Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1480624
Director, Jill Cormack, not only worked with Don to organize the NZ art crews but oversaw the elvish sets. Meanwhile, I worked with Iain on the concepts of dwarven kingdom. As we got through all the concepts, including digital and physical modeling, the work would then shift back to the Art Directors and Set Designers in NZ to break down, adjust and get them built. Simultaneously, while I was orchestrating the work of over twenty concept artists, off I went to explore the breadth of New Zealand, by plane, car and helicopter, with the incomparable location manager, Kevin Spring. The village, Tirharad, was thus built into a lovely hollow on a farm near Auckland. Bronwyn's house was built on a hillside above it. This revealed one of the trickiest bits of shooting in New Zealand. Each part of the country is controlled by local councils, whose permission must be secured, and whose rules must be abided. (In some cases, the production also needed to interface with the local iwis, the tribal councils of the Māori.) The crew were two weeks into filming the village when the pandemic shut us down in March 2020. The set sat unused, in the elements, for months, aging gracefully into its surroundings. While all the crafts had done a remarkable job with their teams C D E F