HOBBIT: PJ Facebook Blog of Last Day Recap

Tim here with your recap of Peter Jackson's Facebook Blog of the last day of shooting on The Hobbit films. It looks like it was a long day (20 hours) for Mr. Jackson and the crew of The Hobbit, but they managed to get everything they needed. As Jackson noted: "15 years of Tolkien… 771 days of shooting…"

The bullet points of information that one can gather from PJ's last day blog:
• The last day had two units (main & splinter) shooting on various stages: A, F, and K
• At midday PJ conferenced via video chat with Howard Shore for Music Spotting.
• "Spotting" involves talking through edited scenes with Howard, and figuring out everything he needs to do a first pass at the music composition - where music should start and stop, what mood it should have, themes to use, moments to punctuate. To stay on schedule, Howard needs 10 mins of cut footage every week.
• The score for The Desolation of Smaug is going to be terrific, according to PJ.
• They were a little frustrated with An Unexpected Journey because they had to revisit so many of the LOTR themes: The Shire, Rivendell, Galadriel, Gollum, and the Ring.
• This time around, apart from a couple of Ring moments, the score is all new: Beorn, Mirkwood, The Woodland Realm, Laketown, Bard and Smaug all give Howard the chance to write brand new themes, and he's knocking it out of the park!
• With Andy Serkis busy being a monkey at the moment (Caesar, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes), the directing duties for the splinter unit have fallen on Christian Rivers's shoulders.
• PJ's relationship with Christian Rivers goes back to 1986 when he recieved a fan letter from the 13-year-old school boy Christian, which happened to have drawings of wizards and dragons. By Braindead Christian joined the team as a storyboard artist, and has made all the storyboards for PJ's movies since. He became an animation director on King Kong and won an Oscar. He's now directing the splinter unit, and developing projects of his own.
• It proves that fan letters can pay off!
• The tent is where PJ has spent more time in the last two and a half years than anywhere else. He shares it with Victoria, the script supervisor, Jabez the editor, Seb, his assistant and Caro, the producer.
• Jabez and PJ try to edit previously shot scenes while he's filming.
• Caro and PJ have worked together since Heavenly Creatures.
• His big chair has a story. He used to always sit the small wooden and canvas "director's chair" until Dec, 2000, when Harry Knowles visited during the very last week shooting LOTR. Harry wasn't going to fair too well in a small chair, so the Unit guys bought a crappy old arm chair from a second hand store. When he left, and the shoot was finished, PJ tried it out and found it quite comfy. Caro had it recovered. He's used it ever since. Another good luck charm.

And that sums up what Peter Jackson wrote. Below are the pictures he posted:

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug hits IMAX 3D and RealD 3D theaters December 13^th, 2013, and The Hobbit: There and Back Again hits IMAX 3D and RealD 3D theaters December 17^th, 2014.