The Hobbit–Peter Jackson releases penultimate behind the scenes feature

Peter Jackson has released his penultimate behind the scenes feature on thehobbitblog.com, home for Jackson’s online vlog series to whet the appetites of anxious fans who just cannot wait for the December release of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, part 1 of The Hobbit film adaptation. If you haven’t seen the other production features yet, check out our earlier post here.

Instead of showing the behind the scenes people and places on the outdoor sets throughout New Zealand as Jackson revealed in early production videos, this 14 minute film, the 7th of 8 scheduled for release this year, goes to the giant stage town. Key staff members run us through make-up, costuming, model building, all the way through the second unit directors office.

The production is careful to blur some bits and pieces, like set miniatures and production drawings, for those (like me) who freeze-framed the video to see all that rushes past us. Still, there is more than enough cool features to make this video worth your time. In particular, a look at the vault boxes storing the lead actors’ props, the different sizes of actors filming various sequences (there is a miniature of everyone in this film, it seems), WETA offices, and a practice street battle for the stunt men to warm-up. And the variety of titles of the people creating the movie is amazing. Who wouldn’t want to be a real-life sword master? And don’t worry about spoilers–other than some great images of costumes and characters and flash-by set pieces, there’s not anything substantial given away here.

Jackson again shows here why he is a fan favorite. Every film should take the time and effort to document the production process as he does with his films. With seven features now released, and only one more to go, it feels like we’re almost to the finish line.

Here is the HD version of the Production Video #7: