being stuck in the studio for nearly a month." "And I look forward to carrying on, on the set." "The art department have done a fantastic job." "A lot of people have worked very hard." "You know, it's a real credit that it's going to look so good on film." "Action!" "Today is day 36 here on the set... and it's not a very happy day for us." "It's disturbing." "There's a guy named Gandalf... who's been taking unauthorized photographs... of the set and the people, and it's just freaky." "I can't believe that Gandalf would do that to me... not after everything I've done for him." "Motion pictures like to have a level of secrecy... but with Kong is King, as you've seen... we've shot a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff..." "Hello." "What are you doing?" "Who said you could come in here?" "That doesn't seem to be good enough for one guy in particular... who's going by the name of Gandalf." "And he still feels the need... to scurry through the bushes and creep along in the dirt." "We're gonna go find..." "Can you just sort that out?" " Yes, I can." " Thanks." "We've got a spy." "Gandalf is his name, and he's..." "I just wanted to know, where do you reckon... he's taken these photos from?" "He stood right here." "There it is." "Sorry, I'm just a bit paranoid today, Andrew." "More so than normal." "I'm gonna go hide under the tent." "Go." "Go." "Go." "Jack's very concerned about this intrusion into privacy..." "I think we all should be, and I'm just a little bit worried, too." "It's hard to concentrate." "I mean, you could be scratching your bottom... or picking your nose, or doing something unpleasant... when he's taking photos, and that's not a good look." "Be careful, Pete." "Be careful!" "He's right there." "We've got him." "We've got him." "Let's roll." "Get down!" "Get down!" "When we got here, he was gone." "Just like that." "This guy's quick." "Bloody Gandalf!" "Do you see him?" "I don't know." "It's hard to say." "He could be hiding in the bushes." "Blast his eyes." "Blast his eyes!" "At the quarry..." "The hill." "Gentleman in a white skier... taking pictures." "He's raising his staff!" " What?" " He's raising his staff." "He's raising his staff?" " Is he going to blast us?" " I think he's got a telephoto lens." "I wonder if this is how the Balrog felt." "This is pretty freaky." "Okay." "We're going to have to go across to the set now, Jack... and I want you to go as fast as you can, okay?" " Okay." " Have you got any..." "I'm gonna serpentine." "All right." "Three, two, one." "Go!" "Go!" "Go!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Run!" "Gandalf the White." "Follow that." "Go get him." "No way." "Not this time, you big gray..." "Sam, look!" "You can't get away this time." "Did you see?" "You have gotta be kidding me." "Why do they always use their powers for evil?" "You know what I mean?" "And action!" "No!" "Stop!" "Gandalf!" "Pete's gonna be pissed." "So here we are on day 40." "This is the parking lot where we had The Venture... way back at the beginning of shooting a few weeks ago." "We've now taken the ship away and built what's effectively a big swimming pool." "This particular scene is a swamp scene... and the guys are building rafts and pedaling along." "Fans of King Kong will remember a very similar scene in the first film... and we're doing something along those lines." "We're shooting in the swamp today, yeah." "And, I think we've got everything ready." "It was sort of based on some concept art work which had been going on... for quite a long time." "It's really..." "Gus' work actually that sort of we honed in on mostly." "Big close up thumbs-up." "It's been a very difficult one to make because it's just got so many elements to it." "We're in the wet set." "We'll have the best part of a meter of water in here." "We used gabion technology... which is what they use for shoring up river banks basically." "I mean, the thing's sitting on a car park." "Gabions, they're wire baskets full of rocks." "That's the base that we used for our pond." "And as you can see, it's relatively watertight... and holding the 1.8 million liters of water... that we've got in the pond." "So... hopefully, it'll all stay together." "We want this to look like a swamp, and so before we start rolling today... we're gonna be putting a lot of scum and slime... and duckweed along the surface of it." "I'm the scum god." "It's just like a polystyrene swath, like... just scraped off and ground off." "A couple of guys just went hard out... for a couple of days." "Just turned themselves into snowmen." "Basically end up with, yeah, bags of it." "And then we had to color it all in concrete mixers." "It does take a while for the color to come through, but eventually, you get... beautiful pond scum." "Beautiful." "All the scummy goodness of pond scum." "And, of course, we couldn't just go and get dirt and make it into mud." "We had to make hygienic mud." "This is wallpaper paste and sterilized peat, basically." "It's good for footprints, you know, you can make shapes with it." "So we've had to sort of develop our mud that's not going to stain the water." "And yet still, sort of have all the other physical attributes of mud." "I intend to take this tree here... and you see where we got all the roots, all these interesting roots here... just rotate it round and bring it in a bit and so it'll tangle all these roots." "We've designed this gigantic big swamp tree in the middle of the swamp." "This is our tri-tree, we call it." "It's a three-piece tree, we can configure it so that it's one tree... or it's three individual trees or one-and-a-half trees." "Two minutes ago, it was just one tree... but now, we've pulled it apart into three individual pieces... and I guess over the next few days it's going to go back to one tree again, maybe." "It's weird looking at this because... it doesn't really look like anything at the moment." "Of course, where the blue screen is, there's gonna be more swamp trees... and eventually a distant jungle." "Of course, we have conceptual artwork which helps us visualize... what the finished product's gonna look like." "So we're basically just looking to get our live action bits... with the actors on the rafts... and then a lot of the picture of the swamp, the overhanging trees... then there's the wildlife in and around the swamp... all that's gonna be added later on, post-production, with the computers." "I don't care what that guy says." "I can't see how you're gonna make that blue screen into a jungle." "Today we're shooting a sequence where the sailors are having to shoot... at something in the swamp." "I can assure you it's not butterflies that they're shooting at." "But they're using their guns." "I got these earplugs in." "And Pete's, like, giving me direction." "I can't hear a damn thing he says." "At all!" "I'm trying to lip-read, though." "I think I'm getting most of it, Pete." "I'm sure he's going to use the earplugs every day now." "With or without guns." "Eight guns firing." "It's a lot of noise." "Eye protection, ear protection, face protection." "I'll still get shot through the heart, mate." "But you're to blame." "Of course, in the original movie, you may remember... the sailors were shooting at a brontosaur." "I think it was probably the only carnivorous brontosaur in the world." "But there's this wonderful scene of the brontosaurus tipping the raft over... and staggering out of the swamp after the sailors." "The original brontosaur from 1933... still survives and is very close by." "We actually have the original model of the brontosaurus here with us today." "This is the stop-motion brontosaur that was built." "And as you can see, it hasn't stood the test of time very well at all." "And the only advantage with it being in such a bad state... is it actually allows you to really study, and see the way that these models were made... back in 1932." "A lot of it is made of steel." "And the armature forms the basis of the stop-motion puppet..." "Obviously with the ball-and-socket joints." "The cotton was then wrapped over the armature." "You can still see the bits of string that attached it, and bits of wire." "They used some wire mesh netting to pad the creature out." "And there's actually evidence of the football bladder... that was used for the breathing." "And then on top of that was, finally, a rubber skin." "And the rubber skin is largely calcified, and, in fact, disappeared." "And what's left is incredibly brittle." "There's actually a couple of shots... at the beginning of the brontosaur scene... that was done with a mechanical brontosaur head... rising out of the water." "It wasn't stop-motion animation like this model." "And we actually have that mechanical one over here as well." "This was not an animation armature." "It was a little mechanical wire rig... that when the head of the brontosaur comes out of the swamp... this is what rises out of the water, with the water drops dripping on it." "Surprisingly small-scale actually." "Tiny." "Which sort of explains, in the movie, why the water seems so big... and out of scale, when it sort of drips from the neck of the creature." "But they just made this much of it... because all they needed to do was to have it sitting in the water of the swamp." "You know, with the water coming up around its body." "So this is all that exists of that creature." "You can actually still compare it with the photos and recognize its little head." "Of course, the irony is that today we don't have miniature dinosaurs anymore." "They're all going to be computer-generated." "But these are the dinosaurs that inspired me when I was eight, nine years old... and I saw King Kong for the first time." "So after 72 years, it's just amazing to think that... they're sitting here right in front of us." "An amazing piece of film history." "I just found something out that really pisses me off." "I looked at the website "Kong is King"... the other night, and it has me listed as 5' 4" tall." "Which is bull..." "Okay?" "I'm 5' 7"... and, after yoga, I'm 5' 7.5"... and I don't know who is responsible for it, but I'm gonna find out." "Today." "Okay, this is a good example." " We're about the same height." " Yeah." "I wanna find out what they said you..." "How tall they said you were... because I believe they said he's 5' 8"." " Yeah." " And I'm 5' 4"." "What's up with that?" "Are you really 4 inches taller than me?" "Jack's not very tall." "I mean..." "I think he wears those..." "You know, those heel supports." "Don't tell him I told you, but I don't think he's very tall." "It's not that I wanna be 5' 7.5"." "It's that I am 5' 7.5"." "5' 8" if I've just been doing yoga." "I don't know how many times I have to say it." "It's pretty sad how such an innocent comment... has really taken Jack's eye off the ball." "Yeah... "Taste of it." What is it?" " "We can all have a piece of it." - "We can all have a piece of it." Sorry." "For a long time, he was giving a really good performance... but recently, he's become a different man." "He's lost a few inches." "I don't wanna affect the working atmosphere... but that's affecting my work atmosphere." "That's affecting my work atmosphere." "When they put lies like that in the Internet... for everyone to see, that affects my working atmosphere." " Telling..." "Okay." " The grips have just brought you this." "There you go." "There's your..." "Just jump up there to sort things out." "That doesn't help me." "That doesn't make me feel better." "No, I like to think this 5' 4" thing is pretty accurate." "I reckon it's pretty accurate, because I'm 5' 10"." "And even if he's not 5' 4", he acts like someone who's 5' 4"... which is, really, probably what they're referring to." "Okay, well, I'll be in my trailer until this is rectified." "All right." "I do yoga, you know." "It stretches the tendons and the muscles and the bones." "Everyone knows that." "Makes you taller." " I've been thinking a lot about it." " Yeah." "And I don't know if this is..." "If these are period... but I really think these would be good for my character." "Okay, all right, yeah." "Well, I mean, so long as we don't see them..." " I guess it doesn't really matter." " Okay." "Should we make it like your trousers are long... and your trousers drag on the ground so they hide the shoes?" "Yeah." "No, I don't really..." "It's just the feel of them." "I feel more "Carl Denham" when I wear these, so..." "Is that extra two inches that important to you?" "It's not the inches." "It has nothing to do with inches." "It has to do with the feel of..." "For the good of the film." "Thank you, though." "I'm glad that you're okay with it." "That's Carl Denham in a nutshell." "You can laugh, but I think these are right for the character." " Absolutely." " It's not really about how they look..." " it's more about how I feel." " Right." " And they do make me feel more..." " Like Carl?" " Yeah." " Yeah." " Carl the filmmaker." " Thank you." "I'm glad you see things my way." " Sorry." " It's okay." "Sorry, Mr. Black." "No problem." "No problem at all." "How are you?" " I'm fine." " Good to see you." "Oh, yeah." "And just remember, everybody, sense of speed and urgency, please." "And action." "And cut." "That's good." "Jack's so much better." " Hey, Jack." " Yeah?" " That's good, mate." "Much better." " Oh, good." "We're just gonna do one more for luck." "I felt good on that one." "Good." "So it's day 48 and we're in the jungles of Skull Island." "Not particularly spectacular on set." "This is like a kitset jungle, or a build-your-own jungle." "But, of course, the real jungle is gonna be appearing on the blue screen." "That's where all the spectacular stuff is and... you know, have a look at those little orange markers on the blue screen." "They're critical to the process." "Right, well, that's because there are holes in the screen." "And they're just to cover them." "They couldn't find any blue gaffer tape." "Well, actually, they're not dots, they're squares." "It's to keep a guy named Malcolm Angell employed." "Tracking markers." "What we're doing is creating a virtual camera... which mimics the movement of the real camera." "And we use that for any computer-generated portions of the shots." "So with the computers tracking the camera movement... the combination of the miniatures and real footage... is gonna be used to create the jungles." "Jeremy Bennett and Gus Hunter, two of our conceptual artists, have been working... for well over a year on creating looks for our Skull Island jungles." "Once the artwork's approved it goes to either art department to build the set... or then goes down to, ultimately, miniatures who produce the mid-ground elements... and sometimes the background elements... before you have the digital map out on the deep distance." "The beauty of working in Photoshop here, using photographic garments... is that the amount of information we can convey in the paintings... proves to be very, very helpful to Alex Funke." "When we start, the production illustration just gives us the basics." "How big things are, where they are, what kind of trees they are, things of that kind... but it also contains all the details that Peter has seen and... has developed maybe over a number of paintings, things that he really wants to see." "The beam of light coming through here." "The fact that the distant trees are gradually fading out into the smoke." "How much smoke you see here compared to how much smoke you see here." "What kind of plants are growing on this little rocky section." "All these things we can get just from looking at this painting." "One thing with conceptual art is that often the art looks amazing... but you can never actually recreate it on film." "So I was very determined that our conceptual designs for our jungle... were actually achievable because, you know..." "I didn't want art that got us all excited... and then we couldn't actually get that look on film." "So earlier this year we instigated a series of tests where we took... the art that Jeremy and Gus had done and we really tried to... recreate the look of the jungles on 35 mil film." "There's the painting of the log they're working from, here's the real log." "Very, very small, 20th scale." "So what we had to do... after the live action was shot of these guys walking over sandbags... was to match the contours of that ramp... to the contours of this 20th-scale miniature log." "So all these little ups and downs are actually... little ups and downs in the sandbag pile." "Now there's a lot of other layers." "If you look from the back there, this is not the actual relationship." "There's another piece, that's a mid-ground piece... it's a bit of tree, it's this piece right here... that's this coming down there, so this we actually shot in a series of layers... the reason being, we want to put different amounts of smoke in it... to make it look like it's getting further and further away." "So it's a very evolutionary process and a very exciting one." "Once each piece is shot... then that is scanned in, in digital... and hand-loaded into the compositor." "What we're essentially doing is trying to build all those layers... and try and recreate Jeremy and Gus's vision as close as possible." "So we actually have quite evocative test shots... that won't be in the movie but they certainly represent the type... of shots that we're looking to achieve in the finished film." "So here we are on day 51... and it's our first day of shooting at the Skull Island wall." "It's gonna be a spectacular set." "As in the original film, I wanted the village... and the wall to have been built by the hand of some ancient civilization." "And, of course, the Skull Island population that occupy it today... are not the people that built this." "The people that built these structures have long since disappeared for whatever reason." "Probably something to do with dinosaurs and big gorillas, I suspect." "And it's now inhabited by a much less sophisticated group of people... and they are the people that obviously take Anne... and sacrifice her to Kong." "Even though this set is very close to our studio base... just the fact that it is a location up on a hill... it poses all sorts of complications for the unit and we have... a tremendously hard-working unit team whose job it is... to make sure that we can just show up... get out of our cars, walk on the set and start shooting." "And for me that sounds simple, but for everybody else it's been an enormously... difficult logistical and planning exercise." "So now we're on King Kong instead of Lord of the Rings... and we're still setting up again!" "The responsibilities of a unitllocation manager are... mainly, we'll start with locations, is setting up the location for the crew... to come in and work." "Basically when we started on this location there was a field." "It just had grass, a bit of gorse, a few little shrubby bushes around the place... so we come in with some graders... we took up all the topsoil and then we bought on a whole lot of base course." "All the grass had to go and we had to get all this stuff here... it's just shingle and dirt, really..." "Just looks like a normal shingle road now." "It was a nice green pasture at one stage." "That enabled the art department and that to bring all their machinery in... and put the containers up, do all the scaff work and get the set ready." "Once we start filming, the unit's in charge of looking after the crews." "Today we've got four shuttle drivers which might increase to six... moving crew from a parking area to the location... 