14 executive summary theibcdaily The storytellers


Beyond imagining Sir Peter Jackson


Director Region: New Zealand


Interview by Dick Hobbs


“Ever since I was a child I wanted to make movies,” says Sir Peter Jackson. “In particular, fantasy films that have a lot of visual effects in them.


“Sometimes people don’t


regard imagination and technology as being one and the same, supporting each other. In the case of the film industry – and particularly the films I make – I cannot exercise my imagination without the support of technology.”


Jackson is one of a new breed


of directors, using a huge amount of technology to power seemingly endless visual effects to achieve a completely natural –


if fantastic – environment. Indeed, it seems that it was this desire to create new worlds that has driven him from the beginning. It started at the age of nine, when he saw the 1933 Cooper and Schoedsack version of King Kong. He knew immediately that he wanted to remake it, and set about learning the skills to make it happen. The first Jackson film was a Ray Harryhausen-style stop motion short, entered in a schools competition in his native New Zealand.


His first full-length feature film took him four years to make. Bad Taste had a shoestring budget and featured his friends – and


Jackson himself – as the stars. But the effects are convincing, and the movie put him on the ladder to the top. His movies have garnered 20 Oscars, four Golden Globes and 14 Baftas to date, and on a personal level in 2010 he received a knighthood from Her Majesty the Queen. In 2005 he realised his ambition to remake King Kong: veteran critic Roger Ebert said: “There are


astonishments to behold in Peter Jackson’s King Kong... a surprisingly involving and rather beautiful movie.”


He is perhaps best known for his Tolkien adaptations: The Lord


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