There's an interesting interview on Lord of the Rings fan website The One Ring with Guillermo del Toro, who is moving down to New Zealand for the next four years to make two movies from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.

As this MTV interview illustrates, there's much debate among Tolkien fans as to whether the Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy director is the right man for the job. Personally I can't think of anyone better to helm a fantasy epic such as The Hobbit, especially with Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh in the executive producer roles.

But the TheOneRing interview suggests Del Toro will take a different approach to movie making when it comes to technology.

Take this comment for example:

"The only thing I will be pushing for more in these films than the other three are full animatronics and animatronic creatures enhanced with CGI, as opposed to CGI creatures themselves. We really want to take the state-of-the-art animatronics and take a leap ten years into the future with the technology we will develop for the creatures in the movie," said Del Toro.

"We have every intention to do for animatronics and special effects what the other films did for virtual reality," he added.

What are animatronics? This article gives a good outline, but if you've ever been to the Universal Studios back lot in Los Angeles and seen the old shark from Jaws lunge out of the water at the trolley bus you travel around the park in, you'll have an idea of what the technology entails. We're talking about mechanised puppets that are robotically controlled.

Stephen Spielberg's Jurassic Park movies really pushed the use of animatronics forward, creating some of the most life-like creatures to hit the screen up to that point. Peter Jackson has used animatronics before, but his approach with the Lord of the Rings movies and King Kong relied more heavily on motion capture - remember Andy Serkis running around in that wetsuit with the balls all over it as he acted out the parts of first Gollum, then Kong?

Weta and Peter Jackson became world famous at motion capture and laying the visual effects over the computer generated simulations. Who can forget the detailing and expression of Kong's face?

But some directors feel animatronics give a more naturalistic, convincing look. Del Toro used animatronics in Pan's Labyrinth to great effect. It now looks like he plans to scale back on the CGI and motion capture elements for The Hobbit and get his team creating some mechanical animals.

Also of interest is Del Toro's flattering take on New Zealand as a production location: "I really love how they have that setup in New Zealand, I call it 'Hollywood the way God intended it'. New Zealand has all the technical advantages when doing a big movie and you are shooting it in paradise, both in terms of artistic freedom and commitment," he told TheOneRing.

You can't get much more of a glowing endorsement than that!

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