LOTR wins costume design Oscar

3.30pm

Ngila Dickson and Richard Taylor have won the Oscar for Best Costume Design for The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King.

Dickson was also nominated for her costume design on The Last Samurai, part of which was filmed in Taranaki.

She thanked the film's director Peter Jackson, his partner Fran Walsh, and film producer Barrie Osborne, as well as her wardrobe crew.

"(They're) an unbelievable group of people who stuck with us through thick and thin, five long years of film making."

Taylor thanked his team at Wellington's Weta Workshop for helping bring the designs to life.

"Everyone who's supported us through the last seven years, I thank you so much."

Taylor paid special tribute to his partner, Tania Rodger.

"Tania, my partner, the young girl who at the age of 13 I bought two live rats as my first present to her. You're still with me, what a great treat."

Backstage, Taylor said he would be putting this Oscar on show at Weta Workshop.

"The only place to put an Academy Award is where the whole team can share in it, so it will go proudly at Weta."

Dickson paid tribute to what she called "a fantastic ensemble cast" for showing off her costumes to such effect, and the backstage team.

"That was one of the best things about Lord Of The Rings. We worked so closely together, you would go from one building to the next to find out how a part of the film was developing, and I think without that collaboration... I doubt we could have achieved what we did.

"Access to Peter over this period of time was really difficult. He was under so much pressure, it was better we tried to come up with the answers, so we were a very close bunch of people."

Taylor echoed Dickson's thoughts on how closely the team who brought Lord Of The Rings to the screen worked.

"When you're trying to realise the visual images of a single author, that author is a single mind. The problem with film, of course, is it disperses that vision, so the tighter the group can work the more close-knit the vision from the group, the closer you'll compliment the original literature.

"We appreciated that from the outset, we've been blessed by the opportunity to bring Tolkien's writing to the screen so therefore it was very important we went into it with an incredible spirit of unity and camaraderie."

- NZPA


- NZPA