The shooting is almost done but Peter Jackson’s King Kong production diary is still worth looking at.
The scale of the production is pretty incredible. My head starts to explode when I think about the amount of coordination necessary when you have an A crew, a B crew, a miniature departement and an animation departement working together on the same scenes almost at the same time.
I guess that about 99% of the movie has been filmed in a studio or open air set. Pretty interesting how the pendulum swings from street to stage and back again, over and over, in the history of film. The 50’s highly stylized movies where countered by the neurotic realism of the late 60’s and early 70’s. The 90’s saw Dogma 95 (and a lot of movies inspired by it) but today almost every movie is fantastic in the literal sense of the word. It may be based on a comic book, mythology or strange thoughts of a strange writer, but it’s all fantasy. (There are off course exceptions.)
I don’t know how long this is going to last. Some people seem to get tired of it, other can’t have enough. But the recent attention and praise towards various documentaries seems like a writing on the wall. Although one can ask himself if it’s the subject of the documentary that captures the interest of the public or the newborn hero making it. After all, who’s going to be a teenager’s role model now: the friendy neighbourhood nerd or the man who uses his camera as a gun?
