Behind the Scenes for the Sound Effects of The Desolation of Smaug

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The remote server returned an unexpected response: (417) Expectation failed.

Last week The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug received two Oscar nominations for sound in the categories of Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing. In the video below the crew discusses how how they created the audio track, the challenges, and how the film influences their decisions.

The Desolation of Smaug Receives Three Oscar Nominations

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The remote server returned an unexpected response: (417) Expectation failed.

Today the Academy of Motion Pictures of Arts and Sciences officially announced the nominations for the the 86th Annual Academy Awards. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug received three nominations in the Visual Effects, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing categories. Congrats to the crew on the recognition of their fantastic work. Sadly odds are very long with them winning as suspect a Gravity sweep. The winners will be announced during the Oscar telecast on March 2nd. The full list of nominations is here.

Visual Effects
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Iron Man 3
The Lone Ranger
Star Trek Into Darkness

Sound Editing
All is Lost
Captain Phillips
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Lone Survivor

Sound Mixing
Captain Phillips
Gravity
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Inside Llewyn Davis
Lone Survivor

Vote in the Middle-earth March Madness Final Four! Some like it ‘Hot!’

April 2, 2014 at 11:38 am by newsfrombree  - 
The Final Four are set! And in a stunning turn of events, Middle-earth has gone ‘Hot
!’ In an unexpected twist of fate, the final four combatants are arguably the most swoon-worthy group of Middle-earth combatants ever.
First up, we have Thranduil facing off against Aragorn. Some staff are already dubbing this match-up as ‘Team Sparkle’ (Thranduil) vs. ‘Team Stubble’ (Aragorn).
And with Legolas dispatching Gandalf in the Elite Eight, we now have a Hobbit (film) showdown of epic proportions – Legolas vs. Thorin Oakenshield.
Will this be the first year we have an all Elven final? Can Aragorn finally put Team Sparkle out of the competition? Will the Richard Armitage Army dispatch Legolas? All is up in the air as the final four voting has begun!
Voting will last until 10pm ET on April 5th in this round. So let the Middle-earth March Madness continue! Happy Voting!

Download the Brackets! [Final Four] [Round 4] [Round 3] [Round 2] [Round 1]
Posted in Characters, Events, Fans, Fellowship of the Ring, Hobbit Book, Hobbit Movie, Lord of the Rings, LotR Books, LotR Movies, Movie Fellowship of the Ring, Movie Return of the King, Movie The Two Towers, Other Events, Other Tolkien books, Return of the King, Silmarillion, The Hobbit, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, The Two Towers, Uncategorized on April 2, 2014 by newsfrombree

Watch Orlando Bloom rehearse a Lake-town fight scene in Bard’s house

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The remote server returned an unexpected response: (417) Expectation failed.
April 3, 2014 at 8:18 am by Demosthenes  - 

Click below to watch Orlando Bloom as Legolas show off his knife skills in exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from Desolation of Smaug.

At the end he says to Jackson: “We should have shot it, right?”

The clip is taken from the DVD/Blu-ray release of the theatrical edition of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which is set to debut on April 7.

Posted in Uncategorized on April 3, 2014 by Demosthenes

McKellen Greets Hobbit Fans for Midnight Showing

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The remote server returned an unexpected response: (417) Expectation failed.

The Hobbit fans in New York got a little extra treat when Ian McKellen (Gandalf) showed up to speak briefly with all the midnight movie goers who were about to see the film. At point this week I need to write a formal review but basically the movie was superior to the first and highly recommend seeing it. (via io9)

See how WETA brought Lake-town to life for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

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The remote server returned an unexpected response: (417) Expectation failed.
April 3, 2014 at 9:51 am by Demosthenes  - 

The little behind-the-scenes clip of Orlando playing with his knives was pretty cool, but this is just a whole ‘nother level of “wow”. Thanks to Ringer Smaug the Stupendous for the heads-up!

Click below (run, do not walk!) and see exactly how Weta created Lake-town using a variety of CGI and VFX techniques.

To create the city, our models department built 50 unique buildings, eight unique bridges and six towers, all of which were dressed and scaled differently in order to provide the vast amounts of variance required to populate the 200,000 square metres of ground with up to 1,500 buildings visible in some of the shots.

Over two million planks of wood, more than five million roof tiles and 1,749 walkways were created to bring Lake-town to life.

Posted in Headlines, Hobbit Movie, Locations Sets, Production, The Hobbit, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, WETA Digital, WETA Workshop on April 3, 2014 by Demosthenes

Smaug Opens Strong in First Weekend of Release

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The remote server returned an unexpected response: (417) Expectation failed.

The Desolation of Smaug's opening weekend US take of $73.65 million fell short of landing the December opening record set by The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey ($84.6M) but I doubt Jackson and company care considering the film took in $205M worldwide essentially paying for itself in the first three days of release. The assumption is the movie will cross the $1 billion threshold and considering the overall good reviews, I see little reason to doubt it. More details on the breakdown here but basically the movie did as well as it was expected to do.