February 4, 2025 • 11 mins
There was huge news for Wellington's film industry late last month; our very own Weta FX has been nominated for three Academy Awards.
This year, Alien: Romulus, Better Man, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes have been recognised with Best Visual Effects Oscar nominations. Weta FX worked on all three films.
The company, which has 2000 staff in Wellington, will learn whether they have won the awards on Monday March 3.
Weta FX head of VFX Matt Aitken joined Nick Mills to discuss the work that went into the films - as well as his memories of previous Oscar ceremonies alongside the stars.
LISTEN ABOVE
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Wellington Mornings podcast with Nick Mills
from News Talks at B.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
There was some big news for the film industry in
Wellington last week. Our very own WITTERFX has been nominated
for three Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects. Joining us
on the show now is witter FX head of the
if X, Matt Aickin.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Hi, Matt, he don very good, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
So tell us how you first found out and how
excited is the team.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
We are increwy excited. Yes.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
So the Academy Award and nominations are announced very early
in the morning for us here in Wellington because they
are announced for a North American news cycle. So I
made sure I was awake about twenty past three in.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
The morning last Friday morning, and.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
We had three projects that were possibly up for a nomination,
and we got all three of those projects been nominated.
So three out of five is an amazing result for us.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I mean, it's an incredible result for a small country
like New Zealand and for us in Wellington.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Isn't it. Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Yeah, it's We've had seven individuals nominated for the Visual
Effects OSCAR before and you know we're we're Wellington based.
We're tapped away here at the bottom of the world.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
We're competing with.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Companies, visual effects companies worldwide that are much bigger than us,
and I want, I love that, you know, we're being
recognized for the.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Quality of our work here.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
What what the industry is saying, what our peers are saying,
is that that we are second to none as far
as the quality of the visual effects work that's being
done here in Wellington is concerned. So that's just incredibly,
incredibly gratifying and incredibly pleasing.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I mean, one of the movies is three three movies
that you've been nominated for obviously, and we'll talk about
them all, but better Man comes to mind straight up
because it's a commercial, more commercially known movie was about
Robbie Williams done as an ape. I mean, is that
the way to describe it? I mean, how do you
(02:16):
describe better Man?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
That's a pretty good description.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
I mean, so it's a biopic of Robbie Williams. It
tells his life story and the filmmaker Michael Gracie was
chatting with Robbie and saying to Robbie, how do you
see yourself? And Robbie said, I feel like I'm I'm
less evolved than other people. And so Michael Gracie had
this idea that rather than appearing through an actor or
(02:45):
as himself, that the film would present Robbi Williams as
a chimp, as a sort of a kind of a
cross between a human and a chimp. So he's upright,
he wears clothes, he has a lot of Robbie Williams.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Characteristics about his face.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
He sings, he dances. But yeah, and it's just turned
out so well. I think it's a fantastic film. It's
a it's a great film. Even putting our visual effects
work to one side, I think it's an incredibly satisfying
film to watch. But yeah, we we had to do
a lot of heavy lifting to to create the digital
(03:22):
performance work to have this believable c G I chimp
standing in for Robbie Williams all the way from his childhood,
through his Take That career and into his solo career.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
So did you see did Robbie come out at all?
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Did he?
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Was he involved in it himself?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah, he did some voice work. I'm not sure that
he actually.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Ever came to Wellington. We we did a lot of
work in London for that film in Australia, so but
he he was very much involved with the project. But
an actor called John o'davies was the what we call
the reference performer, so he did you know, he was
(04:05):
dressed up in the motion cap suit you might have
seen those suits for the dots all over them and
did all the things, not the singing. Robbie did the thing,
but Johnay did the dancing and was in every shot
and we had to kind of paint him out and
then replace him with our CGI Chimp version of Robbie.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
You said you did a bit of work on this
in London and Australia. Is that something that wetter FX does?
Does it? Do you as a team do work overseas
as well, like go and do stuff in la or
London or New York.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah, so that's a really really good question. We do.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
All the actual work happens predominantly here in Wellington. We've
got officers smaller offices in Melbourne and Vancouver as well,
but the majority of the team are based right here
in Wellington and that's why we.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Put all the work together.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
But when the productions that we're working on are filming,
we will almost always have an onset presence, so we'll
see a smaller team wherever the production is shooting. And
there's a huge number in the middle of Better Man.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Where take that?
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Do one of their songs in Regent Street in the
heart of London, which was filmed over four nights. They
shut down Regent Street for four four nights and films
that shot with a huge cast and we did a
lot of work in that sequence, and so we had
to have our team there supervising the shoe making sure
it was going to work for us, and we put
the work together back back here in Wellington. That was
(05:38):
That was the song? Was rock DJ was the song.
It's just a great number in the middle of the film.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Tell me, just for our listeners, how many numbers wise
around would work, would have worked on a movie from
you guys like Better Man.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
I don't have the exact number. I'm going to pluck
a number out of the year. Maybe six hundred people
would have been involved.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
In that project. It's very pain taking the work. You
would be amazed that.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
You might look at what we call a shot, which.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Is one cut in the film might be on average
two to three seconds long, and we.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Might have forty people with touch that shot, and we
might work on that one two and a half second
section of the film for weeks or even months for
some of those shots, just to get them really honed
in and looking as good as they can be.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Can you do two movies that once? Could you have
done Alien Romeus Romeus at the same time you're doing
Better Man and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes?
So would you have people working on all three movies
at the same time.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
We do, and we have to. We have to to
keep our head wanted to keep busy.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
We're currently working on about nineteen different productions. We typically
are working on between fifteen and twenty.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Films at the same time.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
No, no, they're not all of the same size as a
Better Man or a Kingdom of the Planet of the
Apes or an aver Tar movie. So they're very in size.
But you know, we have different disciplines in the company
and to keep everybody's skills in use all the time,
which is what we try to do. We we schedule
(07:21):
work so that you know, people who are working early
on in a film are working on one project and
the people who are working finishing up a film or
working on another project.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
How many of you out there, and and well how
many of you work in Wellington roundabout?
Speaker 4 (07:35):
So the whole, the whole company is currently well over
two thousand people and vast majority of those are here
in Wellington.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Gosh, that's amazing. We don't celebrate it. Wellington doesn't celebrate
you guys enough, do we?
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Well we we you know, we just like to have
our heads down here during during what we do. But
I like, I think we're we're a really great part
of the Wellington scene, in Wellington culture. I think, you know,
we've we've over the years, we've brought a lot of
people in. We've attracted people into the weather from from
all over the world to work here in Warrington, and
(08:10):
they bring a lot of skills and a lot of
different cultures. And we've got people here from NASA, We've
got people here from you know, universities all over the
world bringing their skills and expertise to bear on our work.
And I think it's making a really positive contribution to
the culture of Wellington.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Having having that that going on here.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Goly gosh, I think that's the most biggest understatement. That's
like saying you went and shot a gorilla at the
Zoo for this movie. I mean, that's all those things
that you do for our city. Our city would be
stuff without you guys. So no, I think you're under
underplaying that a bit. Have you been the Oscars before.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Matt, I have had the pleasure of going twice, and
when I was working as a visual effect supervisor here.
I went originally for a film called District nine, a
little sci fi film that we got to work on,
which was amazing. And then I did the two big
Avengers films. Infinity were an Endgame and I was lucky
(09:11):
enough to be nominated for Endgame. Didn't win the Oscar
either time, but had an amazing experience, you know, getting
my tuxedo on and going going down the red carpet.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
At the Bobby Theaters. It's a special experience.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Tell us about it, tell us, tell us, I've been
my hair on my legues lifting, but you just even
mentioning it.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
Well, I a couple of memories. So I ended up
at the Vanity Fair party after the District nine ceremony
and went not to get a drink, and I looked
and I had Carry Milligan sitting at the bar on
one side of me, and Sandra bullets sanding at.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
The bar and the other side of me.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
So I was like, okay, so this is Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, wow, how many of you going over to the Oscars.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
So we've got like I say, seven nominees and we'll
have some support people going with them. They will be
taking taking their plus ones and they will be getting
dressed up and it's such a huge, huge day for
the company. Will Will the rest of us will be
back here watching, watching live. We might have some bubbles
standing by. We don't want to put it take anything
(10:15):
for grants in a way. We feel like we've won already,
but should should we get to have some of those
people get to go up on stage and and hoist
up some askers that we would be and could be happy.
We'll be popping champagne courts back here for sure.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Matt, thanks for joining us this morning. I mean, I'm
very very proud of you, and thank you, thank you
and your organization, Thank you and your organization for what
you do for our city, for our country and our world.
I mean, it's bigger. It's bigger than Wellington, it's bigger
than New Zealand. It's the world that you do amazing
things for in Gosh, I for one who live out
(10:48):
that area of Wellington, so so appreciate you guys.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Thank you so much for the support. It's really fantastic
to hear that. We appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Go get it, Go get it and then we'll talk afterwards.
