WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.379 I want you to picture a teenager in a quiet New 00:00:04.379 --> 00:00:07.759 Zealand suburb. This is back in the 1970s. He's 00:00:07.759 --> 00:00:10.259 just standing in his backyard holding a sharp 00:00:10.259 --> 00:00:13.380 sewing needle, and he's meticulously poking these 00:00:13.380 --> 00:00:16.559 tiny individual holes into a strip of celluloid 00:00:16.559 --> 00:00:19.519 film. Just by hand. Completely by hand. And he 00:00:19.519 --> 00:00:22.059 isn't destroying the film. He's holding it up 00:00:22.059 --> 00:00:24.519 to the light, calculating exactly where to puncture 00:00:24.519 --> 00:00:26.199 it. Because, you know, when it runs through a 00:00:26.199 --> 00:00:28.399 projector, the bright light shining through that 00:00:28.399 --> 00:00:30.800 tiny hole will look exactly like a muzzle flash. 00:00:30.859 --> 00:00:33.659 Like a World War II rifle firing? Exactly. He 00:00:33.659 --> 00:00:36.700 is literally physically inventing his own special 00:00:36.700 --> 00:00:38.700 effects out of absolutely nothing. And the wild 00:00:38.700 --> 00:00:42.920 part is, today, that exact same guy is an Oscar 00:00:42.920 --> 00:00:46.000 -winning director and a billionaire tech pioneer. 00:00:46.159 --> 00:00:48.859 It really is a profound trajectory. I mean, we 00:00:48.859 --> 00:00:51.479 are so used to the standard Silicon Valley narrative. 00:00:51.759 --> 00:00:53.979 Oh, yeah, the Ivy League dropout coding in a 00:00:53.979 --> 00:00:56.420 slick garage. Right. Exactly. But this story, 00:00:56.420 --> 00:00:59.020 it breaks every single one of those templates. 00:00:59.100 --> 00:01:01.880 It really does. So welcome to today's deep dive. 00:01:02.259 --> 00:01:04.840 Our mission today for you listening is to trace 00:01:04.840 --> 00:01:08.180 this wildly unconventional evolution. From poking 00:01:08.180 --> 00:01:11.019 holes in film to reshaping the global entertainment 00:01:11.019 --> 00:01:14.049 industry. Yeah. We are going to explore exactly 00:01:14.049 --> 00:01:15.790 how Peter Jackson pulled this off, because this 00:01:15.790 --> 00:01:18.810 isn't just a biography. It's a masterclass for 00:01:18.810 --> 00:01:23.730 you on how obsessive, passion, and a total refusal 00:01:23.730 --> 00:01:25.909 to accept technological limitations. And a wonderfully 00:01:25.909 --> 00:01:28.769 macabre sense of humor. Yes. How all of that 00:01:28.769 --> 00:01:31.959 can completely redefine an industry. OK, let's 00:01:31.959 --> 00:01:33.799 unpack this. It's the perfect place to start, 00:01:33.980 --> 00:01:36.340 because to understand his eventual tech empire, 00:01:36.840 --> 00:01:38.879 you really have to understand his foundational 00:01:38.879 --> 00:01:41.799 philosophy. Right. Jackson's career is basically 00:01:41.799 --> 00:01:45.480 the ultimate case study in scaling up a fiercely 00:01:45.480 --> 00:01:47.819 independent do -it -yourself ethos. Taking that 00:01:47.819 --> 00:01:50.340 backyard ingenuity and just supersizing it. Exactly. 00:01:50.519 --> 00:01:52.920 He scaled it into a multi -billion dollar global 00:01:52.920 --> 00:01:56.079 machine, but he never actually lost that obsessive 00:01:56.079 --> 00:01:59.400 tinkerer identity. So to understand the billionaire 00:01:59.400 --> 00:02:01.799 who builds digital empires, we have to look closely 00:02:01.799 --> 00:02:03.760 at the kid who built cinematic worlds out of 00:02:03.760 --> 00:02:06.019 thin air. The kid in Pukaro Bay. Yeah, this coastal 00:02:06.019 --> 00:02:08.340 town. Growing up, he was completely captivated 00:02:08.340 --> 00:02:12.580 by Ray Harryhausen films and the original King 00:02:12.580 --> 00:02:15.240 Kong. Which is pretty standard for future filmmakers, 00:02:15.439 --> 00:02:18.280 but Jackson took it further. Much further. At 00:02:18.280 --> 00:02:20.860 just nine years old, he isn't just watching these 00:02:20.860 --> 00:02:23.500 movies. He's trying to reverse engineer them. 00:02:23.539 --> 00:02:25.860 He's making his own stop motion models. Right. 00:02:26.199 --> 00:02:29.639 trying to literally remake King Kong scene by 00:02:29.639 --> 00:02:33.199 scene in his house. And that drive to just reverse 00:02:33.199 --> 00:02:35.960 engineer reality, it only intensifies. You mentioned 00:02:35.960 --> 00:02:38.099 him poking pinholes in the film earlier. Yeah, 00:02:38.199 --> 00:02:40.639 the muzzle flashes. Right. That was for a short 00:02:40.639 --> 00:02:42.979 film he made as a teenager called The Dwarf Patrol. 00:02:43.289 --> 00:02:48.030 Great title. It is. But he had no budget, no 00:02:48.030 --> 00:02:50.449 special effects department, and obviously no 00:02:50.449 --> 00:02:52.750 access to industry tools. So he just looked at 00:02:52.750 --> 00:02:55.610 the problem mechanically. Exactly. How do you 00:02:55.610 --> 00:02:58.270 simulate a bright flash on a physical medium? 