Aliquippa native Joe Letteri, once again nominated for a best visual effects Oscar, is headed to the Academy Awards ceremony tonight. While the nomination is exciting, Letteri says, "there's a lot of competition" and therefore no guarantee of taking home the golden statuette.
"All the work was really good," Letteri says of the competition in the special-effects category. "With 'Hugo,' the train; and in 'The Transformers,' the robots. ... People vote for what they see, and all the movies did well. It's difficult for people to judge visual effects."
Letteri, 54, and his team from Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand, where Letteri now lives, are nominated for "Rise of the Planet of the Apes." The movie depicts a chimpanzee with human intelligence, raised among humans, who leads a revolution of apes against humans after he is placed in captivity. The Academy Award-nominated Weta team also includes Dan Lemmon, R. Christopher White and Daniel Barrett.
A graduate of Center Area High School in Beaver County, Letteri made his first trip to the Oscars in 2003, when he and his Weta team won the special effects Oscar for "The Two Towers," the second "Lord of the Rings" movie. Weta was co-founded by "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson. Letteri went on to win three more, for "The Return of the King" in 2004; the remake of "King Kong" in 2006; and "Avatar" two years ago. He and the Weta team also were nominated in 2005 for best visual effects in "I, Robot" but did not win.
The Weta team and Letteri are known in the film industry for their expertise in creating visual landscapes and capture-motion or performance technology. The motion technology uses sensors attached to a real actor's face and body to transmit data to a computer. The technicians used this data to create the realistic motions of the apes, the Na'vi aliens of "Avatar" and Gollum, the ring-obsessed villain of the "Lord of the Rings" movies.
Jackson hired the same person, English actor Andy Serkis, for the motion technology for Gollum, King Kong and Caesar the ape in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."
"Andy was our first choice for Caesar," Letteri says. "His performance really carried the day."
The Weta team also worked on Steven Spielberg's "The Adventures of Tintin," an animated movie based on a series of Belgian comic books, about a young international adventurer.
While the special effects in "Tintin" were impressive, the movie was not nominated except for its music because it "sort of fell through the cracks," Letteri says. He says the special-effects branch of the Academy of Arts and Sciences did not nominate the movie because it was animated, and the animated movies category members did not nominate "Tintin" because it used performance technology.
Weta Digital is now working on "The Hobbit," the prequel to "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, and on portions of three other films including "Man of Steel," a Superman movie.
Letteri, who earned a degree at the University of California at Berkeley, worked at Industrial Light & Magic, the special-effects company of "Star Wars" creator George Lucas. Peter Jackson then hired him to work on "The Two Towers," and he has stayed with Weta Digital, which now employs 1,000 people in New Zealand.
While Letteri is hoping to win an Oscar, he says being nominated is "great. It's a nice validation of the work you do."
Other Pittsburgh ties
⢠"Warrior," which was filmed in Pittsburgh, didn't get a best-picture nod, but actor Nick Nolte is nominated for best supporting actor for his role as a recovering alcoholic who agrees to train his resentful son for a mixed martial arts competition.
⢠Pittsburgh most tenuous tie to the Oscars is through best-actress nominee Rooney Mara. The 26-year-old newcomer is the great-granddaughter of Steelers founder Art Rooney Sr.