You've got to promise me. You've got to promise me
a chat. You've got to promise me a chat if
you if you're want to ask her.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Right, absolutely, one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
There you go, good luck, Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
For more from Wellington Mornings with Nick Mills, listen live
to news talks It'd be Wellington from nine am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Wellington Mornings podcast with Nick Mills
from News Talks at B.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
There was some big news for the film industry in
Wellington last week. Our very own WITTERFX has been nominated
for three Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects. Joining us
on the show now is witter FX head of the
if X, Matt Aickin.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Hi, Matt, he don very good, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
So tell us how you first found out and how
excited is the team.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
We are increwy excited. Yes.
Speaker 4 (00:39):
So the Academy Award and nominations are announced very early
in the morning for us here in Wellington because they
are announced for a North American news cycle. So I
made sure I was awake about twenty past three in.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
The morning last Friday morning, and.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
We had three projects that were possibly up for a nomination,
and we got all three of those projects been nominated.
So three out of five is an amazing result for us.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
I mean, it's an incredible result for a small country
like New Zealand and for us in Wellington.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Isn't it. Yeah?
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Yeah, it's We've had seven individuals nominated for the Visual
Effects OSCAR before and you know we're we're Wellington based.
We're tapped away here at the bottom of the world.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
We're competing with.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Companies, visual effects companies worldwide that are much bigger than us,
and I want, I love that, you know, we're being
recognized for the.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Quality of our work here.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
What what the industry is saying, what our peers are saying,
is that that we are second to none as far
as the quality of the visual effects work that's being
done here in Wellington is concerned. So that's just incredibly,
incredibly gratifying and incredibly pleasing.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I mean, one of the movies is three three movies
that you've been nominated for obviously, and we'll talk about
them all, but better Man comes to mind straight up
because it's a commercial, more commercially known movie was about
Robbie Williams done as an ape. I mean, is that
the way to describe it? I mean, how do you
(02:16):
describe better Man?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
That's a pretty good description.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
I mean, so it's a biopic of Robbie Williams. It
tells his life story and the filmmaker Michael Gracie was
chatting with Robbie and saying to Robbie, how do you
see yourself? And Robbie said, I feel like I'm I'm
less evolved than other people. And so Michael Gracie had
this idea that rather than appearing through an actor or
(02:45):
as himself, that the film would present Robbi Williams as
a chimp, as a sort of a kind of a
cross between a human and a chimp. So he's upright,
he wears clothes, he has a lot of Robbie Williams.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Characteristics about his face.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
He sings, he dances. But yeah, and it's just turned
out so well. I think it's a fantastic film. It's
a it's a great film. Even putting our visual effects
work to one side, I think it's an incredibly satisfying
film to watch. But yeah, we we had to do
a lot of heavy lifting to to create the digital
(03:22):
performance work to have this believable c G I chimp
standing in for Robbie Williams all the way from his childhood,
through his Take That career and into his solo career.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
So did you see did Robbie come out at all?
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Did he?
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Was he involved in it himself?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Yeah, he did some voice work. I'm not sure that
he actually.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
Ever came to Wellington. We we did a lot of
work in London for that film in Australia, so but
he he was very much involved with the project. But
an actor called John o'davies was the what we call
the reference performer, so he did you know, he was
(04:05):
dressed up in the motion cap suit you might have
seen those suits for the dots all over them and
did all the things, not the singing. Robbie did the thing,
but Johnay did the dancing and was in every shot
and we had to kind of paint him out and
then replace him with our CGI Chimp version of Robbie.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
You said you did a bit of work on this
in London and Australia. Is that something that wetter FX does?
Does it? Do you as a team do work overseas
as well, like go and do stuff in la or
London or New York.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah, so that's a really really good question. We do.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
All the actual work happens predominantly here in Wellington. We've
got officers smaller offices in Melbourne and Vancouver as well,
but the majority of the team are based right here
in Wellington and that's why we.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Put all the work together.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
But when the productions that we're working on are filming,
we will almost always have an onset presence, so we'll
see a smaller team wherever the production is shooting. And
there's a huge number in the middle of Better Man.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Where take that?
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Do one of their songs in Regent Street in the
heart of London, which was filmed over four nights. They
shut down Regent Street for four four nights and films
that shot with a huge cast and we did a
lot of work in that sequence, and so we had
to have our team there supervising the shoe making sure
it was going to work for us, and we put
the work together back back here in Wellington. That was
(05:38):
That was the song? Was rock DJ was the song.
