Behind the scenes at Weta

As Avatar's blue aliens invade cinemas worldwide, the return of 3D movies is a potential goldrush for Wellington. Today, Weta lifts the curtain on the Kiwi innovation that contributed to the film's out-of-this-world success.

Oscar-winning director James Cameron's decision to make movie blockbuster Avatar in Wellington boosted the local economy by more than $100 million. The bill for accommodation, taxis and food alone topped $100,000 a week.

More than 1500 people worked on the 3D film now vying to become the biggest box office earner in history - a title held by Cameron's Titanic, released 13 years ago.

Just as Avatar is a giant leap forward for the movie industry, it also marks the evolution and attractiveness of Wellington.

It is the first big-budget offshore film to come to New Zealand to take advantage of existing technical expertise alone, rather than the country's natural beauty and tax breaks.

A notorious perfectionist, Cameron entrusted his vision to the skill of Wellington's Weta Digital and Weta Workshop, and the craft of a stand-alone art department that created hi-tech sci-fi sets and props for 88 days of live-action shooting - at Stone Street Studios in Miramar and at a disused warehouse in Porirua. Motion-capture footage shot in the United States is also included in the final cut.

Ground-breaking techniques developed during the making ofAvatar were added to Wellington's film-making arsenal, keeping it at the industry's cutting edge.

While 3D movies were once dismissed as a novelty, Avatar has packed in audiences and piqued interest in three- dimensional viewing - just as television makers are preparing to market 3D technology in the family home.

Meanwhile, Hollywood film studios are eyeing up the box office-busting film's success and the return of a true movie visual experience to an industry battling piracy and the internet.

Weta Workshop boss and Oscar winner Richard Taylor says Cameron's decision to make the movie in Wellington speaks volumes. "It is a tribute to his utter confidence in the level of skill and ability of the New Zealand film-maker, and all the artistic and technical skill of the New Zealand film technicians."

Taylor says Avatar was completely immersive and used 3D, not as a gimmick, but to create a plausible and fantastical world based on science, engineering and cultural reference points.

"All those elements blended together means when you walk out of the cinema you feel like you have just seen something that is truly unique and incredibly important in the progression of film-making."

Kiwis' famous No 8 fencing wire mentality of innovation is also important to the industry, Taylor says.

"And because we are not tied down by the union control that some other countries have there's a much greater level to collaborate and cross over to different departments to assist one another."

Making such a massive-scale film locally was an accomplishment that would be felt by everyone involved.

"That includes the Wellington and New Zealand film industry. It is critical to note that the Wellington film industry played a major part in this film by the fact that they filmed and created all of the physical world here."

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Weta Digital's senior visual effects supervisor, Joe Letteri, says Wellington's compact nature provides a movie-making mecca.

"Everything you need to make a film is right there in Miramar, within a few blocks of each other. That doesn't exist anywhere else.

"And Wellington as a city is so supportive of that. People just love working and living here and it seems to provide a great way to make films."

Letteri says the success of Avatar is proof of Wellington's position as a premier film-making city.

"I have the feeling that if we did another film with Jim [Cameron] he would seriously consider coming back and shooting here. He really enjoyed the whole experience."

The supervising art director, freelancer Kim Sinclair, says the construction department let 647 contracts to 44 sub-contractors, to create 30 realistic film sets, props and furniture.

"There are loads of offshore productions done in New Zealand but in the past it is always because of the location. This is the first time a production came here purely for the technical knowledge."

That knowledge is paying off at box offices worldwide, with Avatar reaping US$1.62 billion (NZ$2.2b) since opening in mid-December - second behind Titanic, which sits on US$1.83b. It has taken $10.9m in New Zealand in just a month, placing it fifth on the all-time box office list here.

Avatar's New Zealand production manager, Brigitte Yorke, says a lot of people working on the movie didn't understand completely what they were making

"But people are very proud of what was very hard work.