00:02:58.930 --> 00:03:01.009 You literally let the projector's bulb do the 00:03:01.009 --> 00:03:03.430 work by scratching away the emulsion on the film 00:03:03.430 --> 00:03:05.569 strip. It's brilliant problem -solving, but the 00:03:05.569 --> 00:03:07.669 sheer dedication is what really gets me. Like, 00:03:07.669 --> 00:03:09.870 he actually drops out of school at 16. Wait, 00:03:09.909 --> 00:03:12.719 at 16? Yeah, drops out and gets a job as a a 00:03:12.719 --> 00:03:15.099 photo engraver at a local newspaper in Wellington. 00:03:15.340 --> 00:03:18.139 That's a serious commitment. And he stays at 00:03:18.139 --> 00:03:22.280 that day job for seven years. Wow. Seven years. 00:03:22.539 --> 00:03:24.860 And he continues living at home with his parents 00:03:24.860 --> 00:03:28.259 that entire time just so he can save every single 00:03:28.259 --> 00:03:30.580 penny. To buy equipment. Yeah, to buy his own 00:03:30.580 --> 00:03:32.659 professional grade camera equipment. Which pays 00:03:32.659 --> 00:03:36.259 off because he finally secures a 16 millimeter 00:03:36.259 --> 00:03:39.599 camera. Yeah. And that specific piece of hardware 00:03:40.090 --> 00:03:43.169 becomes the engine for his first feature film. 00:03:43.310 --> 00:03:47.810 Bad Taste. Bad Taste. Oh, man. Bad Taste is legendary 00:03:47.810 --> 00:03:50.169 in the indie world. It really is. For those who 00:03:50.169 --> 00:03:53.669 don't know, it's this wild, over -the -top, splatter 00:03:53.669 --> 00:03:56.770 comedy. It's about aliens coming to Earth to 00:03:56.770 --> 00:03:59.849 harvest humans for an intergalactic fast food 00:03:59.849 --> 00:04:03.580 chain. As one does. Right. But because he is 00:04:03.580 --> 00:04:05.840 still working his day job, he shoots this movie 00:04:05.840 --> 00:04:07.919 almost entirely on weekends. Over the course 00:04:07.919 --> 00:04:09.479 of four years, right? Four years of weekends. 00:04:09.780 --> 00:04:11.840 His friends are acting for free. He builds his 00:04:11.840 --> 00:04:13.900 own camera crane. He's practically a one man 00:04:13.900 --> 00:04:16.220 studio. He even plays two separate roles in the 00:04:16.220 --> 00:04:17.980 film. There's this incredible sequence where 00:04:17.980 --> 00:04:20.279 his two characters are physically fighting each 00:04:20.279 --> 00:04:22.920 other. On the edge of a cliff, right? Yes. On 00:04:22.920 --> 00:04:25.500 the edge of a cliff. So you have a director out 00:04:25.500 --> 00:04:28.779 on a ledge, literally filming himself fighting 00:04:28.779 --> 00:04:31.199 himself. What's fascinating here is that this 00:04:31.199 --> 00:04:35.220 entire period was built on pure, unadulterated 00:04:35.220 --> 00:04:37.500 trial and error. Because he had no training. 00:04:38.040 --> 00:04:41.560 None. Jackson had absolutely zero formal training 00:04:41.560 --> 00:04:44.879 in filmmaking. No film school. No mentors. He 00:04:44.879 --> 00:04:46.920 was just figuring it out as he went. Teaching 00:04:46.920 --> 00:04:49.620 himself editing, visual effects, prosthetics, 00:04:49.759 --> 00:04:52.579 all on the fly. And because he never learned 00:04:52.579 --> 00:04:55.000 the traditional rules of how a Hollywood movie 00:04:55.000 --> 00:04:56.740 is supposed to be made. We didn't know the limits. 00:04:56.959 --> 00:04:59.459 Exactly. He never internalized those traditional 00:04:59.459 --> 00:05:01.579 boundaries. He simply didn't know what was supposed 00:05:01.579 --> 00:05:03.759 to be impossible. It really makes me think of 00:05:03.759 --> 00:05:06.319 like a garage band musician. Oh, that's a good 00:05:06.319 --> 00:05:08.379 comparison. But it's not just a musician who 00:05:08.379 --> 00:05:10.639 is writing their own songs in the garage. It's 00:05:10.639 --> 00:05:13.319 someone who is in there actually soldering together 00:05:13.319 --> 00:05:15.500 the circuitry for their amplifiers. Building 00:05:15.500 --> 00:05:17.879 the hardware. Right. Hand carving the wood for 00:05:17.879 --> 00:05:20.459 their own guitars, all just to get the exact, 00:05:21.319 --> 00:05:23.459 highly specific sound they hear in their head. 00:05:23.620 --> 00:05:25.680 That is a highly accurate way to look at it. 00:05:25.959 --> 00:05:28.319 He was actively building the tools to make the 00:05:28.319 --> 00:05:30.540 art, rather than just making art with the tools 00:05:30.540 --> 00:05:32.740 provided to him. But you know, building homemade 00:05:32.740 --> 00:05:34.819 camera rigs and shooting aliens in the woods 00:05:34.819 --> 00:05:37.959 on a Sunday, it has a natural ceiling. It does. 00:05:38.500 --> 00:05:40.220 Splatter comedies, no matter how inventive they 00:05:40.220 --> 00:05:42.800 are, they don't exactly get you massive studio 00:05:42.800 --> 00:05:46.279 funding or like... critical prestige. Not usually, 00:05:46.459 --> 00:05:49.399 no. To truly scale up as a world builder, he 00:05:49.399 --> 00:05:52.379 had to prove he could handle genuine, nuanced 00:05:52.379 --> 00:05:54.939 human emotion. Not just fake blood and latex 00:05:54.939 --> 00:05:58.000 masks. Exactly. And that causal shift brings 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:01.720 us to 1994 with the release of Heavenly Creatures. 00:06:01.819 --> 00:06:04.160 Which is a massive pivot. A completely different 00:06:04.160 --> 00:06:07.199 universe. He abandons the alien vomit for this 00:06:07.199 --> 00:06:10.240 beautifully shot, deeply tragic, critically lauded 00:06:10.240 --> 00:06:13.000 drama. Based on a true story, too. Yeah, a real 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:16.180 -life 19 - murder case in New Zealand, it starred 00:06:16.180 --> 00:06:19.000 a then unknown Kate Winslet. And it fundamentally 00:06:19.000 --> 00:06:21.100 changed how the industry viewed him. It earned 00:06:21.100 --> 00:06:23.579 him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original 00:06:23.579 --> 00:06:25.839 Screenplay. And we have to give immense credit 00:06:25.839 --> 00:06:28.019 here to his partner and frequent collaborator, 00:06:28.180 --> 00:06:31.519 Fran Walsh. Oh, absolutely. It was Walsh who 00:06:31.519 --> 00:06:35.379 really saw the potential. in this specific true 00:06:35.379 --> 00:06:38.040 crime story. She pushed for it to be told. Her 00:06:38.040 --> 00:06:40.819 enthusiasm and her writing really drove the project. 00:06:41.160 --> 00:06:44.019 It proved that their team could direct incredibly 00:06:44.019 --> 00:06:47.360 complex human stories. But even with that newfound 00:06:47.360 --> 00:06:50.540 prestige, the tinkerer in him just couldn't resist 00:06:50.540 --> 00:06:52.720 manipulating the medium. I had to put the boundaries 00:06:52.720 --> 00:06:57.240 again. Just a year later, in 1995, He and co 00:06:57.240 --> 00:06:59.779 -director Kosta Boats pull off one of the great 00:06:59.779 --> 00:07:02.079 media hoaxes. Forgotten Silver. This is maybe 00:07:02.079 --> 00:07:04.120 my favorite thing he's ever done. It's a television 00:07:04.120 --> 00:07:06.680 mockumentary. And people totally fell for it. 00:07:06.920 --> 00:07:09.920 Completely. They invent this completely fictitious 00:07:09.920 --> 00:07:13.000 New Zealand film pioneer named Colin McKenzie. 00:07:13.220 --> 00:07:15.149 Right. Totally made -up guy. And they create 00:07:15.149 --> 00:07:17.790 a documentary claiming this guy secretly invented 00:07:17.790 --> 00:07:21.170 color film. And the talkies? Yes. Decades before 00:07:21.170 --> 00:07:23.649 Hollywood did. They fabricate old film reels, 00:07:23.870 --> 00:07:25.990 age them to look authentic. And they just broadcast 00:07:25.990 --> 00:07:28.310 it. They broadcast the whole thing in a serious 00:07:28.310 --> 00:07:31.470 drama slot on national television with zero warning 00:07:31.470 --> 00:07:33.930 that it was fake. Which is so bull - People were 00:07:33.930 --> 00:07:35.829 absolutely outraged when they found out they 00:07:35.829 --> 00:07:38.370 had been duped. But look at what that prank achieved. 00:07:39.060 --> 00:07:41.540 mechanically. Right. It proved beyond a shadow 00:07:41.540 --> 00:07:44.699 of a doubt that Jackson could flawlessly manipulate 00:07:44.699 --> 00:07:47.939 reality. He made the unbelievable look entirely 00:07:47.939 --> 00:07:50.959 factual. It was a flex. A huge flex. Yeah. And 00:07:50.959 --> 00:07:54.079 that specific skill set blending the impossible 00:07:54.079 --> 00:07:56.839 with the real is exactly what caught the eye 00:07:56.839 --> 00:08:00.629 of Hollywood. which leads to his 1996 comedy 00:08:00.629 --> 00:08:03.350 horror film, The Frighteners. Starring Michael 00:08:03.350 --> 00:08:05.370 J. Fox. Okay, wait, I have to push back here 00:08:05.370 --> 00:08:08.189 for a second. He finally lands the big Hollywood 00:08:08.189 --> 00:08:11.550 backing. He gets a major star like Michael J. 00:08:11.629 --> 00:08:13.810 Fox. A huge star at the time. And the film itself 00:08:13.810 --> 00:08:16.750 is set in a North American town. Wouldn't the 00:08:16.750 --> 00:08:20.699 absolute most logical... easiest path to success 00:08:20.699 --> 00:08:24.800 for a rising director be to pack up, move to 00:08:24.800 --> 00:08:26.980 Los Angeles and plug into the studio system? 00:08:27.139 --> 00:08:29.439 You would think so. So why on earth did Jackson 00:08:29.439 --> 00:08:32.120 insist on shooting the Frighteners entirely in 00:08:32.120 --> 00:08:34.480 New Zealand? It's a great question. And honestly, 00:08:35.259 --> 00:08:37.840 understanding his decision here unlocks his entire 00:08:37.840 --> 00:08:40.700 future empire. Moving to Los Angeles would have 00:08:40.700 --> 00:08:43.019 meant plugging himself into someone else's machine. 