Listening to this interview Tim did with Richard at Wētā, I was really struck by what Richard had to say about the scale of the Gallipoli exhibition in Wellington. He was talking about the level of detail they went to get every detail perfectly accurate and in alignment with the larger than life vision.
To match the 2.5x scale of the people, they went to extreme efforts:
Because to make a larger costume you have to find a sheep with a two and a half times larger denier of hair density to what was used for the real costumes. And then you’ve got to weave it. You’ve got to loom it, and then weave it, and then build it into costumes. You can’t just use a sewing machine because the stitching won’t be big enough. And on and on and on it goes.
It would have been so easy to not go to that level of effort and detail. But I just love how Richard has linked the painstaking detail and process to respect for the purpose of the art:
We take it to that degree because you are trying to pay a depth of respect to the memory of the people. And if you shortchange the effort, you’ve shortchanged the respect to those people. These are veterans, right? They’re returned servicemen or men that lost their lives in service to our country. So what is it to us to make that extra 10 percent to try and get it as good as we can possibly get it?
This is such an excellent example of a purpose in action. A clear and passionate purpose will allow us to get to the extremes of what is possible in our work.
