Peter Jackson was born as an only child in a small coast-side town in New Zealand in 1961. When a friend of his parents bought him a super 8mm movie camera (because she saw how much he enjoyed taking photos), the then eight-year-old Peter instantly grabbed the thing to start recording his own movies, which he made with his friends. They were usually short, but they already had the spectacular trademark that would make Jackson famous: impressive special effects, made at a very low cost. For example, for his film "World War Two" which he made as a teenager, he used to simulate a firing gun by punching little holes into the celluloid, so that, once projected, the gun gave the impression of displaying a small fire. Jackson's first step towards the more serious filmmaking came with an entry in a local contest to stimulate amateur and children's film. For this film he used stop-motion animation to create a monster that ruins a city in the style of Ray Harryhausen. Unfortunately, he didn't win. When Jackson was 22, he embarked on an movie making-adventure that would change his life. This film, Bad Taste (1987), was begun as any other Jackson film, in an amateuristic style, at a low budget and using friends and local people to star in his film. Jackson himself did nearly everything in the movie, he directed, produced, filmed and starred in it, in a number of roles, amongst them that of the hero, Derek. And everything was filmed on a second-hand, $250 camera. It took Jackson and his friends four years to complete the movie. What had started out as an joke in a group of friends, then became a cult-classic. A friend of Jackson who was working in the movie industry convinced him the film had commercial prospects and arranged for it to be shown at the Cannes film festival, where it won a lot of acclaim, as well as a number of prizes. The movie soon became a hit because of its bizarre humor and overdose of special-effects, some realistic, some hilarious because of their amateuristic look. After the success of Bad Taste, Jackson became recognized as a director and the door to fame and fortune was opened. He gave up his job at a local photographer's shop and became a well-known director of horror-movies, after the success of his first professionally made movie, Braindead (1992).
2006-08-24 02:02:33
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answer #1
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answered by exnavykds 4
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Peter Jackson CNZM (born October 31, 1961, Pukerua Bay) is a New Zealand-born filmmaker best known as the director of the The Lord of the Rings [1] trilogy , which he, along with his long time partner, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens adapted from the novels by J.R.R. Tolkien. [2]. He is also known for his remake of King Kong.[3]
With his successes and innovative film-making, Jackson is now considered to be an important force in the new generation of motion picture directors. Peter Jackson has even been described as the new Steven Spielberg of the present generation, and the combination of his unmatched commercial successes, along with the critical acclaim he has garnered, have made Jackson one of the most powerful film directors of the present era.[4]
Jackson first gained attention with his "splatstick" horror comedies, and came to prominence with his critically acclaimed Heavenly Creatures, for which he shared an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen with Walsh.
Personal life
Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh have two children, Billy and Katie. His parents were the late Bill and Joan Jackson, both of whom were immigrants from England.
Career
Jackson started his career in film as a fanatical hobbyist, creating small films with simple technical means and with the help of his friends. When one of his projects, the horror comedy Bad Taste, grew over four years from the originally planned half-hour to a 90-minute feature film, Jackson and his crew took the end result to the Cannes Film Festival, received critical acclaim and sold the rights to twelve countries. This allowed him to start a professional career as a film director.
Unlike some other New Zealand film directors, Jackson has remained in his native country to make films, preferring to have Hollywood come to him. This has been the genesis of several production and support companies. Most of Jackson's assets are on the Miramar Peninsula in his home town of Wellington and much of his filming occurs in and around the city. He successfully cajoled New Line Cinema into holding the world premiere of The Return of the King in the city's iconic Embassy Theatre, which he has helped restore.
He was an early user of computer enhancement technology and provided digital special effects to a number of Hollywood films by use of telecommunications and satellite links to transmit raw images and the final results across the Pacific Ocean.
A perfectionist with his film projects, Jackson demands numerous takes of every scene (with his "One more for luck"), pushes his special-effects crew to make their work seamless and invisible, and insists upon authenticity in miniatures even on the sides that never appear in a film. On the other hand, many of his most beautiful scenes result from purely serendipitous shots taken while flying from one location to another. Despite this perfectionism, he has a reputation for requiring a significantly smaller budget than his peers.