00:08:43.159 --> 00:08:45.860 Ah. He would have had to rent Hollywood special 00:08:45.860 --> 00:08:48.620 effects houses. He'd have to abide by their schedules, 00:08:48.799 --> 00:08:50.919 their rules, their unions. He'd be an employee, 00:08:50.940 --> 00:08:53.960 basically. Right. By dicking his heels in and 00:08:53.960 --> 00:08:56.080 insisting the production stay in New Zealand, 00:08:56.960 --> 00:08:59.860 Jackson essentially forced the studio to fund 00:08:59.860 --> 00:09:01.840 the creation of his own infrastructure. Wait. 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:05.240 So by refusing to go to LA, he used their Hollywood 00:09:05.240 --> 00:09:08.220 budget to build his own personal factory. Exactly. 00:09:08.460 --> 00:09:11.460 To handle the complex digital and physical effects 00:09:11.460 --> 00:09:14.019 required for the Frighteners, he and his collaborators 00:09:14.019 --> 00:09:16.580 rapidly expanded their own local effects company, 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:19.820 Weeda Workshop, and its digital counterpart, 00:09:20.059 --> 00:09:23.159 Weeda Digital. He was employing vertical integration, 00:09:23.679 --> 00:09:25.980 controlling every step of the process. He wanted 00:09:25.980 --> 00:09:29.159 total creative control. And to have that, you 00:09:29.159 --> 00:09:31.820 must own the means of production. By staying 00:09:31.820 --> 00:09:34.320 home, he built a facility that could eventually 00:09:34.320 --> 00:09:36.840 handle anything his imagination could conjure. 00:09:37.019 --> 00:09:40.000 Which directly sets the stage for the most audacious 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:42.679 pitch in cinema history. The big one. Because 00:09:42.679 --> 00:09:45.720 he now owns this massive, vertically -integrated 00:09:45.720 --> 00:09:48.460 factory with WIDA, he is uniquely positioned 00:09:48.460 --> 00:09:51.480 to walk into a studio and confidently say, I 00:09:51.480 --> 00:09:54.240 want to adapt JR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. 00:09:54.620 --> 00:09:57.120 The scale of that ambition cannot be overstated. 00:09:57.340 --> 00:09:59.600 It really can't. And initially, he developed 00:09:59.600 --> 00:10:02.740 the project with Miramax. Oh, right. However, 00:10:02.860 --> 00:10:05.559 the studio heads there started pressuring him 00:10:05.559 --> 00:10:09.159 heavily. They wanted him to condense this massive, 00:10:09.820 --> 00:10:13.240 sprawling, historically rich fantasy epic into 00:10:13.240 --> 00:10:16.480 just one single two -hour film. Imagine trying 00:10:16.480 --> 00:10:18.960 to cram all of Middle Earth into one movie. It's 00:10:18.960 --> 00:10:20.879 impossible. It would have been an absolute creative 00:10:20.879 --> 00:10:24.440 disaster. Jackson knew it would fail. So in a 00:10:24.440 --> 00:10:27.139 massive gamble, he takes the project to New Line 00:10:27.139 --> 00:10:29.620 Cinema for a last -minute pitch. And New Line 00:10:29.620 --> 00:10:31.639 didn't just save the project. No. They doubled 00:10:31.639 --> 00:10:34.179 down. They insisted on making it a proper trilogy. 00:10:34.620 --> 00:10:38.000 Three massive films shot back -to -back, concurrently. 00:10:38.100 --> 00:10:40.019 Here's where it gets really interesting. Hell 00:10:40.019 --> 00:10:42.480 me. Think about the mechanics of that negotiation. 00:10:42.820 --> 00:10:45.279 It's like you walk into a bank and you ask the 00:10:45.279 --> 00:10:47.720 loan officer for a small personal loan to build 00:10:47.720 --> 00:10:50.139 a little wooden shed in your backyard. Right. 00:10:50.379 --> 00:10:52.519 And the bank manager looks at you and says, no. 00:10:52.570 --> 00:10:55.549 Absolutely not. I demand that you take hundreds 00:10:55.549 --> 00:10:57.769 of millions of dollars and build a three -story 00:10:57.769 --> 00:11:01.210 mansion instead. That is insane. It was completely 00:11:01.210 --> 00:11:04.809 unheard of in Hollywood to greenlight three blockbuster 00:11:04.809 --> 00:11:07.669 films at once for an unproven franchise. Unheard 00:11:07.669 --> 00:11:10.429 of and incredibly risky. I mean, principal photography 00:11:10.429 --> 00:11:13.950 lasted for well over a year. With multiple units 00:11:13.950 --> 00:11:16.669 shooting all across the rugged terrain of New 00:11:16.669 --> 00:11:19.230 Zealand. And this is where that digital ecosystem 00:11:19.230 --> 00:11:22.370 he built truly flexed its muscles. Right. Why? 00:11:22.610 --> 00:11:25.269 Because to create the massive sweeping battles 00:11:25.269 --> 00:11:28.490 of Middle Earth, Weta Digital developed a revolutionary 00:11:28.490 --> 00:11:30.789 piece of software called Massive. Because you 00:11:30.789 --> 00:11:33.129 can't just hire 50 ,000 extras for an orc army. 00:11:33.330 --> 00:11:35.669 Exactly. The logistics alone would ruin you. 00:11:36.289 --> 00:11:38.850 So the Massive software utilized artificial intelligence 00:11:38.850 --> 00:11:41.370 to give thousands of individual digital characters 00:11:41.370 --> 00:11:44.529 their own autonomous brains. Wait, their own 00:11:44.529 --> 00:11:47.570 brains? Yeah. Instead of manually animating every 00:11:47.570 --> 00:11:49.870 single soldier frame by frame, they program a 00:11:49.870 --> 00:11:52.590 digital agents with rules for combat, vision, 00:11:52.889 --> 00:11:55.370 and movement. That is so far ahead of its time. 00:11:55.669 --> 00:11:57.720 And then they essentially press play. and let 00:11:57.720 --> 00:12:00.620 them fight it out organically. He literally scaled 00:12:00.620 --> 00:12:03.620 his childhood stop -motion models into autonomous 00:12:03.620 --> 00:12:06.340 digital armies. And the payoff for this integration 00:12:06.340 --> 00:12:09.539 of tech and art was historic. Beyond historic, 00:12:09.840 --> 00:12:13.159 The Return of the King Alone won 11 Academy Awards. 