DESOLATION OF SMAUG is Second Biggest December Midnight Opener of All Time

THE HOBBIT: DESOLATION OF SMAUG made $8.8 million in midnight opening alone, which is the second biggest midnight opening in December in history, only falling behind THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY!

Warner Bros’ is citing competition from Frozen and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire for the difference, but remains very optimistic regarding the films’ success:

“We had a fan base that was drooling to see the film,” said Dan Fellman, president of domestic distribution for Warner Bros. “We’re off to a great start, the early matinees are great. I think the number of 3D screens (the increase) will help the upcharge of the film.” Of the pic’s $8.8 million midnight run, $1.2 million came from IMAX theaters.

Source

Take an Animation Class with The Hobbit’s Senior Designer

Phoenix Atelier, a digital animation and design program that allows budding creators to build upon their skills, has posted a great new interview with Andrew Baker, the Senior Designer for The Hobbit trilogy.

Phoenix Atelier also announced that Baker will teach a program beginning September 16, in conjunction with Weta Workshop, entitled Breathing Life and Presence into Digital Creatures. Here are the basics:

In this program, you will learn to use digital sculpting as a conceptual tool for creatures and characters in the film industry and create some evocative 2D artwork for presentation alongside a finished design maquette.

Everything Wrong With The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

If you’re going to nitpick…

 

Gollum Meets Bilbo

Whether you’re still waiting to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey or you’re just wondering the Internet looking for clips to re-watch after seeing the movie already, here’s a great look at Bilbo Baggins’ first encounter with Gollum, courtesy of Coming Soon!

Click the graphic to see the clip:

Visual FX Supervisor on The Challenges of The Hobbit

Joe Letteri

Joe Letteri, the Visual FX Supervisor of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy as well as The Hobbit trilogy is talking about the unique challenges provided by The Hobbit films in a new interview with Coming Soon!

This interview contains minor spoilers!

Here’s a taste:

CS: I spoke to Andy Serkis earlier and I asked him about the goblin cavern scene specifically because I thought that might be hundreds of extras running around, but a lot of it was constructed based on what they did on set.
Letteri: Yeah, we did some small pieces of the set that the guys could run around on and do some of the action especially that bit where they’re brought before the Goblin King because a bit of the action happens on that well-lit platform in front of the throne but most of what you see in there is digital. In fact, a lot of what was shot, we wound up replacing, just because of the complexity of the camera moves and the stereo. We shot goblins with partial suits on, but we were going to be adding their heads. A lot of what we were really doing that for was for a couple shots where it was practical. Most of the time it was easier to just replace them with completely digital characters then to try to match heads onto partial bodies. Sometimes we ended up just replacing everything that shot including the actors, because it was just easier to construct the big shots that way. Yeah, we’ve gotten to the point where we can make characters and digital doubles. As long as you’re not talking about nuanced emotional dialogue performances, you’re talking about action scenes, sometimes it’s just easier to go all digital with it.

CS: I also wondered about the dwarves. In the previous movies, you had a way of turning full size actors into hobbits and you used some on-set trickery to do that, but here, you were shooting 3D and you had 12 dwarves played by 12 actors of different sizes. So wouldn’t that make every shot an FX shot because you had to make them look dwarfish?
Letteri: Yeah, for the most part. There were a couple of shots where you could just get away with putting Gandalf up on an apple box or having the dwarves down on their knees. As long as you maintained a fairly correct perspective spatially because stereo obviously picked up the difference, you can get away with that, but when you go wide or when the camera started moving, that’s when you really needed to go in and look at either rotoscoping Gandalf off of the plate and you scale him up and lock him back in 3D or you replace him with a 3D character all together, like a digital double, or you go with this dynamic forced perspective using synchronized motion control rigs.

Richard Armitage on Transforming into Thorin Oakenshield

Richard Armitage recently talked to Collider about his work on The Hobbit trilogy!

You can click the photo to view the interview, but here’s a quick roundup of questions answered from the source:

• Is he enjoying being anonymous even when standing next to a Hobbit poster with Thorin on it. Also talks about transforming his physical appearance to play the character
• Talks about his reaction to seeing the film for the first time
• What’s been the biggest surprise making The Hobbit trilogy
• Is he looking forward to the additional photography for the 3rd Hobbit movie next year. Talks about how it takes 10 weeks to grow back the beard
• Which does he like filming more: the big action scenes or the intimate character moments

Gandalf Preps Bilbo in New Hobbit Clip

With just hours to go before The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey hits theaters in the US, Coming soon has released an exclusive new clip from the film!

Click the photo to watch the video!

Peter Jackson and Martin Freeman talk ‘The Hobbit’

Hey U Guys recently interviewed Peter Jackson and Martin Freeman about The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, out in just TWO DAYS! We don’t know where the time has gone, but we are psyched!

First, check out Peter Jackson discussing making movies, the translation from book to film, those infamous 48 frames per second, and casting Martin Freeman.

Then Martin Freeman discusses taking on the role of Bilbo Baggins, working with Peter Jackson as well as working on a big franchise, and getting sick of his own overexposed face!

The Hobbit – Dwarf Cheat Sheet

Let’s not kid ourselves: We all occasionally have some trouble telling after the dwarves of The Hobbit. There’s a lot of them! There’s really no shame in it.

Fear not, Tolkien lovers, The LOTR Project has come up with an awesome chart to help you identify them all in the film!

Misty Mountains Song from THE HOBBIT

For your listening pleasure, here’s the entire track of the Misty Mountains song from The Hobbit.

WARNING:  It’s a video, so if you want to listen to it, but don’t want to watch it, play it in a different browser window and avoid actually watching it!

Thanks to theonering.net for posting this!