After our recent visit to New Zealand, we are even more aware of how the Lord of the Rings film trilogy has put that country on the map—and what a celebrity Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson has become in his homeland.

The next film in the sequence, The Hobbit, is in production for release in late 2012. You’ll find  the link (below) to Jackson’s production blog fascinating—it’s a look into the high-tech world of 3-D filmmaking.

Jackson is using dozens of state-of-the-art RED Epic cameras as he shoots on sets in Wellington and at locations around the country. His Weta Digital visual effects company, Park Road post-production studio and other operations a part of one of only two filmmaking complexes in the world (the other being in Silicon Valley, California) capable of exhibiting stereoscopic material at 48 frames per second. (Avatar and other high-tech blockbusters were also created here.)

Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit production blog: http://www.spectres.com.au/seanimation/wordpress/?p=3689