00:12:13.460 --> 00:12:15.559 Tying the all -time record. And becoming the 00:12:15.559 --> 00:12:18.919 very first fantasy film to ever win Best Picture. 00:12:19.120 --> 00:12:21.620 And when you look at his actual directing style 00:12:21.620 --> 00:12:24.840 on set during those films. Oh, it is intensely 00:12:24.840 --> 00:12:27.480 perfectionist. Very. He was famous for demanding 00:12:27.480 --> 00:12:30.220 take after take from his actors. Always asking 00:12:30.220 --> 00:12:32.820 for one more for luck. Right. He would shoot 00:12:32.820 --> 00:12:35.580 a scene from a staggering number of angles to 00:12:35.580 --> 00:12:38.440 get what the industry calls coverage. And that 00:12:38.440 --> 00:12:41.240 specific directing style, the absolute insistence 00:12:41.240 --> 00:12:44.379 on relentless coverage and multiple takes, that 00:12:44.379 --> 00:12:47.740 is a direct descendant of his DIY roots. How 00:12:47.740 --> 00:12:50.860 so? Remember, he spent years manually splicing 00:12:50.860 --> 00:12:53.700 his own film strips by hand for bad taste. Oh, 00:12:53.700 --> 00:12:56.279 true. He knows the agonizing feeling of sitting 00:12:56.279 --> 00:12:59.299 in an editing bay at 3 a .m. and realizing you 00:12:59.299 --> 00:13:01.580 don't have the exact shot you need to make a 00:13:01.580 --> 00:13:03.639 scene work. You can't just fix it in post if 00:13:03.639 --> 00:13:05.799 you don't have the footage. Exactly. So by shooting 00:13:05.799 --> 00:13:08.799 from every conceivable angle on set, he ensures 00:13:08.799 --> 00:13:11.519 he has every possible puzzle piece available 00:13:11.519 --> 00:13:14.019 to him when it's time to assemble the final picture. 00:13:14.320 --> 00:13:16.639 That makes perfect sense. He also clearly had 00:13:16.639 --> 00:13:19.399 a blast making them, despite the immense pressure. 00:13:19.700 --> 00:13:22.220 He constantly sneaks into his own movies. Of 00:13:22.220 --> 00:13:25.559 the cameos? Yes. In The Fellowship of the Ring, 00:13:25.600 --> 00:13:28.240 he's the grumpy guy chomping on a carrot in the 00:13:28.240 --> 00:13:31.279 rain in the town of Bree. Oh yeah. In The Two 00:13:31.279 --> 00:13:34.350 Towers, he's a Rohan defender. curling a spear 00:13:34.350 --> 00:13:37.159 off the wall at Helm's Deep. Classic. And my 00:13:37.159 --> 00:13:39.299 absolute favorite, in The Return of the King, 00:13:39.440 --> 00:13:42.779 he plays a pirate mercenary who accidentally 00:13:42.779 --> 00:13:45.200 gets shot in the chest by Legolas. It's a great 00:13:45.200 --> 00:13:47.600 reminder that the kid making movies in his backyard 00:13:47.600 --> 00:13:50.559 with his buddies is still very much alive on 00:13:50.559 --> 00:13:53.919 that set. Completely. So he conquers the ultimate 00:13:53.919 --> 00:13:56.299 fantasy epic. He then follows it up by living 00:13:56.299 --> 00:13:58.740 out his childhood dream. Remaking King Kong. 00:13:58.840 --> 00:14:02.100 Yes, in 2005, utilizing Weta's motion capture 00:14:02.100 --> 00:14:05.320 technology. But once you have built a machine, 00:14:05.450 --> 00:14:08.250 capable of creating Middle Earth and a hyper 00:14:08.250 --> 00:14:11.470 -realistic giant ape. What do you point it at 00:14:11.470 --> 00:14:14.169 next? Right. You've climbed the mountain. For 00:14:14.169 --> 00:14:16.909 Jackson, the answer was unexpected. He turned 00:14:16.909 --> 00:14:19.970 his technological ecosystem toward reality. Towards 00:14:19.970 --> 00:14:23.029 history. Exactly. This transition completely 00:14:23.029 --> 00:14:26.240 blew my mind. In 2018, he releases a documentary 00:14:26.240 --> 00:14:29.159 called They Shall Not Grow Old. A masterpiece 00:14:29.159 --> 00:14:32.220 of restoration. He takes century -old, grainy, 00:14:32.360 --> 00:14:34.679 silent, black -and -white archival footage from 00:14:34.679 --> 00:14:37.399 the trenches of World War I, and he unleashes 00:14:37.399 --> 00:14:40.519 the full power of wetta upon it. The restoration 00:14:40.519 --> 00:14:42.799 process was staggering. I mean, they didn't just 00:14:42.799 --> 00:14:45.299 clean up the scratches. They computationally 00:14:45.299 --> 00:14:47.830 adjusted the frame rates. So the soldiers stop 00:14:47.830 --> 00:14:51.389 moving in that jerky sped up motion typical of 00:14:51.389 --> 00:14:54.230 old film. It looks like modern video. It does. 00:14:54.889 --> 00:14:57.210 They painstakingly colorize the uniforms and 00:14:57.210 --> 00:14:59.990 the mud to historically accurate shades. And 00:14:59.990 --> 00:15:02.350 they converted the entire thing into an immersive 00:15:02.350 --> 00:15:05.190 3D experience. And the audio. I couldn't believe 00:15:05.190 --> 00:15:08.350 this part. Oh, the lip readers. Yes. They actually 00:15:08.350 --> 00:15:11.129 brought in professional lip readers to study 00:15:11.129 --> 00:15:14.070 the silent mounds of the soldiers on film. Just 00:15:14.070 --> 00:15:15.470 to see what they were saying in the background. 