Oscars journey a family affair
Dan Hennah’s phone in Orinoco started ringing at 4am. In Mapua, the same was happening for his son-in-law, Ra Vincent.
Mr Hennah, the production designer for The Hobbit trilogy, did not answer the call, but knew what it meant because ‘‘no-one is going to be ringing up to tell us we didn’t get a nomination’’.
The news was that he had received his fifth nomination for an Academy Award and Mr Vincent, the films’ set decorator, had received his first nomination.
Mr Hennah told the Nelson Mail this week that being nominated was the key, because they come from his production design peers, whereas the award itself was voted on by all the academy’s members.
Creating J R R Tolkien’s world for Sir Peter Jackson has been a family affair for the men. Mr Hennah’s wife Chris managed the art department and Mr Vincent’s wife Nancy worked on makeup.
Mr Hennah has won one Academy Award, for set decoration on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. But for The Hobbit, he moved up to the production designer’s chair, a role where he was responsible for the overall look of the film. He worked with the director and conceptual artists from the very earliest stages of planning the films.
He said one of the key design triggers was the decision that the dwarfs’ journey would be to the east, rather than south as in The Lord of the Rings. He said that meant that travelling from England, the journey over the trilogy would be through Europe and into Asia, which opened up those influences in architecture and geography for the world he was creating.
Mr Hennah also said that because Tolkien was so descriptive, ‘‘everyone who’s read it has an idea of what it looks like’’ and so ‘‘keep it true to Tolkien’’ became a design mantra. He first read The Hobbit aged 11 and said he had ideas of how the world would look from then.
The biggest challenge from the first film of the trilogy, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, was creating the goblins’ cave. ‘‘That was always going to be tricky because we had to create the impression that you were under millions of tonnes of rock,’’ said the former architect.
That meant overhanging elements had to be huge and structurally the sets had to be very strong.
He also designed the hobbit Shire to be a permanent structure, intended to have minimum life span of 50 years in Matamata.
The job of filling the sets with authentic looking furnishings and props was the responsibility of Mr Vincent, a sculptor and painter.
He used his contacts with artisans all over New Zealand to commission authentic pieces to ‘‘breathe life into the sets’’ and said being able to spread a huge amount of work all over the country was one of the most satisfying aspects of his job.
‘‘In effect we have real objects on the set and because we’re using real materials it makes the actors’ experience a much more believable one.’’
That became especially important because the films were shot at 48 frames per second, which showed background objects in sharper detail.
Both men said the nominations had brought them more job offers although Mr Hennah will be tied up with pick-up shoots and related Hobbit work until August and has had to decline offers until after then.
Mr Vincent finished on The Hobbit last August and since then has been the production designer for Taika Waititi’s new film with Jemaine Clement, which has the working title of Shadows and is due to be released in July. He is also working on a civic sculpture for Wellington.
Both men, their wives and Mr Vincent’s daughters, Ruby, 7, and Tui, 5, will be attending the Academy Awards in Los Angeles on February 24.