Matt Aitken: Wētā FX Head of Visual FX on their three Oscar nominations

It's Oscars day and Kiwi's are front row for their work out of Wētā FX this year. 

The team have three nominations for Alien Romulus, Better Man and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.

Head of Visual FX Matt Aitken talks to Mike Hosking about the ceremony. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Another day at the office for the geniuses at where

(00:02):
To Workshop. This year they got three nominations for the Oscars, Alien, Romulus,
Better Man, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
Head of Video Effects, Matt Haigen as will as Matt.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Morning to you, Good morning, Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
I remember doing interviews over many, many years, and you
guys every year get nominated. Does it become sort of
run of the mill and something would be wrong if
you didn't get nominated? Is that the sort of excellence
you dabble in it Wetter these days?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Oh? No, we never take it for granted. It is
great giving this level of recognition. Three, you know, three
of the films nominated for visual effects this year are
projects that were effects worked on. You need to pick
up one thing you said in the intro there make
it's Wetter Effects Jackson's Digital visual effects and animation company

(00:46):
that we're celebrating today, not wet A Workshop, which is
Sir Richard Taylor's physical effects Workshop.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
My confusingly, it is confusing, but that's that's on makes
some I apologize for that. The workload generally in the
movie industry. How's it feeling at the moment.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
It's you know, it's challenging times. People are going to
the cinema less there. The Hollywood strikes had a real
impact on our business. We feel that we are digging
away out of that. There's more films going into production,
but in our particular area, we never can take it
easy that there there are always headwinds and so to

(01:28):
you know, to have an opportunity to celebrate the way
we do today is a really is a really great opportunity.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Where are we at tech wise? Is it evolutionary or
revolutionary in terms of advance I think it's gone.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
From being revolutionary to being evolutionary. I think we're consolidating
as an industry. We you know, when I first started
at Whether Effects thirty years ago, we had nice heal
what we were doing. We were making it up as
we went along. We were getting a project that had
like King Kong, a giant Harry gorilla, and then we
were writing the software to do the as we went

(02:04):
But these days it's more about adding finesse, adding quality.
You know, we have a very established pipeline now for
this kind of work and we just have our great
technology and research department adding finesse and adding quality.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
With the work that they do for us in that space,
absolutely fantastic. Will go well to today. We wish you
all the very best. Matt aik And who is the
head of video effects that we're to FX three nominations today.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
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Speaker 1 (02:36):
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