'cause there's diddlysquat room on the location." "Since 6:00 this morning... half a dozen of our transport boys have been down here... prepping all the trucks, getting them all warmed up... and traveling them back to Crawford." "The camper is one of our vital trucks that we have to get up on site first... because we need to have it powered up for the batteries..." "This is us." "Up top there, we had to sort of..." "Up top there, we had to sort of... do some more grader work and flatten out some of the hill." "It was a bit of a slope and we had to sort of flatten it all out and... make a big space up there... which is about the size of a rugby field, maybe a bit smaller, for... the caravan park up there." "That's Steve Harvey." "He's in charge of maintaining and setting up our caravans." "When we bring units up here like the campers and the Swagman and the trailers... we've gotta water them up, power them up, make sure they're basically all go." "On a site like this you've really gotta take care of the sanitary side of things." "Obviously the toilets and things like that." "It's just home away from home, really, just like going camping at Christmas." "So the actors all, sort of, hang out up there so they keep away from us." "A nice little hideaway for them." "It's the best spot on set, to be honest." "Power for the site comes from that power line." "It sort of runs down, we've got a temporary box here to set up for the power... there's a 63 phase which feeds most of the construction site." "We will be drawing too much power for this site for this thing to handle... so we've got generators to help, sort of, spread the load a bit." "We've got in this one, at this stage, four generators... split into four corners of the location... and we're basically just providing lighting power." "Whenever anything else crops up, we'll jump in and... provide them whatever else they need." "The tents are set up for two reasons." "There's a couple of big tents over there." "The far one is the wicker tent, which is for getting the native extras ready." "The other tent is for catering for the crew." "We've got 400 people, cast and crew, to feed today." "For that we need two catering trucks... infrastructure of power, water." "We've also got a coffee truck on location so people can... die and live on flat whites." "Welcome to the coffee truck." "If it wasn't for the unit department, the crew wouldn't have somewhere to eat... they wouldn't have power or water, the set wouldn't be able to be built." "Yeah, hey, we're the backbone of this whole industry." "So that's the end of this video diary." "Now we're gonna keep these going." "We're really having a lot of fun making them, but we actually thought... it might be quite good to send out an invitation... to all of you folk who watch these." "If there's anything that you want to know... about the production of the film..." "King Kong is obviously what we're making... but either about Kong in particular or about filmmaking in general... why don't you let the kongisking website know about it... and we can carry on doing these video diaries and start incorporating... some specific answers to questions that you may have... or things that you want to learn about." "Fire in the questions." "We're here and we'll read them... and we'll see what we can do." "So, it's day 53." "We're still shooting on our Skull Island village set." "It's interesting, some of the things you have to deal with, with filmmaking." "And one of the things you may not know about is that the studio... often arranges visits of the press while you're filming." "That gives the press an opportunity to visit the set... to describe what they see on the set... to interview the actors while they're actually working." "And today we're hosting a visit of a group of international press." "And it's fun to see them down here in New Zealand." "And they're having a look around... and you'll be able to get to meet some of them." " How are you guys?" "All right?" " Well, thank you." "Nice to see you." "They're just really excited to be here." "A lot of them have traveled from Europe and Germany and Switzerland." "And I'm very happy to have traveled to the far side of the world to follow it." "And I look forward to writing an article... for the people in little Denmark, you know, about this great production." "We try to get them onto set as often as we can... which can be quite tricky." "We work closely with the ADs... to see where we should and shouldn't stand." "Going on the set for about three minutes before we're told to get off... because we're in Naomi Watt's sightline." "But I'm sure we'll get another chance to go back on." "Look, it's exciting." "It makes me want to be an extra, for about 10 minutes." "When we do interviews, when we manage to get actors, we try to get them to commit... to about a 20-minute interview, which they will do with all 16 journalists." "They've gathered you all, and I feel like I should do a sermon." "So you're Jack, right?" " I'm Jack." " So what kind of dude is Jack?" "Obviously, the journalists just love getting an opportunity to speak to the actors... and hear about their experiences with Peter." "At the moment, the questions seem to be quite general." "Jack, can we start, please... by getting your take on the whole King Kong thing... as a kid when you first saw it then." "Well, I think I saw the remake first." "So when did you see the original, as it were?" "The original?" "I saw it when it came out." "When was that '75?" " No, 1933." " Oh, the original." "None of the journalists have read the script." "They all know that the movie's based on the '30s version." "So they have something to reference." "That's completely different to the 1976 version, where all the villagers..." " lived behind the wall." " Yes." "Have you got a special question that you want to ask him?" " Lf you wanna get in there..." " No." "Not right now." "I'm..." "You're just going to sit back and listen?" "Within a group of 20 or 16 journalists that we've got at the moment... you've probably got about four or five journalists... that ask the main group of questions." "I will ask to Naomi Watts... how does it feels to be eventually compared with... somebody like Jessica Lange?" "Or to the other girl of the '30s movies?" "And fortunately for this group... they're actually a really smart group of people... so they've asked really good questions." " Why is King Kong timeless?" " "Tameless?"" " Timeless, timeless." " Why?" "I mean, everyone has their own take on what makes it..." " timeless and magical." " Timeless?" "Timeless." "Sorry about that." " He's a foreigner, I know it's difficult." " He grew up in the wild." " I know." " We have a shot..." "A shot..." "You know." "As soon as I leave here I'm going for an elocution or an electrocution." "Because I said "tameless" and you said "yes"?" "It's tough to have a whole lot of journalists together... because everyone's looking for their own angle for a story... and everyone's in exactly the same situation... listening to exactly the same words from everyone." "Can you tell us about the excitement you're clearly feeling... as your Kong, the beast you are creating... is developing, and you're quite cunningly keeping from us?" " Yes, we have noticed." " For really obvious reasons." "We haven't..." "To be completely honest with you... as of today, I haven't seen Kong myself." "I don't know if you have known the film called Godzilla... but we do this, like, King Kong versus Godzilla in Japan." "King Kong, the king of all monsters... even better than Godzilla." "He's stronger and smarter than Godzilla." "Godzilla's a stupid lizard." "King Kong is almost a man, a giant man." "A Sasquatch, if you will." "The whole day has been one surprise after another... as far as I'm concerned." "But it's been great just to be on the set and see the scope of the thing." "I think it's very impressive." "It's this impressive gray wall I just am looking at right