If I'm lucky enough to be involved in the Academy Awards in the future I'll just let people make up their decision without being involved in any politics. Because it shouldn't involve that.
The Beatles once approached Stanley Kubrick to do 'The Lord Of The Rings.' This was before Tolkien sold the rights. They approached him and he said 'No.'
Motion-capture is not a genre. Motion-capture is a tool and technique and what we tried to do was to really use both motion-capture and traditional animation to build a system.
If you take a regular animated film that's being done by animators on computers so the filmmaking is a fairly technical process.
I never overtly analyse my own movies I don't think that's my job to do that. I just muddle through and do what I think is best for the movie.
If you're an only child you spend a lot of time by yourself and you develop a strong ability to entertain yourself to conjure up fantasy.
I am not anti-media at all. But the media the news anywhere in the world is based on drama.
Rivalry doesn't help anybody.
Everybody's life has these moments where one thing leads to another. Some are big and obvious and some are small and seemingly insignificant.
I hope one day that I'll get to make another horror film; I'd love to.
I'm always embarrassed by those rugby player autobiographies which get written by journalists.
To people in my industry I'm usually a guy that tries to generate his own projects and I remain very elusive when people try and attach me to big projects.
What I love about films is that you can see "King Kong" and you can be affected by it and then you realize that he was just this little guy when he made that fall.
I just think that we're living in a world where the technology is advancing so rapidly. You're having cameras that are capable of more and more - the resolution on cameras is jumping up.
Continuing advances in stem cell medicine will change all of our lives for the better.
If you take 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' as books one is written for children and one is an adult's book.
I adore physical miniatures and try to use them as much as I can and have a bit of a fetish about that.
One of the best things about growing up in New Zealand is that if you are prepared to work hard and have faith in yourself truly anything is possible.
My dad always told me that the principal reason he chose New Zealand to emigrate to after World War II was the high regard his father had for the Kiwis he encountered at Gallipoli.
In every house when the curtains are drawn there's a story going on and you never get to hear... You get the public side of things the happy smiling social activities.
Filmmaking for me is always aiming for the imaginary movie and never achieving it.
Adapting a novel is not really about being faithful to every word and every moment the author has created. It's more about that same story being filtered through somebody else's sensibility.
One of the first movies I ever saw was 'Batman ' based on the TV series with Adam West and Burt Ward.
Defeat is always momentary.
Every film is a challenge. I always say that making a movie is like film school - you're always learning. But unlike most schools you never get done with it. You never learn everything.
Being honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame alongside the names of some of my childhood heroes is slightly surreal and incredibly awesome.
I didn't want my kids having to pass through an airport named after their father.
The producers of 'The Hobbit' take the welfare of all animals very seriously and have always pursued the highest standard of care for animals in their charge.
100 years ago movies were black-and-white silent and 16 frames a second. So 100 years from now what are they going to be?
I was bullied and regarded as little bit of an oddball myself.
There's a generation of children who don't like black and white movies. There's a level of impatience or intolerance.
There's a generation of children who don't like black and white movies. There's a level of impatience or intolerance now.
Forty-eight frames per second is a way way better way to look at 3D. It's so much more comfortable on the eyes.
I want to make movies just like "King Kong." You know dinosaurs big gorillas - it's everything that a nine year-old boy would fall in love with.
I love Bilbo Baggins. I relate really well to Bilbo!
I am a big Dragon fan. I've said it before- And I was fortunate enough to be born a Dragon in the Chinese Horocope...
The big-budget blockbuster is becoming one of the most dependable forms of filmmaking.
The vast majority of the CGI budget is labor.
The entertainment options for young people are a lot broader now and the quality of films is slumping a little bit.
Buster Keaton's 'The General ' from 1927 I think is still one of the great films of all time.
To his ex-wife in court he said I lost interest in you when the Botox lost its effect and you looked like a plastic doll that escaped from a fire.
Learning how to edit movies was a real breakthrough.
We've all forgotten how to be original.
The most honest form of filmmaking is to make a film for yourself.
I just got tired of being overweight and unfit so I changed my diet from hamburgers to yogurt and muesli and it seems to work.
When you look at the original 'Paradise Lost' film you see three kids who can't defend themselves being persecuted in a medieval way - witchcraft satanic worship. It was kind of primitive.
The theatrical versions are the definitive versions. I regard the extended cuts as being a novelty for the fans that really want to see the extra material.
I regard myself as being the final filter so everything that ends up in the movie is there because it's something that I think was cool.
Bad Taste' was - it was in many respects my sort of my I guess my single-minded desire to want to break into the film industry when New Zealand didn't really have a film industry to break into.
You don't want to believe everything you read on the Internet.
I'm a Beatles fan and I remember in the mid-1980s when CDs first came out there was a sound of vinyl and the sound of the needle on it that people loved and suddenly CDs were threatening.
I think that's the job of a director really - to sort of funnel all the creativity into one centralized point of being.
To some degree I was very dubious of the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' idea - taking a theme park ride and turning into a film - even though they seemed to end up being quite fun films.
Stem cell therapy has the potential to treat a multitude of diseases and illnesses which up until now have been labelled 'incurable.'
Film is such a powerful medium. It's like a weapon and I think you have a duty to self-censor.
If you make a trilogy the whole point is to get to that third chapter and the third chapter is what justifies what's come before.
The cameo I did in 'Fellowship of the Ring' was I was in the street of Bree and I was eating a carrot.
I make cameos in all my movies for no particular reason other than a joke. It's just a Hitchcock thing.
For a lot of my childhood I didn't want to direct movies because I didn't really know what directing was.
I think that you can treat a classic like a museum piece -stuffed and mounted- or you can make it a living breathing narrative that is unfolding right then and there.
When you're directing you're right at the coal face always exhausted often emotional - and I'll enjoy being a couple of steps back from that and simply helping where I can.
Writing a screen play with a group of collaborators is like the Lennon McCartney collaboration .... sometimes one or two people do more than others on certain parts of the process and vice versa.
We have lost close friends and relatives to cancer and Parkinson's disease and the level of personal suffering inflicted on patients and their families by these diseases is horrific.
The Return Of The King' has a conclusion.
I want to make a series of movies that run together so if any crazy lunatic wants to watch them all in a row there will be a consistency of tone.
No film has captivated my imagination more than 'King Kong.' I'm making movies today because I saw this film when I was 9 years old.
New Zealand is not a small country but a large village.
I don't like directing that much to want a career as a director for hire. I like to have as much creative control as possible.
So many film makers are scared of visual effects - which is no crime.
The music in a film like this is as critical as anything because Kong is mute. He doesn't talk.
I think everything that you do you're learning. I mean every movie that you make is like a film school; that's one of the things that I enjoy about filmmaking.
One does not simply walk into Mordor
I'm thinking about doing a First World War film.
I find that in the process of making a film you're constantly discovering things that you never even imagined would work at the beginning.
The only thing about 3-D is the dullness of the image.
What I don't like are pompous pretentious movies.
I never dreamed in a million years that 'The Lord of the Rings' would be nominated for an Oscar. Those types of fantasy movies never got nominations.
Fantasy is an 'F' word that hopefully the five second delay won't do anything with
As human beings we always have resistance against things that are different and there's always suspicion.
Most directors prefer to direct everything themselves. I thought I could on Lord Of The Rings but very quickly found out that the sheer scale prevented it.
The director has to win because you should never force a director to shoot something they don't believe in.
[While shooting close-ups] you study real eyes you study how the light reflects in them you study the back of the eye you study the way irises reflect emotion. You go into great scientific detail.
While you're finding evidence of innocence you also find evidence that points to other people.
In an ideal world the script is written lean and tight and therefore there are no scenes left on the cuttring room floor and therefore no extended edition.
I remember when I was - I must've been 17 or 18 years old - I remember 'The Empire Strikes Back' had a big cliffhanger ending and it was like three years before the next one came out.
Where film is infinitely superior to any other medium is emotion and story and character.
I regard myself as an entertainer much more than an artist.
Temeraire' is a terrific meld of two genres that I particularly love - fantasy and historical epic.
With the right movie 3D can enhance the experience. Absolutely it can make a good film a great film. It can make a great film a really amazing film to see .
It's interesting how the frame rate actually changes the perception of the 3D as well as making it more comfortable to watch.
If justice is supposed to be fair than any justice system you would hope is based on fairness.
Prosthetic makeup is always frustrating.
I used to send away for eight-minute Super 8 movies of various Ray Harryhausen scenes advertised on the back of 'Famous Monsters of Filmland' magazine.
Remember pain is temporary; film is forever.
Anything you can imagine you can put on film.
As a filmmaker you want nothing more than to have people say 'I love your movie.'
As a filmmaker you are going to manipulate the character as you need to make the scenes work.
Strategically horror films are a good way to start your career. You can get a lot of impact with very little.
I mean I didn't have a huge upbringing with movies I guess.
There is a lot of 'Halo' movie material no one has ever seen in New Zealand.
There's a very go-to kind of attitude in New Zealand that stems from that psyche of being quite isolated and not being able to rely on the rest of the world's infrastructure.
The one thing with 3D presentations is I think that 3D itself whether it's 24 or 48 is at a very interesting point in time.
I wanted people to believe that there could still be this little undiscovered piece of the world that survives still on Skull Island.
Structure is important in film but there's often structure to be found in the most unlikely of places! It's quite possible to build a structured story and retain idiosyncrasy.
I just got to the point where I literally didn't want anyone else to do it.
It is now such a complex society in terms of media. It just comes at us from every direction. You kind of have to push it all away.
There's something incredibly tragic about Kong. You feel almost feel ashamed to be a human being when you see what happens to him. I mean he is ultimately a pure-heart.
People call Kong "a monster." He's not. There's nothing evil about Kong. He's just another creature who has opened up a little bit of his heart to Ann and it proves to be his undoing.
To get an Oscar would be an incredible moment in my career there is no doubt about that. But the 'Lord of the Rings' films are not made for Oscars they are made for the audience.
I don't think that because you die and move on to somewhere else that you lose your sense of humor.
I think there's still a little bit of that 9 year-old in me and I'm pretty happy.
Actors will never be replaced. The thought that somehow a computer version of a character is going to be something people prefer to look at is a ludicrous idea.
If you work at love you will find love at work.
What I think is remarkable about my mum and dad is they had no interest in films really. None.
I'm not going to head off and do a Marvel film. So if I don't do a Marvel film I don't have any other choice - I've got to go make a small New Zealand movie!
There was a great magazine in the '80s called 'Cinemagic' for home moviemakers who liked to do monster and special effects movies. It was like a magazine written just for me.
He who must search a haystack for a needle is likely to end up with the attitude that the needle is not worth the search.
New Zealand is not used to wealth. In America wealth is kind of a thing of pride. Here it's the opposite. The more you've got the bigger the target you are.
I feel very lucky to be able to make movies in New Zealand and I will always be grateful for the support I have received from so many New Zealanders.
A wizard is never late nor is he early he arrives precisely when he means to.
It's not going to be too much longer before Xbox Live produces programming.
I don't really want to make a stylized film or anything too surreal.
I don't believe in the concept that 3D should be shot separately. I mean every director has their own style sure but I don't think any of that is really an issue with 3D.
Second movies are great because you can drop into them and it doesn't really have a beginning on it particularly in a traditional way. You can just tear into it.