"He [Cameron] expects people to give 150 per cent every day . . . and to be pushed and encouraged to work at such an amazing level, and be involved in something so ground- breaking, was fantastic."

Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast says "more than $100,000 a week was being spent on accommodation, taxis and food".

Film Wellington is funded by councils in greater Wellington and is an important part of the movie scene. It processes all permits to film in and around Wellington City and can place film-makers with the appropriate crews, equipment and facilities.

Manager Delia Shanly says the impact of Avatar on Wellington's movie industry is a giant leap from the work done by Sir Peter Jackson on his Rings trilogy.

"We are now at the next step with people in the world realising it is not just Peter Jackson's plaything.

"Avatar will probably have even more effect because it wasn't done by a local director. It was James Cameron choosing over anywhere else in the world to come here.

"He had the vision . . . but he needed the people to create that for him and he chose Wellington. We are on the second wave where anyone in the world can come and make cool stuff here."

Ms Prendergast says Film Wellington is a critical one-stop shop making the capital a film-friendly city. "The myriad compliance issues and regulations that film-makers have to get for the production side of filming is often an off-put to producers.

"They know where the best locations might be, how to close off an area, use a park, close a street, have access to issues around airspace and lighting. Those issues can be dealt with by dealing with one person."

There is also a "can-do attitude" at the council that helped break barriers to films being shot here, Ms Prendergast says.

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TRICKS OF THE TRADE

Weta Digital's innovations on Avatar:

* To "grow" Pandoran landscape, Weta staff adapted a programme called Massive that replicates variations on digitally generated objects.

* An army of artists used custom-developed software to paint the finest details of virtually every leaf in the jungle.

* Weta used a new technique that helps render each detail of a scene relative to its size in the frame so the final result looks as it would to the naked eye.

* It used computer technology that allows artists to fine-tune lighting of complex scenes in a very similar way to real-world lighting.

* New techniques were developed to make digital faces realistic.

* Weta used a virtual stage and camera with which the actor's performance translated to the digital character's performance in real time.

* Animators added ear and neck animation to complement the facial performance.

* Much time was spent locking eye movements to made sure digital characters were connected with their environment, engaged and involved.

* The characters' eyes were made to react to light realistically.

* A technological breakthrough created a new "tissue" system to evaluate how muscles, tendons, fat, skin and other body tissue change shape and affect each other as characters move and interact.

* Previously, other tissue systems were simulated from the "outside in". Weta developed a system that works from the "inside out".

* Weta pushed the envelope with skin shading, enabling it to create blue people with red blood - without having everything turn purple.

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FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS A GIANT GROWS

The company that would one day be known as Weta was born as RT Effects in the back room of Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger's Wellington flat in 1987.

The couple supported the emerging local film industry with a range of services in special effects, creature work, prosthetics and make-up effects.

In 1993 they joined with friends Peter Jackson and Jamie Selkirk to expand the company. They renamed it Weta, with Taylor and Rodger heading up Weta Workshop.

Its Miramar-base is a 6038 square metre (65,000sq ft) facility that is the biggest of its kind in the world.

Housed under the one roof is the equipment, infrastructure and capacity to create anything from fine jewellery and creature suits to large-scale tank and vehicle construction.

Weta was later split into two specialised companies - Weta Workshop and Weta Digital.

Weta Digital is a post-production visual effects company led by Joe Letteri. It does computer-generated work, including animation, motion capture, crowd generation, modelling, as well as film scanning and recording.

It provides a suite of digital production services for feature films and high-end commercials, from concept design to cutting-edge 3D animation as seen in Avatar.

One of the company's first projects was providing visual effects for Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, released in 1994. It went on to work on Jackson's Rings trilogy and King Kong.

It has also been sought out by other Hollywood directors to create visual effects on box office hits such as I, Robot, X-Men: The Last Stand and Water Horse.

Weta's two arms make up just part of Wellington's film-making community based in the eastern suburbs. Stone Street Studios has two purpose-built sound stages, including the massive 2276sq m "Kong" stage, and four adapted warehouse stages.

