Christian Rivers

Christian Rivers began his screen career drawing images of zombie carnage for Peter Jackson classic Braindead. Since then his career has been closely intertwined with Jackson's. After designing creatures on The Lord of the Rings, Rivers won an Oscar for his visual effects contributions to the 2005 remake of King Kong. These days he concentrates on directing: after assisting on The Hobbit, he helmed moody short film Feeder (2015). At one point tied to a possible Dambusters remake, Rivers makes his movie debut with post-apocalyptic epic Mortal Engines, based on the award-winning book by Brit Philip Reeve.  

Peter [Jackson] would describe the shots for the film and I'd sketch them. Now we have a team of people, and rather than storyboard it, we discuss the scenes and the action and we animate in 3D... Christian Rivers on changes in how movies are previsualised before the start of filming, in 2005 book The Making of King Kong, by Jenny Wake