now." "You know, it's so amazing." "It must have cost them a lot of million dollars." "So they're really just here to soak up the environment... get a sense of what filming is like... get a sense of what Peter Jackson's like as a director... how the actors like to work, a little bit of the story." "But it's really a preliminary feeling-out how the movie is... and working out what kind of coverage they want to do... and how they want to use their interviews in the future." "It'll probably start covering next month." "I think I have a deadline of next week or something, to get the first thing out." "Because people in New Zealand, they have vested interest in all of this." "They take all of this, Peter Jackson's work, very personally... so I think they're going to be wanting to follow along... the whole process of the thing." " Thanks, Peter." "Nice to see you." "Thanks." " Thank you." "Nice to meet you." " Thanks, mate." " That all right, thank you." "So it's the end of day 58 today." "We've been plowing through your requests." "This is just a few of them." "But they're the ones that specifically wanted to know about the Art Department... and the on-set Art Department and how they get ready for a day of shooting." "So for Anthony, Mark, Jordan, Bob... and all others that wanted to know about the Art Department... we've had our cameras following our team over the last couple of days." "Yesterday we were on the Skull Island set... and today we're back on the jungles of Skull Island." "So they're two very different days... and we thought we'd just follow the Art Department around... for a couple of days and show you what happened." "You may think that the Art Department builds a set and that's it." "But that's not it." "We're constantly revising sets, building new sets... always just trying to stay ahead of the shooting crew." "And, of course, on the day the shooting crew, they get to the set... the set needs to be redressed, turned around... and that's why we have an on-set Art Department." "The responsibility of the on-set Art Director and his team is... to make sure that the set is exactly as Peter wants it." "Maybe another one here so they..." "'Cause that's the step... they're obviously gonna come up." "He just adjusts things on the day... so that it suits Peter and what he wants to shoot." "Look, Peter wants one of these skeletons over here... just in the foreground of this wide angle... as the heroes come through." "You're gonna see it here." "Well, we're just working out the lens size." "Then we can build... something that works for the shot." "The Art Department for the Camera Department is... a very important member of the team." "They create all this stuff and we just tear it up and go:" ""Mate, get that out of there, will you?"" "And they just take it away." "It's fantastic." "So you see what they're doing here." "They've removed all of this... 'cause we're walking about here with a Steadicam." "And then when we're back over there, it's all gonna have to go back in." "And no one's gonna say "please" or "thank you."" "It's just the job you took." "What can you say?" "We have, you know, standby chippies, standby props... standby painters, standby greens... so that anything that needs little repairs on the way through... or if paint gets knocked off anything, they would fix it up." "If we have to move a whole bunch of rocks down there... they seem to get knocked a wee bit so... it's kind of just damage control, really... so it's nothing too detailed but just to make sure... there's no big patches of white showing." " You missed a spot there." " For example." "One of the things he really likes is to dress to camera." "There is the other choice." "This is actually Murray but there is Wayne... who's on the other ruin." "And I think we should get Wayne." " Wayne?" " And just see if he's a bit better than Murray." "Murray is a bit stiff, isn't he?" "Well, Wayne's all curled up... and it might look more..." " you know, more of a stiff ceremonial..." " Right." "Rather than someone who looks like he's just been shot." "So, Wayne, you finally made it." "Pete likes him so we're gonna poke him in the spot where Murray is... and see how he performs." "He's happy." "He might have been a bit bleached from the sun." "We'll probably do a bit of treatment on him, to knock him back... and dust him up and gravel him up... to make him look like you've been here for some time." "Can you hear now?" "Vietnamese torture, tying him up like that... and then they untie them, and they can't stand up." "No, it's just a bit of masking." "Where I was told to take these was right up to the top." "So bring up some rib in here." "Oh, you gotta love that, son." " Nice." " Are these gonna look funny... lined up like that or is it gonna look quite ceremonious?" "He's got ammonium in him, destroying him." "So they're busy." "They're not just sitting there looking at it." "They're usually very, very busy." "And all the ground dressing, all the shells... all the detritus from their eating... which is mostly fish-based." "Well, we'll walk on them and break them and just sort of... do whatever it needs to make them the right color... or texture." "We just, sort of, work on them... off-set and throw them on... and if it's still not right the on-set crew will do it." "We use various different types of sand, depending on the set that we're working on." "If it's a dark set... you know, we'll go for a darker sand." "Whatever really suits the part." "Right here, we have these larger rocks." "We also have painted these." "We paint them with a blue base... and then a black overcoat, so you get this color that we have now." "They were... these here." "That's the difference after the paint." "What we do is, kind of, intermingle all of them together to get... the visual we're looking for, more of a natural look... where people can walk by and not see that it's been placed there." "So we also get what's called mingimingi... and such things like that from the bush around the area around here." "Since we're not shooting on location... everything from the largest rock wall to the tiniest leaf needs to be built." "Mount Crawford was really physical, heavy, hard work... like lugging rocks and sand and stuff around." "And not have any greenery." "We have a huge nursery out the back that we built especially for this movie." "...which is located just directly behind the studio." "You can see Kong stage directly behind me." "Because you can only leave them in a studio for a certain amount of time... before they start to look a bit sick." "So you have to take them back out into the nursery... and bring in new ones and feed them up again and make them healthy." "'Cause film sets aren't really the kindest places to bring plants into." "Just with all the lights and extra feet that are around on a crew." "So you're better off going for more native plants." "...a good 20 different varieties of plants." "All of those are living specimens grown in bags right here... and then when we put them on set, we make sure we keep them well-watered." "Besides that, the moss would be the other major live specimen." "Lots and lots of living mosses." "But we have a bit of fun... with some synthetic things as well." "Our number one... fake moss is this Fun Fur... and it just comes in mats." "We burn it with propane to get it curly... and it actually gives a really real look." "Well, Wellington's pretty good for a beach for us." "Most of it is very light... so what we have to do is paint it all back so it doesn't... hang out in the lights." "So you're not getting lots of spots of white... which would look a lot like all this polystyrene that's here... which we have to paint back, as well." "Taking photographs on set is probably one of the most important things... that the on-set crew do for them and for us off-set... because that's for continuity." "You may have to go back to that same set... or maybe rebuild it two months later." "And it's amazing what you forget without a photograph." "Everywhere you go, you need to know what it was... so that you just don't make those wonderful continuity mistakes... that people are looking for all of the time." "I've just taken a photo of the skeleton down there in the dressing." "So if we do have to return here... we can match how it was." "Here we all are." "Not the butthole again!" "I wanted to touch it to see how real it was." " Very real." " Very real." "I think it will be available... for hire at the weekend." "Well, as you can see, the Art Department is constantly in motion." "And it's time to move on to the next set." "So hopefully that gives you a bit more of an idea of the Art Department." "And we're gonna keep going through the questions." "There's lots of good ideas here, so we're inspired." "We'll keep these production diaries coming." "Keep the questions coming." "We've already got a few ideas for the next week or two." "So, look forward to seeing you again soon." "So here we are." "It's day 62, and we're shooting on the shoreline of Skull Island... which is our wet set in the back lot here." "And this is another one of our requests from the viewers, if you like... and this one was