Supporting these are a cluster of offices for production, construction, wardrobe, a make-up and art department, and a large back lot that can house a wet stage.

Then there is Park Road Post, a post-production house that has a range of services under one roof, such as laboratory services, film scanning and sound mixing.

Portsmouth Hire rounds out the group relationship by being a complete film equipment rental company.

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WETA WORKSHOP

Avatar's global success is great news for Wellington visual effects company Weta, says Oscar winner Richard Taylor.

"It reinforces that the world's audience enjoys watching films of fantasy and science fiction. They like escapism in film-making.

"That is all fantastic for the likes of Weta as a company because ultimately worlds that take you to other places need visual effects, creatures, [and] special make-up effects."

Both Weta Workshop, where Taylor is boss, and its offshoot Weta Digital have been involved in making some of the most successful movies of all time - including the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Avatar.

But that doesn't mean the company can hand-pick movies it will work on in the future.

"We don't have that luxury as such because we are a service- providing company and we've got a crew that needs to stay busy."

Taylor says there are very few films Weta would turn down - excluding those that are derogatory in a racist, sexist or religious way.

"Nobody wants to make a poor film, no-one ever has the intent of doing that, so at the beginning of a project almost all films have the potential of being something very exciting to work on.

"We've got to work on some really amazing films, with very, very few that have not been something that has fulfilled our expectation - I can't even really think of any."

Weta Workshop spent two years assisting Avatar's design team in the US before filming even began.

It went on to create all the guns, military costumes, helmets, and the medical equipment including the big amnio tanks the avatars are born in.

Weta Digital created about 100 minutes of pure CG footage used in the film, Taylor says. "There was a good physical/digital blend through [the two companies] which made for a very exciting involvement for the overall company."

He says the technical know-how in Wellington is cutting edge. "There is no doubt that Avatar will forever acknowledge that even the most challenging film can be made here."

Mr Taylor is still very much hands-on at Weta Workshop: "I try to spend seven or eight hours of every day on the workshop floor which unfortunately means leaving the business side of the company to spill into the early evening.

"It would be a shame not to continue to enjoy that because the business side of the work would take away the fun of making a film."

WETA DIGITAL

Making computer-generated 10-foot-tall blue people look real was one of the biggest challenges faced by Weta Digital when it started work on Avatar, senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri says.

"We knew these characters were going to be some of the lead characters in the film, right up there with the live action performances.

"So first and foremost the question was can we carry their performance, can we get what the actors are doing all the way to the screen, and can we make these 10-foot-tall blue people look real?"

Weta Digital has a history of successfully bringing computer- generated characters to the big screen with Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the ape in King Kong.

"We thought now we have to do everything we have done in those movies but many times more," Letteri says from New York, where he is vying for work on another project he won't identify.

"Instead of a single main character, we had seven lead characters. We had dozens of background characters that all had to have dialogue.

"Instead of creating one jungle, we had to create jungles all over the planet, for example."

Letteri says once lead character Jake opens the doors and enters planet Pandora - a dense, lush jungle filled with exotic vegetation and wildlife - the viewer enters a completely digital world for most of the movie.

Bringing Avatar's alien world to life meant constructing several computer-generated environments, including the floating mountains in the skies above the jungle, the hometree where Neytiri's people live, the Willow Glade, the Sacred Place, and the Tree of Souls.

Daring aerial battles also needed to be created.

Weta Digital ended up going back to square one. Staff spent a year researching and developing how they were going to create each aspect of the movie. In the process they invented some ground-breaking techniques to make believable digital characters which moved naturally and to invent realistic new worlds.

The complexity of making the environments in 3D caused difficulty creating an entirely realistic computer-generated world.

3D demands an added layer of complexity. For example, with effects such as water and dust you can often "cheat" some of the detail in 2D. But it isn't possible if you want it to look realistic in three dimensions.