00:15:15.850 --> 00:15:18.769 Exactly. Just so they could accurately script 00:15:18.769 --> 00:15:22.129 and dub in the exact words the men were shouting 00:15:22.129 --> 00:15:25.190 in the trenches 100 years ago. The critical consensus 00:15:25.190 --> 00:15:28.750 was that the film created an eerie, hyper -real 00:15:28.750 --> 00:15:31.429 sense of life. It really did. It took figures 00:15:31.429 --> 00:15:34.470 that we are used to seeing as distant, unrelatable 00:15:34.470 --> 00:15:37.889 ghosts of the past and made them undeniably, 00:15:38.250 --> 00:15:41.509 viscerally human. He then applies a similar technological 00:15:41.509 --> 00:15:45.759 leap to music history. Yes, The Beatles. In 2021, 00:15:45.919 --> 00:15:48.580 he releases the massive documentary series, The 00:15:48.580 --> 00:15:51.139 Beatles. Get back. Which was a massive undertaking. 00:15:51.460 --> 00:15:54.740 Huge. He has handed 55 hours of unseen video 00:15:54.740 --> 00:15:57.639 footage and 140 hours of audio from the band's 00:15:57.639 --> 00:15:59.600 final days together. But there was a major issue 00:15:59.600 --> 00:16:01.639 with the audio, wasn't there? A huge issue. The 00:16:01.639 --> 00:16:04.240 problem was a lot of that audio was just a noisy 00:16:04.240 --> 00:16:06.580 jumbled mess. They were playing over each other. 00:16:06.679 --> 00:16:08.820 Constantly. Instruments were bleeding into vocal 00:16:08.820 --> 00:16:12.120 mics and it was considered largely unusable by 00:16:12.120 --> 00:16:14.659 standard metrics. So what does his team do? They 00:16:14.659 --> 00:16:18.379 literally invent groundbreaking demixing software 00:16:18.379 --> 00:16:21.240 to solve it. This demixing technology is a true 00:16:21.240 --> 00:16:23.980 paradigm shift in audio engineering. It's basically 00:16:23.980 --> 00:16:26.399 magic. It feels like it. Yeah. Previously, if 00:16:26.399 --> 00:16:28.639 you had a mono track with a guitar and a voice 00:16:28.639 --> 00:16:30.740 mix together, you couldn't separate them cleanly. 00:16:30.799 --> 00:16:34.289 They're baked in. Right. But Jackson's team utilized 00:16:34.289 --> 00:16:36.710 machine learning to solve this. They essentially 00:16:36.710 --> 00:16:40.710 trained an AI to recognize the specific acoustic 00:16:40.710 --> 00:16:43.710 waveform of John Lennon's voice and the specific 00:16:43.710 --> 00:16:46.389 waveform of Paul McCartney's bass. It's literally 00:16:46.389 --> 00:16:48.629 like teaching a computer how to unbake a cake. 00:16:48.789 --> 00:16:50.809 That is a brilliant way to conceptualize it. 00:16:50.909 --> 00:16:53.230 You have a fully baked cake, which is the mono 00:16:53.230 --> 00:16:56.549 audio track, and this software somehow manages 00:16:56.549 --> 00:16:59.210 to perfectly extract the flour from the eggs 00:16:59.210 --> 00:17:02.610 without ruining either ingredient. The A .I. 00:17:02.610 --> 00:17:04.849 isolates the individual instruments and vocals, 00:17:05.190 --> 00:17:08.130 allowing them to remix a messy 1969 recording 00:17:08.130 --> 00:17:11.569 with pristine modern clarity. And that technology 00:17:11.569 --> 00:17:14.109 didn't just stay in his documentary. No, it changed 00:17:14.109 --> 00:17:16.309 everything. It completely revolutionized the 00:17:16.309 --> 00:17:18.410 music industry overnight. It allowed for the 00:17:18.410 --> 00:17:21.329 incredibly crisp 2022 reissue of the Beatles 00:17:21.329 --> 00:17:24.269 album Revolver. And even more astonishingly. 00:17:24.410 --> 00:17:27.750 It led to the completion of Now and Then in 2023. 00:17:28.069 --> 00:17:30.990 The last Beatles song. Yes. The surviving Beatles 00:17:30.990 --> 00:17:34.750 used Jackson's de -mixing tech to cleanly extract 00:17:34.750 --> 00:17:38.670 John Lennon's vocal from a very muddy, low -quality 00:17:38.670 --> 00:17:41.009 demo cassette he recorded in his apartment in 00:17:41.009 --> 00:17:43.970 1977. Just a tape recorder sitting on a piano. 00:17:44.210 --> 00:17:46.490 And they built a modern track around it. And 00:17:46.490 --> 00:17:49.509 it literally just won a Grammy. Jackson even 00:17:49.509 --> 00:17:52.190 stepped in to direct the music video, seamlessly 00:17:52.190 --> 00:17:55.390 blending new footage with restored vintage clips. 