requested by a lot of people." "A surprising number of people, actually, wanted to know about the cameras." "The type of cameras that we're using, and how that they work." "This is a 35-mil motion-picture camera... and today it's got a 32-mil lens on... and a filter, which is an 81 EF... which is gonna make the daylight slightly cool... because this is a predawn sequence." "And we're filming right behind you." "So for Hines and for Brian and Keith and Mark and Phillip and Peter... and many other people, this video diary is gonna focus on our cameras." "Then what happens is, the light comes through the lens through here." "I'll take this off." "Then what happens is, it hits that mirror, and that mirror spins around like that... 24 times a second." "When it hits the mirror, the light travels up here... into the eyepiece, so the operator can see." "And then when it spins around here... it exposes the film, and that's where you get our pictures." "This is the first shot of the day." " 164 alpha, take one." "A marker, guide track." " Mark." "B marker." " Set!" " Set!" "And action!" "Camera reload." "This is loading the camera, readying the camera." "But if you look in here, you can see... a little gap in there, that's the camera gate, that's where the film gets exposed." "And then what happens is, these pins come out... they're called the registration pins." "They hold the film steady, and the film stays exposed." "And then pull down forward, come down again." "And that happens three or four times a second." "This is an LCS, which stands for Lens Control System... which is essentially just a remote focus device... which enables me to step away from the camera and pull focus remotely... without actually needing to be anywhere near the camera." "If you can imagine, you got a manual camera at home, and you're taking a photo... you got to focus it up." "Well, in this situation with a motion-picture camera... actors may be moving, or the camera might be on a dolly... and it will be tracking in or moving... so the focus needs to be adjusted constantly during the shot." "And that's what the focus puller does." "The other thing a focus puller does is they're responsible for the camera... like this little 235." "This is the ARRICAM LITE, it's one of our cameras that we're using." "It's a lightweight camera, great for hand-held." "Now you got your exposed film counter." "So if your roll stops, it let's you know the footage remaining." "And reset." "That's my reset button." "Over here we have the battery pack, which isn't actually part of the camera." "It's just an accessory." "That's like a digital tech vision." "The sound, that comes out through the front from those two horns." "Down here we have the frames per second." "That's all changeable there." "One to forty frames." "That's the on-off button." "We have three cameras on this setup." "We have a 65-mil camera which Simon Harding is operating... which is filming a reverse of Naomi to Adrien." "We have Race on a 40-mil... filming a slightly wider shot of the same activity." "And I am on a 20-mil lens, which is a wide-angle lens." "These are different focal lenses for different shots that you may wanna compose... depending on the drama of the situation." "The higher the number, the longer the lens." "For instance, if you shot from the same spot, the same subject with a 50... and then changed to 100, you'd have a much tighter shot." "What if we put a 28 and just open it..." "Just open it up." " 28 will be good." " Yeah, 28 will be good." " Yeah." " 28, try that." "20 to 28, going wide." "This is the T-Stop, the aperture." "T-Stop's measured once the light's traveled through the lens... whereas in an F-Stop on our stills camera... the light's measured before it comes through the lens." "And this is the zoom." "It moves around there." "That's tight in there, 290." "And now it's at 24." "This is your focus scale here." "And that's it." "The magazine refers to the film holder." "These are 1,000-foot mags." "The other ones are a bit smaller, they're 400-foot mags." "The reason we have the 400 and 1,000 is because..." "Cap's on." "...the 1,000-foot mags are very heavy... so 1,000-foot is for production mode, 400-foot is for hand-held." "One magazine." "Four hundred feet of unexposable..." "So here we have 350, of exposed mags." "Four hundred feet would have... four minutes of shooting on it." "That's at 24 frames... which is the normal reel time." "We can go at high speed up to 150 frames... which means this would last 60 seconds, at the most." " And cut." " Cut!" "That's good." "That's great." "We can check that." "Thank you." "Thank you very much, everybody." "We'll check that." "During the shot, you can get a bit of dirt buildup or a scratch." "What I've got to check for is..." "Just see if it's clear, basically... and that there's no damage." "If there's no damage to the film, that way we can move onto the next shot." "Those camera gate's clear?" "And thank you, everybody, that is a shooting wrap." "I heard that..." "Viggo slept with his sword... to get into character, so I sleep with my camera." "Don't touch my camera." "So, here we are on Day 66." "We're in the Opera House in Wellington... which is an old theater... which is pretending to be an old theater in the middle of New York sometime in 1933." "But that's not why we're talking to you at the moment." "We're actually doing the first web diary sequel." "Now, the other day we did cameras... and then that sparked a lot of inquiries." "Hanzhi, Al, Andrew, and a bunch of other people said:" ""Oh, well, that's nice, but what happens to the film after it leaves the camera?"" "And so we thought, "Okay, well, let's just shoot a sequel..." ""to last week's web diary."" "And so, we're now going to follow that roll of film." "It's B432." "And we're going to follow its journey... from the time it leaves the camera... all the way through the system, so you can see what happens to that roll of film." "The journey of the life of roll B432... starts onset, during the shoot." "This roll, incidentally, is a scene between Colin Hanks and John Sumner... at Skull Island cove." " Yeah, very nice." "Thank you." " Thank you." "And action." "And... cut." "Camera reload." "Once Peter yells, "Cut"... the magazine containing our roll B432... is then taken off the camera... and put into a case by the camera assistant, and is then taken to the camera truck." "It comes back to the darkroom, where I download it... and can it... and send it off with a runner... to the lab, where it gets processed." "Hey, mate." "How far away are we?" "It's already begun." "I've just brought in these exposed rolls of film." "So the processors would grab the neg..." "load it in total darkness... and run it through the machine." "While that's happening... we're preparing for it throughout the rest of the lab." "Once that's finished in here, the negative is cleaned... then it is printed... so then you have the negative... and you have an unexposed print." "And then the negative is transferred in telecine... the print is processed and then screened... by Lynne and I in the link theater." "I look at the color in here, in the theater... and then go around to telecine... and just check... make sure that everything is looking pretty much the same." "This goes on to the telecine itself... and this is what converts... the optical film into a video signal." "The spare is called a, well, it's called a spare telecine." "It's scanning at 2,000 lines all the time... and can actually feed out to high-definition... and to standard-definition tapes... and to the Avid hard drive, all at the same time." "So we don't have to record anything afterwards." "The Avid is what digitizes the material for editorial." "And then that's all dispatched on a small FireWire drive." " For you." " Thank you." " See you." " See you." "It comes back to us on a FireWire drive." "And we have these rather nice little..." "Bond, James Bond cigarette cases, which has a... 40 gb FireWire drive." "So the media comes back to us on that." "And that media, which is a copy of the film... is really what we deal with, mostly." "So, this media is picture-only." "We get sound as a media file from another source." "We put the two together." "We break all those..." "Every shot in the film down." "We add lots of information." "We send that on to the editors." "We normally get the footage the next day after it's been shot." "It takes sort of a day for it to go through the whole process... of being developed, put onto videotape... ingested into the Avid..." "logged, broken up... sunk with the sound that was recorded separately... and then, finally, about a day later... we get it in our system and can go through it and edit the footage." "So, when it comes time to view the film that we shot... it gets called "rushes" or "dailies"..." "I think that's a BritishlAmerican thing." "I think Americans call them "dailies"... and the Brits or New Zealanders call them "rushes."" "But they are usually viewed in the cinema... although, what I've taken to doing now is to watch them on DVD." "Usually, there's so much footage that... rather than sit in the cinema for a couple of hours at