Special software was developed for rendering and compositing 3D imagery. Without it, Weta would have had to render double the amount of data for a movie that was already exponentially bigger than any other CG film to date.

It does help that Weta Digital has a large data centre for rendering, and 2.5 petabytes - equivalent to 2.5 million gigabytes - of disk space to store information.

Letteri says Weta essentially became the domain of director James Cameron during the making of Avatar - as it did for Sir Peter Jackson with Rings and Kong.

"We told Jim [Cameron] that the whole facility will become his visual effects department and we will dedicate everything ... to figure out all the aspects of this to get the film done."

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ART DEPARTMENT

Avatar depicts alien lands, but not many people know big chunks of the film were created in an old warehouse in Porirua.

While Weta Workshop and Weta Digital are basking in worldwide acclaim, flying under the radar is the film's art department, led by New Zealander Kim Sinclair.

The Kiwi, who entered the film industry after seeing a job advertised in a newspaper, has worked on films starring some of Hollywood's biggest names, including Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks.

For Avatar he oversaw four freelance art directors who, over 15 months, provided work for about 200 people. They created about 30 sets and all the furniture, props and aircraft that appear with live actors in Avatar.

A giant warehouse at Porirua's Central Park, the old Todd Motors Building, was where most of the 88 days of filming took place.

The art department was responsible for about 30 per cent of what is seen in the film. A small section of stop-animation was shot in the United States but nearly all of the remaining 70 per cent is a computer- generated world created by Weta Digital.

Sinclair, who works independently from Weta, says the props made by the art department were so good that people often thought they had been made by the Oscar-winning team at Weta Workshop.

"We had little stickers made saying 'Not made by Weta Workshop'. The guys went around and stuck them on everything we had made."

Avatar was shot in 3D, rather than adding the third dimension after filming, which meant the 3D images could be viewed by director James Cameron as each scene was filmed.

These viewings took place in a converted shipping container Cameron dubbed 'the pod'.

"Whenever there was a take Jim would say 'to the pod' and two or three people would rush away to watch it in 3D. If they were happy they would move on to another scene."

Sinclair says Cameron wanted everything in the film to be based on reality and not as science fiction.

"For example, our research showed that guns will eventually fire case-less ammunition but Jim wanted all weapons to fire bullets and eject brass cartridges.

"We constantly harked back to a Vietnam and Iraq aesthetic of common sense and traditional technology which the film projects forward 100 years."

The cockpits of all the aircraft in the movie were built as physical sets. The most challenging was the Samson helicopter, Sinclair says.

"It is basically a full-sized working helicopter but doesn't have the rotors or tail. But the fuselage, the ailerons, the controls and the pedals all work, and the instruments light up.

"It has to sit on the ground but also on a motion base and be controlled by a computer to do all the turns and moves. It also has to hang from a crane for landing and takeoffs with 21 people in it. It had to be light and strong."

The 30 sets they built were conceptually designed in the US.

"We got them as computer files which are like a computer game that you can walk around inside and have a look.

"I think they were quite happy that we were going to build them because I don't think they had a clue how to do it. They gave them [designs] to us and sort of said 'Here you go, good luck'."

Sinclair trained as an architect and first worked as a film art director on Savage Island, made in New Zealand on an $8 million budget in 1982, after he answered a job advertisement in a newspaper.

He has since worked on a series of blockbuster movies, including The Lost World: Jurassic Park 2, The Last Samurai and Castaway. He is now working on The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

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ACADEMY AWARDS

Weta Workshop

King Kong: best visual effects (2006) (shared with Weta Digital and others)

LOTR: The Return of the King: best costume, best make-up (2004)

LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring: best make-up, best visual effects (2002)

Weta Digital

King Kong: best visual effects (2006) (with Weta Workshop and others)

LOTR: The Return of the King: best visual effects, technical achievement award for Gollum (2004)

LOTR: The Two Towers: best visual effects (2003)

LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring: best visual effects (2002)