Peter Jackson to be Honoured by IBC

The IBC2013 International Honour for Excellence, the highest award IBC bestows, will go to New Zealand film director Sir Peter Jackson. He is currently completing the second part of The Hobbit Trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug.

The IBC International Honour for Excellence is presented each year to an outstanding individual or organisation which has fostered, contributed to or built upon the relationship between technology and creativity. Recent recipients have included the Science and Technology Research Laboratories of Japanese national broadcaster NHK and Sir David Attenborough.

The award is in the gift of the IBC Council. Chairman Peter Owen said, "In the world of the cinema, few directors have pushed the technology barrier harder or farther than Sir Peter." His life was changed at the age of nine when he first saw the 1933 movie King Kong and vowed to remake it. He set about learning the skills of movie-making and effects, always pushing himself on to ever-more elaborate effects.

Sir Peter Jackson's movies have now won 20 Oscars, four Golden Globes and 14 Baftas among many other awards. As well as The Lord of the Rings trilogy and his current project, The Hobbit Trilogy, in 2005 he achieved his ambition of remaking King Kong, a movie which contributed three of the Oscars.

He continually drives technology forward to help him tell stories more engagingly. For The Hobbit he has adopted high frame rate production and presentation to make the 3D more engaging and immersive. Of his continual quest, he said, "I set my team these challenges, but I know the real discussions between them and their key suppliers start at IBC.

"I am particularly delighted to accept the IBC International Honour for Excellence, because those conversations which happen every year at IBC are critical to the future of our industry," he continued. "Thank you, IBC, for this award, and long may you be the place where story-tellers and technologists can meet."

The IBC2013 International Honour for Excellence forms the climax of the Awards Ceremony, to be held at 18:30 on Sunday 15 September. The ceremony is open to all IBC visitors.