the end of each day..." "Andrew Lesnie, our DP, and a few other people... watch just one take from each shot... to make sure they're happy with the lighting... which is obviously where Andrew's interest is." "For me, I ultimately want to watch all the takes... because that's where the performance comes from." "The easiest way for me to do that is to have the dailies on a DVD." "And then I can watch them at my leisure." "Like, I'm here on set at the moment, and I can... just pop... the DVD in, which is our dailies... and I can just have a look at it at my leisure." "As I'm sitting here working during the day..." "I can check up on what we did yesterday or the day before... and make sure that I'm happy with everything." "I also get a copy of these to take home with me." "It's a good way to look at the dailies... because I can just jump from take to take." "I can, you know, find my way around." "There's menus... and you can just pull up a particular bit." "If there's something I want to look at... if I want to just double-check that we've got a moment... then it's a great way to access and find things." "So, thank heavens for DVDs." "Day 68 and we're inside the Wellington Opera House." "Of course, in the movie, we're in the middle of New York." "A lot of you have asked about New York, Art Department, conceptualizing... and how we're going about creating the city of New York in New Zealand." "So people like Marc, Charles, Don, Adrien, Sarah, Jesse, Chris..." "Ignaz, what a funny name." "Never mind." "I'm sure you're happy with that name." "So, for those people... we thought we'd just do a sort of a catch-up... on where things are with New York today." "So, that's a huge kind of thing to take on." "So, you know, we've done a lot of work... sourcing period photographs and really studying them as hard as we possibly can." "You know, to do with architectural details, to do with signage." ""The Rubber Flow..." "The New Watson Rubber Flow Stabilizers."" "I mean, this stuff's great, because you can't make that stuff up." "This is, like, really archaic and cool... and that's a good, nice, big look for any billboard thing." "We've even studied the amount of people per block, if you like, because back then... it was one of the most heavily, densely populated cities in the world." "So we're sort of catering for that sort of amount of extras." "I mean, it's just full of detail... so part of the research was, you know, a very quick visit there." "We got up at about 5:00 in the morning... and the nice folks at the Empire State Building... took us on this tour up to the very top." "We're in the Empire State Building." "It's March 4." "March 4, 2004." "I really wanted to have a look at what it was like... to be on the top of the Empire State Building." "And I wanted Naomi to look at it, too because obviously in the movie... that's where she's gonna be at the end of the film." "This is what we're gonna have to duplicate." "On the blue screen stage in New Zealand you're gonna be doing this stuff here." "I expect it's more the computers need to be doing this..." "Good wind reference we're getting here." "We're getting a really good feel now." "It's really important that New York to me is not stylized... or anything other than the absolute, realistic New York." "And we're going to go into a lot of detail... to try to be as historically accurate with the buildings as possible." "There's been considerable differences... between present day New York and 1933 New York." "A lot of which is what we see is the amount of high-rise buildings... that have been added to the city." "One of the things we find is the skyline of 1933 New York... is a lot different than what we see today." "And then of course, there's a big research thing." "We found, looking at a lot of, you know..." "New York sets that have been done before that they appeared quite clean." "And we want to make ours gritty." "We're set in the 1930s in the depth of the Depression." "It's a gritty story and we really wanted to give it a lot of texture." "Conceptualizing started about a year ago with some art work that was done." "Jeremy Bennett did an exercise of really conceptualizing more of a color palette... and a visual look for New York." "Not so much the technical, building-by-building side of things... but just what it could look like, mood wise." "This is the first day of the shoot, in three weeks and four days." "And the first day of the shoot." "So I guess actually, you know, in some respects this is almost the..." "It's just sort of nervous laughter." "This is obviously, you know, a different view... than what I saw and experienced." "It's a lot grimier, dirtier, smoggier... certainly the first portion here that we see in the docks... it's not the New York that Mayor Giuliano would want to portray to the world." "All of these illustrations are done in Photoshop, made to be, that is... so we can build up, you know, really quite detailed and complete illustrations... which do capture the essence and the flavor of the time." "A lot of people are thinking that New York in New Zealand is kind of a crazy notion." "Why don't we go to New York City and shoot it for real... but of course, the reality is that... shooting in modern day New York as 1933 is almost impossible." "I mean, the city is hard to shoot in at the best of times... and to actually dress large sections of it... and control large sections for a period film is very, very difficult." "So what we're doing is we're building a back lot in the Hutt Valley." "This is Times Square." "And as you can see behind me, this is the subway." "We're gonna blue screen the bottom of those both... to give the illusion that you're going down the stairs into a subway." "But then, this later on becomes Herald Square." "We have to put another facade on the building there." "We change it around a little, it becomes Herald Square." "And across the street, we have Macy's." "I think this street here is 46th Street if I'm correct." "I could be wrong." "We have Broadway somewhere, and then there's Fifth Avenue..." "I think there's Broadway... and then Fifth Avenue and there's 44th Avenue... and heaps of..." "There's so many street names around here, mate... that we don't know." "Yeah, you get lost in New York." "So all that exists in one complex of streets and avenues." "And there's also gonna be a certain amount of set turn-arounds we do." "I tell you what, that's a good corner... to have the big wrap-around awning on the corner to the side." "It's good to have that detail." "You probably should throw it in there." "For other scenes we could just pull it off." "We could just have it off." "Yeah, 'cause it does finish the Empire State Building." "Yeah, so it'll have a square corner." "Once you put the awning and the wrap-around and change it..." " it changes the feel of it, doesn't it?" " Yeah." "So it's probably worth doing that." "And the main thing that we wanted to get... is that we wanted New York to look like it wasn't a back lot, you know." "And I guess in doing so... we were relying a heck of a lot on computer graphic extensions." "The buildings are only built to a certain height on set locations... and digitally, we construct the buildings within the computer." "Apply different materials and textures to make the building look realistic... and continue that on also throughout the distance of the street." "So for a shot that may be constructed within a specific location... we may have to digitally extend the street all the way down to the horizon." "It's an actual 3D model that's built down to the finest level." "We can fly around the entire city." "Any place he wishes to go within the city... he can take his camera down onto that street." "We have constructed everything throughout the entire island." "So, the digital effects are just as powerful a tool these days as physical building." "And as you can see, our New York is really gonna be a very careful blend of the two." "Our shooting in New York happens in January, February next year... and so around that time we'll be able to expand on this early look... and show you a lot more detail about how we're going about it." "Hey, I'm Steve." "We're at the Wellington Zoo today... with the second unit." "So, yeah." "We're just having a pretty cool, cruise-y day at the zoo." "Mostly, it's..." "This morning's been a study of culinary habits." " Here comes somebody up the way." " Yep." "Fascinating." "It walks." "We're here at the zoo because we're getting some footage for the beginning of the movie... which is the zoo." "It's supposed to be a depressed New York zoo." "I have to say, most of the animals in this zoo are not depressed." "It's actually a really lovely zoo... and the animals seem pretty happy, generally." "I'm talking real-life adventure." "The pursuit of the extraordinary." "I'm telling you, boys... they're gonna have to dream up a whole new bunch of adjectives... when I turn this picture in." "The other sequence we're trying to get shots for is when..." "Denham is trying to impress investors with some safari footage that he's shot... with him and Bruce Baxter... sort of posing in front of lions and tigers... trying to entice them with meat." "But the lions and tigers actually are, kind of, looking bored and not really impressed." "At least, that's my understanding of what it's supposed to be." "But we'll be filming the actors against a green screen." "And we'll be shooting the lions and tigers separately." "And then, obviously, they'll be put together in post-production." "Hopefully, we'll get some good footage." "Hi, I'm Suzette." "I'm a team leader here at Wellington Zoo, and I've been... coerced into looking after the film crew today." "So, just keeping an eye on things." " Nothing." " It didn't even blink." "It was a thought." "Trying to get some animals to cooperate." "If I bang a food bucket, then they'll probably look this way... and it might give you their attention." "Come on, guys." "All right." "The scientific approach." "Sante!" "Come on, guys." "Well, you know." "That's about as good as it gets." "Yeah." "Let's go." "They aren't listening." "Okay." "We're on the move." "Because of the candid nature of shooting animals..." "We're going to go for lions." "... it's actually a bit difficult to set things up." "Is there a problem with this mag?" "Potentially, yeah." "We tend to just quickly rush, and set the cameras up... and shoot what we see happening at the time." "Do you see me shooting?" "Well, monkeys, for the zoo sequence, are sort of really important... because obviously there's a sort of a relevance to King Kong, there." "And we're going to go down to Monkey Island, shortly... and try and get some of the smaller monkeys... that sort of leap around the place and swing from limb to limb." "We're also trying to get some..." "I think there's some giraffes and zebras." "Peter's decided he wants to have spots on the zebras." "Which may be useful for the safari footage, as well." "Seriously, though." "We're actually here shooting some plates... for Carl Denham, out on safari, to match the background." "We've been trying to get some footage of animals behind bars... which we don't have too much of now... which is actually quite good for us, but not for you." "Because most zoos, nowadays, they don't put them... in these small enclosures with bars." "Whereas, in the 1930s, that was the norm." "I think there's some intention that in post-production... they'll put some bars across using CGI." "We've even got a little set of bars which we brought with us..." "Solid steel." "... in the hope that we can possibly use that in some scenarios." "It's gone out of the sun." "Now officially a shade bear." "Sun-sensible." "Sun..." "That's right." "Sun-sensible bear." "Yeah." "It's been a great day." "You just get to hang out and feed a few animals." "Yeah." "It's been good." "Welcome to Shoot Day 70." "Six more days till Christmas vacation." "Yeah, six days till Christmas and we're filming in the Civic Theater." "And we chose the Civic because... it's New Zealand's grandest old picture palace." "Also a live theater as well... and it just seemed that if we were trying to find an amazing theater... to represent New York in 1933 that this was really the place to do it." "So it's authentic to that time period." "But yeah, we're not saying what Broadway theater... because it wouldn't match any Broadway theater if someone was a stickler for detail." "They'd say, "That's not the way the Ziegerfield looked."" "You know, so we're avoiding that." "But it's pretty impressive." "The theater's pretty bad-ass, I like to say." "A lot of extras today." "Big work for all of the A.D. S, the wardrobe and the make-up department obviously... to get these people ready to go." "They look actually wonderful." "Well, the clothes are utterly fabulous, as you can see... and the guys look absolutely elegant, don't they?" "So everyone's thoroughly enjoying it." "The furs, and the beautiful gowns, and the hairstyles." "Nice to see you." "Wave at the poor." "All these girls look hot in their little outfits." "It's King Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World." "Let's go to page 2." "Page 2 is all about King Kong with Miss Ann Darrow." "The Eighth Wonder of the World." "Now, is the Eighth Wonder of the World Miss Ann Darrow or King Kong?" " I'm from the Tribune, he's from the Times." " Yeah." "I'm sure no one reads the Tribune, though." "How many extras have I got today?" "We got 230 but it feels like about 1020." "Just listen up." "You guys at the top... if you can watch what's going on that would really help me out." "What we'd like to do... you guys on the outside are going up the stairs... you guys are going straight through, you guys straight down the guts... and you guys around to the right hand side, all right?" "Excuse me." "I know your film is very important." "You don't know what you're gonna see... but you know it's gonna be something amazing." "As is exactly what it turns out to be." "And that Denham down here is the guy that captured him... and he's the center of everyone's attention." "So some of you..." "This is the first shot of the day." "A big, wide establisher." "All the panters coming to see Kong and boy, are they in for a surprise." "Start rolling." "They're talking, folks." "Let's hear it." "This is great." "This is the only time when we can actually talk... and not get told off." "Perfect scene." "We should have the scene..." "And action!" "We can probably sing as well." "We're making movies and we can make as much noise as we want." "Well, you know, camera malfunction." "What can I say?" "Contrary to popular opinion, it was not me that shrieked out in terror." "All right, action." "This is like the shooting of Jack Ruby or something." "He's holding his heart." "It is like the shooting of Jack Ruby." "That's right, it's the Jack Ruby murder." "This roll will be excellent." "We're getting through and it all looks very nice... and well, it's pretty much what one would imagine... a big, glitzy theater in 1933 to look like." " You coming?" " No." "We're getting good at this." " You're going to come again?" " No." "Let's go back upsatirs." "So, we've just finished Day 73... and the crew are moving back down to Wellington from Auckland." "The Civic's all done now... and we've got three more days... of shooting before our Christmas break." "And there's a good chance, though, on this travel day... for me to catch up with the most popular question, I guess." "And one of the most popular questions has been... people asking for more information about conceptual art." "So, for Adrien, Alexandros, Chris... two Chrises, Danny..." "Dwayne, Janie, Jessie, Johnny..." "Mickey, Sarah, and a lot of other people... who've asked about the process of conceptualizing the film... and then how that's taken through to production design..." "I thought we'd just, you know, look at a couple of examples." "The thing with conceptual art that I enjoy mostly... is the inspirational value." "For instance, you know, we always knew that in our movie... we wanted Kong to fight a T-rex." "So, one of the very first things that I had our conceptual artists draw up for me... were a whole series of pictures of Kong fighting a T-rex." "The one in Newsweek that we released is a good example of that." "The design of Kong is not the final design of Kong." "The T-rex doesn't really look like the T-rexes in the movie... because these are not creature-design drawings." "These are just inspirational mood and atmosphere." "How it works is Gus and I will get a very detailed brief from Peter... as to what he would like to see... sort of regarding the next set build." "And Gus and I can go away and do whatever we want." "And that's generally called a "first pass."" "And we'll come back with... however many paintings... and get a very clear, succinct critique from Peter." "Sometimes we have the opportunity to do a second or third pass... depending on what we've missed or... what he's seen and liked and possibly would like to change." "You sometimes get ideas... for the choreography of the fight based on their drawings." "I just love them to be doing stuff for me with no rules, with no instructions, really." "Just come up with some cool images." "And that's a really valuable way... in which conceptual art can actually feed into the creative process." "It's very inspirational." "And then it obviously informs the designing of the film." "I mean, for instance... you know, we have the scene in our movie... and from the 1933 film, the log chasm." "And so we had to, obviously, look at the idea of... what is the log chasm." "I didn't want it to be fundamentally anything different than the original film." "So it's a chasm with a fallen tree across it." "But I wanted to make it a little bit fresh... so we explored the idea of just making the forest look different." "And I thought these roots and the way the vines... hang over the edge of the cliff was interesting." "You're always just trying to look for things that you haven't seen before." "I always thought that the tree... rather than being horizontal like it is in the original film..." "I thought it would be fun if the tree was actually on an angle." "So you had to go uphill to climb over the tree." "And then on the other side of the chasm..." "I wanted to just get a sense... some