Universal Studios signed Peter Jackson for his first film following The Lord of the Rings trilogy, a remake of the 1933 classic King Kong — the film that inspired him to become a film director when he was 9 years old[1]. He was reportedly being paid a fee of US$20 million upfront, against a 20 percent take of the total box-office gross. The film was released on December 14, 2005, with a cast that includes Oscar-nominated actress Naomi Watts, Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody, Jack Black, Colin Hanks and Andy Serkis. The production and marketing costs of King Kong exceeded US$207 million and the final theatrical cut runs more than 3 hours. Both of these figures are far greater than those of their 1933 counterparts. However, Universal Pictures' faith in Jackson turned out to be well-founded and profitable, as the worldwide tally for King Kong was around $550 Million US.[5] Its release on home video and DVD was even bigger, as it set records for a Universal Pictures DVD in sales, even eclipsing other previous sales giants such as Jurassic Park.
His attention will now move to the film version of Alice Sebold's bestseller, The Lovely Bones, which he will be writing and directing and which he has said will be a welcome relief from the larger-scale epics and bears some similarities to Heavenly Creatures.
Much speculation has occurred as to whether Jackson might direct a film of The Hobbit, the prequel to The Lord of the Rings. His comments to date seem to indicate that he is interested, if the studios can work out the rights. Late in 2004 it appeared unlikely, as MGM (the studio which holds the rights to The Hobbit) was sold to Sony in the race with Warner Bros. In December of 2004, Jackson said that production on The Hobbit could be as much as four years away[2], which would place a likely release date in 2010.
Peter Jackson is also executive producing the game-to-film adaptation of Microsoft/Bungie's blockbuster title Halo[3], expected to hit theaters around mid-2008. Jackson, an avid fan of the game, has confessed to playing it regularly during breaks in filming.
Jackson won three Academy Awards for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King:
* Academy Award for Directing
* Academy Award for Best Picture
* Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay
* Jackson usually makes cameo appearances in his own films. In The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, he played a drunken, carrot-toting citizen of Bree (The Fellowship of the Ring); a spear-throwing defender of Helm's Deep (The Two Towers); and as a rider during the charge on the Pelennor Fields in (The Return of the King). He has a second cameo as the captain of a corsair ship in The Return of the King, seen in brief in the theatrical version, and longer in the extended version when Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli commandeer the ship after recruiting the army of the dead. Though not a cameo in the traditional sense, he also served as a stand-in for Sean Astin in the shot where Samwise Gamgee steps into frame, challenging the monster Shelob, thereby giving him three different appearances in that film. He was also the voice of Bilbo near the beginning of The Fellowship of The Ring when Gandalf first knocks at Bilbo's door. Along with being writer, director, producer, and cameo actor in The Two Towers, he also has a moment on the soundtrack where he plays a gong (When Eowyn seems to disappear from the edge of Edoras as Aragorn looks up a second time, Peter's gong hit is heard). He also appeared as a bi-plane gunner attacking Kong in New York, reprising the cameo which original King Kong filmmaker Merian C. Cooper made in his 1933 film. In The Frighteners, Jackson is a biker bumped into by Frank Bannister. In Heavenly Creatures, he is a bum kissed by Juliet Hulme. In Braindead, he is the mortician's assistant. Meet the Feebles is his only film in which Jackson has no cameo.
* In his film Braindead, the natives of Skull Island, home of film's Sumatran Rat-Monkey, were played by the Fijian national rugby union team.
* Between The Return of the King and King Kong, he lost a large amount of weight (over 50 lbs/22.5 kg) to the point of being unrecognizable to some fans. According to the British Daily Telegraph he attributes his weight loss to a diet change. He said, "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."[4]
* Rumors of a feud between Jackson and George Lucas are untrue. In fact, quite the opposite as they are friends. However, they do own rival special effects companies that compete mightily against one another, with Jackson owning Weta Digital and Lucas owning Industrial Light and Magic. Jackson credits Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic in teaching him the ways of special effects in film.
* He owns a King Kong and Pterosaur model used in the original 1933 King Kong film
* In King Kong when we first see the hold of the ship, a cage with "Sumatran Rat-Monkey - Beware the bite!" written on the side is visible - a homage to Jackson's third film Braindead, in which the monkey carries the zombie virus.
* He was paid $20 million to direct King Kong, the highest salary ever paid to a film director in advance of production.
* He has given NZ $500 000 to Stem Cell research. [5] Jackson also gave the University of California in Irvine $311,000 for Stem Cell research. [6]
2006-08-28 03:57:46
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answer #5
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answered by PK LAMBA 6
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