Canadian photographer in Sydney Australia, specialising in arts, events and locations.
Just back from this afternoon’s rally in Civic Square for The Hobbit, featuring Sir Richard Taylor and members of the production team from Lord Of The Rings - here’s hoping we’ll be enjoying their company for the next couple of years, too! The decision on where to film the movies is expected this week, and Wellington’s hopeful - though not necessarily optimistic…
(In case the flash slideshow is slow to load - a couple of people mentioned they were having trouble - here’s a link to the gallery itself…Rally for The Hobbit 10)
I was asked by Jonathan Handel, a writer for The Hollywood Reporter, for one of my images to use with an article on The Hobbit labour dispute, and in the interest of increasing the profile of the march and spreading the word that crew still support making the films here, I agreed. Here’s hoping the situation is still reparable - click here to see the article with my image in place, with thanks to Jonathan for providing the .pdf version.
An estimated 1000 film technicians, directors, producers, actors and artists met tonight to discuss the situation surrounding the production of The Hobbit, which has been delayed and endangered by a worldwide actors boycott started by New Zealand Actors’ Equity / MEAA; a meeting of Equity was scheduled to take place the same evening, so it was decided to protest outside the meeting, which then failed to take place.
Having attended the meeting myself as an interested member of the film community (not as media), I agreed not to report on what was said; but the situation overall is not good. Put it this way, if Sir Richard Taylor feels strongly enough about this to call an emergency meeting of the entire industry, well - that’s not a good sign. We’ll see how it progresses from here, but I’m not optimistic myself. It’s also telling that the meeting had so many concerned people from the industry in attendance, considering it was called in Miramar on only 3 hours’ notice…
Tonight saw (Pan’s Labyrinth / Hellboy / Hobbit director) Guillermo del Toro in conversation with (Black Sheep & Under The Mountain director) Jonathan King, as a fundraiser for a feature project by Bonnie Slater & Sam Kelly - have a look…