It's just a great number in the middle of the film.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Tell me, just for our listeners, how many numbers wise
around would work, would have worked on a movie from
you guys like Better Man.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
I don't have the exact number. I'm going to pluck
a number out of the year. Maybe six hundred people
would have been involved.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
In that project. It's very pain taking the work. You
would be amazed that.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
You might look at what we call a shot, which.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Is one cut in the film might be on average
two to three seconds long, and we.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
Might have forty people with touch that shot, and we
might work on that one two and a half second
section of the film for weeks or even months for
some of those shots, just to get them really honed
in and looking as good as they can be.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Can you do two movies that once? Could you have
done Alien Romeus Romeus at the same time you're doing
Better Man and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes?
So would you have people working on all three movies
at the same time.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
We do, and we have to. We have to to
keep our head wanted to keep busy.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
We're currently working on about nineteen different productions. We typically
are working on between fifteen and twenty.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Films at the same time.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
No, no, they're not all of the same size as a
Better Man or a Kingdom of the Planet of the
Apes or an aver Tar movie. So they're very in size.
But you know, we have different disciplines in the company
and to keep everybody's skills in use all the time,
which is what we try to do. We we schedule
(07:21):
work so that you know, people who are working early
on in a film are working on one project and
the people who are working finishing up a film or
working on another project.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
How many of you out there, and and well how
many of you work in Wellington roundabout?
Speaker 4 (07:35):
So the whole, the whole company is currently well over
two thousand people and vast majority of those are here
in Wellington.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
Gosh, that's amazing. We don't celebrate it. Wellington doesn't celebrate
you guys enough, do we?
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Well we we you know, we just like to have
our heads down here during during what we do. But
I like, I think we're we're a really great part
of the Wellington scene, in Wellington culture. I think, you know,
we've we've over the years, we've brought a lot of
people in. We've attracted people into the weather from from
all over the world to work here in Warrington, and
(08:10):
they bring a lot of skills and a lot of
different cultures. And we've got people here from NASA, We've
got people here from you know, universities all over the
world bringing their skills and expertise to bear on our work.
And I think it's making a really positive contribution to
the culture of Wellington.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
Having having that that going on here.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Goly gosh, I think that's the most biggest understatement. That's
like saying you went and shot a gorilla at the
Zoo for this movie. I mean, that's all those things
that you do for our city. Our city would be
stuff without you guys. So no, I think you're under
underplaying that a bit. Have you been the Oscars before.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Matt, I have had the pleasure of going twice, and
when I was working as a visual effect supervisor here.
I went originally for a film called District nine, a
little sci fi film that we got to work on,
which was amazing. And then I did the two big
Avengers films. Infinity were an Endgame and I was lucky
(09:11):
enough to be nominated for Endgame. Didn't win the Oscar
either time, but had an amazing experience, you know, getting
my tuxedo on and going going down the red carpet.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
At the Bobby Theaters. It's a special experience.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Tell us about it, tell us, tell us, I've been
my hair on my legues lifting, but you just even
mentioning it.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
Well, I a couple of memories. So I ended up
at the Vanity Fair party after the District nine ceremony
and went not to get a drink, and I looked
and I had Carry Milligan sitting at the bar on
one side of me, and Sandra bullets sanding at.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
The bar and the other side of me.
Speaker 4 (09:45):
So I was like, okay, so this is Hollywood.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, wow, how many of you going over to the Oscars.
Speaker 4 (09:53):
So we've got like I say, seven nominees and we'll
have some support people going with them. They will be
taking taking their plus ones and they will be getting
dressed up and it's such a huge, huge day for
the company. Will Will the rest of us will be
back here watching, watching live. We might have some bubbles
standing by. We don't want to put it take anything
(10:15):
for grants in a way. We feel like we've won already,
but should should we get to have some of those
people get to go up on stage and and hoist
up some askers that we would be and could be happy.
We'll be popping champagne courts back here for sure.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Matt, thanks for joining us this morning. I mean, I'm
very very proud of you, and thank you, thank you
and your organization, Thank you and your organization for what
you do for our city, for our country and our world.
I mean, it's bigger. It's bigger than Wellington, it's bigger
than New Zealand. It's the world that you do amazing
things for in Gosh, I for one who live out
(10:48):
that area of Wellington, so so appreciate you guys.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Thank you so much for the support. It's really fantastic
to hear that. We appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Go get it, Go get it and then we'll talk afterwards.
You've got to promise me. You've got to promise me
a chat. You've got to promise me a chat if
you if you're want to ask her.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Right, absolutely, one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
There you go, good luck, Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
For more from Wellington Mornings with Nick Mills, listen live
to news talks It'd be Wellington from nine am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com