Wētā Workshop

I think with world models with farming, we're still quite nascent.

One of my other roles is I've been on the board of Weta Workshop, which is a completely different industry, which is, you know, we make computer games and we made all the costumes for Lord of the Rings and things.

And so coming out of having been involved in governance for gaming, The world models, a lot of them have emerged from almost the way we think about world building in gaming.

The ability to create 3D models and to really work with those.

Sir Richard Taylor, Nick, I'm assuming his relation of yours, a fellow Wellington individual.

He's the co-founder of Wellington's Weta Workshop, generally one of my idols.

The team behind so much of the physical world of Lord of the Rings and things like Avatar.

He was recently describing why practical miniatures have such a hold on us.

The upcoming Black Sheeps follows a young scientist who is convinced that a dangerous new pathogen threatens the population and tracks it back to her hometown, which is located in the shadow of the remote sheep station where the macabre events of the original Black Sheep unfolded.

King and Meister will also reunite with Richard Taylor's award-winning special effects company, Weta Workshop, who provided the gnarly creature effects in the first film.

The movie is produced by King and Granger, alongside James Partridge and Samantha Braun of Terrify Films, with executive producers Richard Fletcher of Libertine Pictures, Philippa Campbell, Ari Harrison and Jasmine McSweeney from Umbrella Entertainment.

Now, somehow, I've never actually seen Backsheet.

Exactly.

Studio Gillis and Weta Workshop for Predator Badlands, Millennium FX for Prime 8, Werner Pretorius and Amazing 8 Productions for Backrooms, and Jim Henson's Creature Shop for Five Nights at Freddy's 2.

Okay.

This one shouldn't even be a surprise.

It was ob- it was amazing, but I couldn't make it work.

And on a whim, I applied for a role at Weta Workshop as a experience host.

And so Weta Workshop, who designed and manufactured just so much of what you see on screen in Lord of the Rings, they've got this whole ecosystem here in Miramar in Wellington.

So I get the job, and all of a sudden I'm spending every day this summer taking all these guests around our little visitor experience, and we're showing them things from Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit trilogy, from Avatar, from District 9, just celebrating the stuff that we're all so passionate about.

And I fell in love.

My whole community now is centered around that world.

I met my partner working here at Weta.

And so Tolkien does Lord of the Rings, which allows Peter Jackson to make those films, and that allows Weta Workshop to become this epicenter of creativity for the Wellington scene.

Weta.

Weta Workshop in Wellington has won another Emmy.

That's amazing.

And I'm surprised the shows they're working on.

Yeah, that's on Monday.

Yeah, you're right.

Have you ever been to the Weta workshop around Wellington? Yes.

Yes.

more businesses.

There was that fuss over Weta Workshop, right?

Yeah, so that was the movie special effects company that back in the 90s called itself Weta Workshop.

The name was meant to be in honour of the wētā, the magnificent and ginormous native insect, but because they left the two macrons off, wētā became wētā, which means, well, shit.

So 2019, it's around this time that they first came under pressure to take a closer look at the spelling.

It's pretty awesome.

I, I had the good fortune to, uh, work with Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop down in New Zealand.

Oh.

And you asked about who I'd like to see work on Star Wars.

Look at the manufacturing pipeline of Way to Workshop, the prop and special effects company run by Richard Taylor.

Weta had to essentially function as a medieval armory, operating at industrial revolution speeds.

They manufactured 48,000 individual prop pieces, swords, scabbards, shields, latex severed heads, hobbit feet.

The output was staggering, and Jackson wanted to immortalize that labor.