Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings

Last December a online dealer gave away the Blue Ray Special Extended Edition of Lord of the Rings for 50 Euros. Although I have the three DVDs of the cinematic cut and also I have seen the Special Editions on DVD (in a row, by the way) I could not resist. So I received the six blue ray discs and somewhat eleven or twelve DVDs with bonus material on it. I enjoyed watching the movie once again, the additional scenes were good and enlightning, I think at least for people who have read the book. But even more I now like to watch the bonus material, a thing a rarely do even this kind of add-ons is delivered with most of the movies since DVDs are on the market.

But this time this is more for me. The movie itself is great, but the greater artwork is the making of Lord of the Rings. This trilogy is not the work of a genius director, a brilliant band of actors or a more than inspiring script and story at its base. It is all this and more. On the bonus DVDs it's often said they tried to find the best people in the field - actors, artists, craftsmen, animators and so on. True, they got much talent from and to New Zealand, but I don't think the reason that it worked out so well is because they got the best of the best.

It worked out so good, because Jackson in the middle of it, presumably also his wife Fran Walsh (who does not show up on the bonus material) and many more created a climate where everybody, really everybody, gave their best to create a product in common effort. It's not how we are used to it in our modern and specialized corporate world: Everyboday has her or his task to fulfill, with borders to other team members and project plans; where each one is careful not to cross this borders and happy when the own task works out and it is maybe someone else who havocs the project. I assume in producing LotR, though Peter Jackson seemed to like to control everything, everybody listened to each other; also taking the risk to have the own work changed to another different idea in favor of one person who is not a specialist on a particular topic. The whole thing was under construction till the very end.

I envy Peter Jackson for his energy and his risk-taking. Steven Spielberg, for example, or George Lucas, also created huge and marvellous movies, even universes. But they moved in a reasonable pace, growing with their projects. Jackson, for all I learned about him, mader several movies, if not low-budget, but maybe then just mid-sized projects. And then - boom. He wanted to form a book into a film that has beens said as unfilmable. And not just as some simple film, but really fully-fledged bluckbuster size, nothing to acchieve in well-worn paths.
It surely was hard to convince others to invest a pile of money into a man's project that is unprecedented. Peter Jackson could not have the experience to steer such a thing, create a mid-sized company out of nothing and make it a fellowship of his idea. I am also sure that he risked his property and maybe his artistic career. But then thousands of people made his motivation theirs and did LotR. I do not think it were the best of the best in their field, or at least all of this big team. But each one contributed with passion.

I am afraid, it is, well, somewhat easier to inspire that passion when creating art than the creation a bank's customer relationship software. But a little bit of that could help any project. By the way, that's a thing the people of agile processes like Scrum had in mind. Let the people work. :)

Anyway, I'm just half through the long hours of bonus stuff, looking forward to continue.