Peter Jackson has released his second production video from the set of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: There and Back Again featuring a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film, including a look at Andy Serkis, who will be reprising his role as Gollum in the film, directing the second unit.
Serkis and Jackson sit down for a chat following the last day of shooting block one, which is to say they are one-third (or 27% if you go by the numbers) of the way through shooting as Jackson explains they’ve broken up the anticipated 254 day shoot into three blocks saying, “It’s a much smarter way to shoot these big films.”
Many are taking a break until the fifth of September and cast members including Ian McKellen (Gandalf), Peter Hambleton (Gloin), William Kircher (Bifur), James Nesbitt (Bofur), Jed Brophy (Nori), Richard Armitage (Thorin), Mark Hadlow (Dori), Conan Stevens (Azog), Sylvester McCoy (Radagast) and a variety of other members of the crew describe what they will be doing during the break.
You’ll follow Jackson to South Island Reece for a location scout, which is where the images below the video come from, captured from this video blog. You’ll listen to them discuss the logistics of the location, how to get people in and out and how much time they’ll have once they are there. You’ll see where they are scouting for the ancient Mirkwood forest and the Valley of Anduin grasslands south of Queenstown.
“There’s plenty of New Zealand that we haven’t seen yet,” Jackson said. “I think people think it’s such a small country and with Lord of the Rings we saw so much of it that we must have seen everything, but believe me we haven’t. There’s a huge amount of wonderful locations still to come.”
Check out the ten minute and 23 second video and the pictures below.
The first Hobbit film, referred to as The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will hit theaters on December 14, 2012 and the second film, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, is slated for release on December 13, 2013.