vague trace of the ruins on Skull Island." "So, I'm standing next to the design maquette... for the log chasm." "We've built a variety of scales... trying to analyze what is required... for the log chasm... and the log across the gap." "And we've worked up those scales... interacting with Peter and the art department as we've gone." "With the log chasm, as with all our big sets... the interpretation from thereon, it's just about size." "The concept art is sort of our bible." "On each set, it's different." "But in terms of the build itself... the texture in the logs... the color of the mosses on the logs... it's a great tool for anyone who's working on it." "Whether it's the sculptors, or whether it's the painters or the dressers... everyone has their, sort of, base reference." "In this case, we have the side of the chasm they approach from..." "Kong's side of the chasm... and the log that spans the chasm." "This is our version of the famous log scene... which was obviously used in the original film... and in the 1976 remake." "So, how can we do without it?" "It's one of the iconic moments in Kong... and it's obviously a scene that... most people will be expecting to see." "And we don't want to disappoint them." "So we've built this mechanical platform... with, basically, a big rubber tree." "And then the idea is that we've... programmed moves into the computer-controlled platform... that simulate, roughly, what Kong will be doing when he shakes and wobbles the tree." "Higher!" "And then there's one more step that follows the shooting on stage... and that's the building of the production miniature." "Now, the maquettes that we use for the design... are never actually filmed." "And so, what will happen with the log chasm now... is that we've finished shooting the set... and now Richard will continue the process... and he will use what finally got built on set... to form the basis of the miniature that he'll build... which is then based also on the earlier maquette... and the production design conceptual art." "What we'll do now is turn this maquette... over to John Baster... who is our miniatures supervisor." "And he will utilize it... to build the final landscape model." "And his production miniature, which is going to be huge... will incorporate the deep chasm... it'll incorporate the towering cliffs... the depth." "It'll have everything that wasn't possible for us to build onstage." "But it will match, ultimately, what did get built onstage... so we can blend the two together." "It's a fairly straightforward pipeline that we developed over Lord of the Rings... and it's great fun for me, because it allows me... to feel the design coming together slowly... and to have input at various stages... and to really try to get the best of everybody's ideas... to finally gel into what ends up on the film." "So, it's Day 76, which is significant for us... because it's our last day before we break for Christmas." "And it's..." "You know, we've had a fairly busy... intensive 14 weeks of shooting." "I know I feel quite tired." "I'm looking forward to the break." "Well, there have been so many great sets." "My most favorite would probably be the diner." "The New York diner, because it reminded me of home, and it was just fabulous." "First night shoot... dump tanks." "All that water crashing down on deck." "And Andy falling overboard." "And no one yelling "Cut," and all the boxes being thrown down." "And there was Andy, hanging off the boat." "Legend!" "Oh, man." "What a night!" "My most memorable moment..." "I can't tell you that one." "No, I can't tell you any of the memorable bits, actually." "Yeah, most of them happen on the weekend." "I can't tell you the most memorable off-camera." "That's a secret." "For me, and me alone." "I don't know, I liked so many things." "I think my most memorable moment is..." "I'm freezing to death out there in the swamp... with Colin Hanks and everyone else freezing with us." "That was kind of memorable, 'cause it was freezing." "I was cold for days." "So, yeah, that would be the one." "And this, of course, is quite memorable." "I mean, my least favorite moment on the movie shoot... you know, has definitely gotta be today." "In that water, man, freezing our asses off." "I mean, we do have wetsuits on and stuff... but when you're not really moving around... you're not really creating much insulation in your wetsuit." "It gets pretty darn cold, and we were in there for a while... and the waves just coming in... and I swallowed a bunch of water and stuff... and I almost vomited at one point." "That wasn't a lot of fun." "To celebrate the end of this first block of shooting... we're having a Christmas competition for the crew... which basically involves guessing how many setups... we have shot since the shoot began." "A shot is a camera angle." "If we have a setup and there's four cameras on it... that means there's four setups." "Every time we move a camera... change a lens... do a different speed, officially that's a setup." "Okay, in honor of it being our Christmas break, we are running a competition." "And it is a shot count competition." "I think it's between 5,000 and 7,000 shots." "Personally." "What do you reckon, boss?" "22,000, easily." "22,000 shots!" "Jesus." "1,921." "200,000." "No, 200,036." "I've got absolutely no idea whatsoever, I'm a runner." "I could tell you how many afternoon teas I did." "But shots?" "I don't know, bro." "All right, so, if you remember... the contest was to guess how many setups... all units have shot since the beginning of the shoot." "That's 14 weeks ago." "Very interesting results." "Very interesting results." "First of all, we will announce the names of the people who were the wrongest." "One of the wrongest people was Sarah Weinberg... who estimated that, since we have begun shooting, we have shot two setups." "I don't know what planet Sarah's from." "Please, you've been working too hard... to notice we've actually been rolling film occasionally." "The results, the numbers, the main unit... in the 76 days, we've shot 1,126 setups." "The second unit... have shot 437." "But then there's the miniature department." "And the miniature department, since shooting began, has shot... 3,355 setups." "The winner of the competition, who wins the travel voucher... with a close guess, not correct, about... 35 shots too low." "With 4,872 shots, was Mike Minogue." "I guess I was wrong, though." "I thought being a runner would hinder me, but obviously it helped a lot." "The largest waterfalls start with but a single drop." "Thank you so much for all of your hard work in the first 14 weeks of shooting... and obviously everything that goes before that." "And have a great Christmas, you really deserve it." "Thanks so much." "Thank you." "Hello, loyal viewers of kongisking." "Net." "We'll see you next year." "Have a great holiday." "All right." "Merry Christmas." "And have a happy New Year." "Right, merry Christmas, happy New Year, and see you next year." "And I lost the point!" "I lost that because I was talking to you, because you're more important, and, well... funnily enough, and I truly believe that." "Have a happy, safe holiday." "See you next year." "Have a safe holidays." "Seasons greeting to you." " Cheers." " Merry Christmas." "Just say to you all, have a fantastic Christmas." "Enjoy yourselves, be safe." "Enjoy." "Well, merry Christmas everyone, and happy New Year." "Have a very, very happy Christmas and an extremely merry New Year." "We've been working very, very hard." "We're looking forward to this nice break." "But have fun, be merry, be happy... be safe, and we'll see you next year." "Bye." "Hi, everyone." "This is Bob and Ned... and, of course, I'm Naomi... playing Ann Darrow." "And I just wanted to say happy holidays." "Have a great time, and a happy New Year to you." "I'm going to be around a lot more next year... and the guys have been chasing me in the jungle... and I've been doing my Christmas shopping." "But, seriously, I'll be around and I'll see you somewhere... maybe on the top of the Empire State Building." " Going to say goodbye to everybody?" " Yeah." " Going to wish them all a merry Christmas?" " And a happy New Year." " And a happy Hanukkah, and a happy..." " And all that." " Kwanzaa." " Kwanzaa, that's right." "What else is going on around this time of the year?" "I don't know." "There's probably a bunch of stuff." "Yeah, whatever you feel like celebrating..." " Celebrate it well." "...celebrate it hard!" " 'Cause that's what I'm going to do!" " Yes, for sure." "And I don't care if you're naughty or nice." "Skull Island is done." " Skull Island's done." " Yeah. 2004 is done." "2004 is done." "Bring on 2005 is what I'm saying." "We'll see you when we get back." " 2005, bring it." " Later." "Bring it." "Okay, here we go." "We're shooting now." "Whatever you want to do, do it now." "Yeah, do some movement." "But don't move too much." "Good." "There we go." "We're done." "Our Christmas break!" "Thank you." "Thank you, folks." "That's a wrap, and..." "Merry Christmas, happy holidays to you all." "Look forward to Christmas Day... or as we call it in the business, the old TA 25." "Yeah." "Yeah."