00:17:55.869 --> 00:17:58.680 But, you know, stepping back. Applying this level 00:17:58.680 --> 00:18:00.819 of computational power to historical artifacts 00:18:00.819 --> 00:18:03.099 raises a fascinating philosophical debate. It 00:18:03.099 --> 00:18:05.319 really does. Right. I have to ask you this because 00:18:05.319 --> 00:18:07.579 I keep thinking about it. Sure. When you take 00:18:07.579 --> 00:18:10.380 century -old silent war footage and you colorize 00:18:10.380 --> 00:18:13.599 it, adjust the speed, convert it to 3D and add 00:18:13.599 --> 00:18:16.160 synthetic dialogue. Right. Or when you rip apart 00:18:16.160 --> 00:18:18.799 the sonic fabric of a 1970s cassette tape to 00:18:18.799 --> 00:18:22.019 build a modern high fidelity pop song. Are we 00:18:22.019 --> 00:18:24.400 preserving history? Or are we modernizing it 00:18:24.400 --> 00:18:26.859 so heavily that it stops being a historical document 00:18:26.859 --> 00:18:29.160 and becomes a totally new piece of art? If we 00:18:29.160 --> 00:18:31.740 connect this to the bigger picture, we really 00:18:31.740 --> 00:18:34.480 have to look closely at Jackson's underlying 00:18:34.480 --> 00:18:37.160 philosophy regarding archives. Okay, what is 00:18:37.160 --> 00:18:40.480 it? For him, a historical artifact locked in 00:18:40.480 --> 00:18:44.119 a vault or a grainy video that a modern teenager 00:18:44.119 --> 00:18:48.829 cannot connect with is essentially dead. Interesting. 00:18:49.289 --> 00:18:51.130 He fundamentally believes that knowledge and 00:18:51.130 --> 00:18:53.809 history are most valuable when they are understood 00:18:53.809 --> 00:18:56.450 and, crucially, when they are felt by a contemporary 00:18:56.450 --> 00:18:59.009 audience. So it's about emotional resonance. 00:18:59.230 --> 00:19:01.250 Exactly. He isn't trying to overwrite the archive. 00:19:01.589 --> 00:19:04.130 He is attempting to translate history into a 00:19:04.130 --> 00:19:07.430 visceral, modern cinematic language so that people 00:19:07.430 --> 00:19:09.950 today will actually engage with it emotionally. 00:19:10.109 --> 00:19:12.589 Translating history. I really love that framing. 00:19:12.630 --> 00:19:14.769 It fits perfectly. So what does this all mean 00:19:14.769 --> 00:19:17.509 for the kid from Pookaroo Bay? Well, mastering 00:19:17.509 --> 00:19:19.970 this level of world building and technological 00:19:19.970 --> 00:19:22.630 translation eventually pushes him entirely beyond 00:19:22.630 --> 00:19:25.069 the bounds of traditional cinema. Oh, far beyond. 00:19:25.230 --> 00:19:27.509 The guy who was poking holes in film with a sewing 00:19:27.509 --> 00:19:30.170 needle officially became a billionaire in twenty 00:19:30.170 --> 00:19:32.390 twenty one. Yes. And the mechanism of how he 00:19:32.390 --> 00:19:35.130 became a billionaire is telling how he sold the 00:19:35.130 --> 00:19:38.029 technology division of what a digital. to Unity 00:19:38.029 --> 00:19:41.529 technologies, for over 1 .6 billion dollars. 00:19:41.670 --> 00:19:44.049 Which is wild. Unity, for those listening who 00:19:44.049 --> 00:19:46.730 might not know, is a massive 3D gaming engine 00:19:46.730 --> 00:19:49.369 company. Right. Why would a video game company 00:19:49.369 --> 00:19:51.490 want a movie director's special effects house? 00:19:51.630 --> 00:19:53.970 Because the line between video games and cinema 00:19:53.970 --> 00:19:56.529 is disappearing. Blurring together. Completely. 00:19:56.950 --> 00:19:59.250 The tools WIDA built to render the jungles of 00:19:59.250 --> 00:20:02.710 King Kong, or the subsurface scattering of Gollum's 00:20:02.710 --> 00:20:05.920 skin? Those are exactly the tools game developers 00:20:05.920 --> 00:20:10.000 need to build immersive, real -time 3D environments. 00:20:10.259 --> 00:20:12.859 So Unity bought Weida to integrate Hollywood 00:20:12.859 --> 00:20:15.839 -level visual fidelity into the interactive gaming 00:20:15.839 --> 00:20:17.839 space. Exactly. It's the ultimate convergence. 00:20:17.980 --> 00:20:20.460 But what's truly wild is what he does with that 00:20:20.460 --> 00:20:22.720 immense wealth. Oh, his hobbies. He has become 00:20:22.720 --> 00:20:24.839 a billionaire hobbyist on a scale that is hard 00:20:24.839 --> 00:20:28.400 to comprehend. His real estate and aviation portfolios 00:20:28.400 --> 00:20:31.559 alone are staggering. Doesn't he own like a fleet 00:20:31.559 --> 00:20:34.359 of planes? He owns over four - 40 air -worthy 00:20:34.359 --> 00:20:37.160 World War I -era planes. That's incredible. And 00:20:37.160 --> 00:20:39.359 he doesn't just display them in a hangar, he 00:20:39.359 --> 00:20:42.200 runs an entire aircraft restoration and manufacturing 00:20:42.200 --> 00:20:44.500 company called the Vintage Aviator just to keep 00:20:44.500 --> 00:20:46.859 them flying. He's sustaining an entire micro 00:20:46.859 --> 00:20:49.839 industry. He also owns modern Gulfstream jets, 00:20:50.079 --> 00:20:53.000 and he actually