Weta Workshop at NYCC

I highlighted my experience with the Weta Workshop booth at New York Comic Con in my previous post, but I wanted to especially elaborate on the conversation I had.

Since I did do a quick write-up on one of my other blogs, I’m pretty much going to re-write that here and just edit out the choppiness and haste of the piece.

This conversation happened on Sunday, the last day of NYCC. My friend and I were just exploring the Weta booth which had great figures and props on display. One of the Weta guys, I assume he does something in the design work for them, came over to us and started a lovely conversation. He had on what looked like dwarf ears and you can tell from his New Zealand accent he traveled a great way to be here.

This gentleman explained to us how he had been working with Weta since the early planning stages for Lord of the Rings. He’s essentially worked there since about 1996/1997. He continued on with the conversation about Tauriel’s role in the Hobbit films. As you may or may not know, she is not a written character in the book, merely an invention of Peter Jackson and his writers.

So, this Weta guy begins telling us how many people have came up and told him how they felt about Tauriel [negative comments from book purists, positive from pretty much anyone else]. In the Hobbit it is mentioned that Thranduil has guards. The guy posed this question to me: couldn’t these guards be male and female?

I agreed with him on that one.

Next he talked about the running pool the crew has on whether or not Tauriel survives in The Battle of the Five Armies. It’s apparently been kept up in secret pertaining to her fate. I inquired as to what he thinks and why and he said he believes she dies as an impetus for Legolas to become involved in the eventual forming of the Fellowship.

I don’t like this reason. The problem with it is that it is a very tired trope we see all the time. It is poor female writing, especially for a character like Tauriel who is the embodiment of tough and boundary pushing. Constantly female characters are killed to further a male characters storyline. Constantly.

Anyway, we shifted the conversation back to the reception of Tauriel. The guy told me that Evangeline Lily, who plays Tauriel, was quite upset the first few weeks after hearing the backlash her character was getting. That must be so hard to hear, especially when Tauriel is an incredibly driven and intricate character and was delicately woven into the existing story as to not disrupt any main plot points. But, he also said she was one of the best actors on set. She did almost all of her own stunt work and was a joy to be around on set. He said he was reminded of Miranda Otto who kicked so much ass while filming the LOTR.

We closed out the conversation with him reminiscing about his time working on all of these movies. He definitely had a great sadness behind his eyes. At least Weta is a design company that is seemingly doing well, not like other studios that are paid feebly and shut down after the movie is out and made its bank (which is what happened to the studio responsible for creating Life of Pi’s visual effects).

All in all it was an enlightening and entertaining conversation.

 

I won NaNo!

All November I had been blathering on about NaNoWriMo, so if you’re reading this you’re likely to know the gist of it as well.

I validated my novel around 6 p.m. local time on November 30, 2013. NaNo was one of the most thrilling, stressful, and fulfilling ventures I have ever undertaken.

Some further obstacles I faced while writing to reach the 50,000 minimum were going away for a week in November to Phoenix. It was a whole week of not writing, not thinking about the story, and alas, when I came back home just a few days shy of Thanksgiving I had no motivation to write/ ideas to propel my story. I was at about 35k for the word amount around Thanksgiving, and there was such a crunch to reach the deadline. It was exhilarating.

Since it has been almost a month since the end of NaNo, I have been quite busy. I started a new job and have been training and trying to balance everything else in my life with it, so I haven’t spent any time writing or editing. I hope to give myself some extra time and come January pick it up again. I would love to start trying to get a book deal or self-publish in the spring time.

This past month has also been exhausting for the major fan in me. My beloved Doctor Who series had their 50th Anniversary special last month, and last night, on Christmas, I saw my Eleventh doctor depart from the show to welcome in the new Doctor played by Peter Capaldi. I will not get too into it but Matt Smith is my favorite Doctor, so it was very hard for me to watch him go. The sadness in his eyes as he said his last lines were incredibly tough and I definitely spent my Christmas night sobbing into my pillow and squeezing my cat. I will miss you incredibly so, Matt Smith.

Also, the new Sherlock season starts next month and we were graced with a mini episode. It definitely has me excited. I’m talking about the Sherlock series on the BBC. Gosh, I’m such an anglophile.

In addition I saw the movie Frozen last month and thought it was truly magical. I love the direction Disney went with it. The music was a glorious mix of classic Disney tunes and Broadway ballads.

I also went to an advanced screening of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug a few weeks ago. It was PHENOMENAL. Yes, the book purist will definitely have problems with it, but I love the story Peter Jackson has added to the classic book. I do not believe he tainted it.

So there we go, a big write-up right before the New Year.

I hope everyone has been having a lovely holiday season, a Merry Christmas, and will have a joyous, prosperous, and most importantly healthy New Year!!