deployed one of them to actively 00:20:53.000 --> 00:20:55.740 assist in the international search for the missing 00:20:55.740 --> 00:20:58.940 Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. It's a very 00:20:58.940 --> 00:21:01.599 active, kinetic type of wealth. Very much so. 00:21:02.400 --> 00:21:06.099 involved in philanthropy. He donated half a million 00:21:06.099 --> 00:21:08.960 dollars to embryonic stem cell research. Wow. 00:21:09.059 --> 00:21:11.079 He stepped in to buy an old church in Wellington, 00:21:11.440 --> 00:21:14.339 and later the Bats Theater, specifically to save 00:21:14.339 --> 00:21:15.960 them from the wrecking ball and preserve them 00:21:15.960 --> 00:21:18.460 for the community. And if saving old architecture 00:21:18.460 --> 00:21:20.839 and maintaining a private air force of biplanes 00:21:20.839 --> 00:21:23.640 wasn't enough. There's more. There is. He is 00:21:23.640 --> 00:21:27.140 also a major investor in colossal biosciences. 00:21:27.200 --> 00:21:31.029 Wait. The genetic company? Yes. That is the radical 00:21:31.029 --> 00:21:33.349 genetic engineering company that is actively 00:21:33.349 --> 00:21:36.250 attempting to bring extinct creatures like the 00:21:36.250 --> 00:21:38.970 woolly mammoth back to life. That is the absolute 00:21:38.970 --> 00:21:41.450 ultimate evolution of a world builder. Right. 00:21:41.589 --> 00:21:44.329 He has gone from animating a clay King Kong on 00:21:44.329 --> 00:21:47.910 a tabletop to funding The literal genetic de 00:21:47.910 --> 00:21:50.269 -extinction of a mammoth. It is a conceptually 00:21:50.269 --> 00:21:52.589 perfect through line. It really is. Jackson's 00:21:52.589 --> 00:21:54.910 wealth is clearly not spent on passive luxury. 00:21:55.569 --> 00:21:58.690 It is actively deployed for preservation and 00:21:58.690 --> 00:22:00.410 creation. Cutting the money to work. Whether 00:22:00.410 --> 00:22:03.250 it's keeping a 1915 biplane in the sky, protecting 00:22:03.250 --> 00:22:06.210 a local theater, extracting a ghost's voice from 00:22:06.210 --> 00:22:09.309 a cassette tape, or exploring radical bioscience. 00:22:09.950 --> 00:22:12.809 his obsession remains entirely consistent. Which 00:22:12.809 --> 00:22:15.710 is. He wants to make the impossible visible, 00:22:16.069 --> 00:22:18.670 tangible, and real. It really is one of the most 00:22:18.670 --> 00:22:21.410 incredible creative. journeys of our time. For 00:22:21.410 --> 00:22:23.750 you listening, we've traced a path from a teenager 00:22:23.750 --> 00:22:26.769 hand cranking a 16 millimeter camera on the weekends 00:22:26.769 --> 00:22:30.230 to film bad tastes. To an Academy Award sweeping 00:22:30.230 --> 00:22:33.329 visionary. To a billionaire tech innovator reshaping 00:22:33.329 --> 00:22:36.309 how we experience history in music. Peter Jackson's 00:22:36.309 --> 00:22:38.329 career proves that fully embracing your most 00:22:38.329 --> 00:22:41.049 obsessive curiosities, building your own tools 00:22:41.049 --> 00:22:43.950 when none exist, and absolutely refusing to take 00:22:43.950 --> 00:22:46.549 no for an answer when technology tells you something 00:22:46.549 --> 00:22:48.809 is impossible. It can quite literally change 00:22:48.809 --> 00:22:51.670 the world. This raises an important question, 00:22:52.049 --> 00:22:53.349 though, a thought I'd like to leave you with. 00:22:53.349 --> 00:22:55.849 Let's hear it. If the technology built by this 00:22:55.849 --> 00:22:59.250 one filmmaker can now perfectly extract a voice 00:22:59.250 --> 00:23:02.549 from a degraded tape and seamlessly transform 00:23:02.549 --> 00:23:05.890 100 -year -old trench warfare into a hyper -real, 00:23:06.170 --> 00:23:09.890 immersive 3D experience, we are officially entering 00:23:09.890 --> 00:23:12.920 a new era. Yeah. As these tools become even more 00:23:12.920 --> 00:23:15.339 advanced, allowing us to perfectly digitally 00:23:15.339 --> 00:23:19.339 simulate history, music, and perhaps even resurrect 00:23:19.339 --> 00:23:22.299 biology. If technology allows us to perfectly 00:23:22.299 --> 00:23:24.759 Photoshop the past, we have to wonder if we're 00:23:24.759 --> 00:23:27.079 actually preserving history or just creating 00:23:27.079 --> 00:23:29.359 a highly convincing simulation of it. That is 00:23:29.359 --> 00:23:31.400 a heavy thought. Will we eventually lose the 00:23:31.400 --> 00:23:33.099 ability to tell the difference between what was 00:23:33.099 --> 00:23:35.440 originally real and what has been perfectly digitally 00:23:35.440 --> 00:23:38.140 remembered? That is a deeply wild thought to 00:23:38.140 --> 00:23:40.700 end on. As the tools to rebuild our past get 00:23:40.700 --> 00:23:43.480 sharper, the line between reality and simulation 00:23:43.480 --> 00:23:46.680 gets beautifully, terrifyingly thin. Keep mulling 00:23:46.680 --> 00:23:48.920 that over and keep diving deep. We'll catch you 00:23:48.920 --> 00:23:49.359 next time.