Weta's visual effects team wins Bafta for Avatar

Four digital effects artists from Weta Digital have taken home Baftas, capping off a winning weekend for New Zealand film.

In London, Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew Jones accepted the British Academy of Film and Television Award for Special Visual Effects, recognising their work on Avatar.

Back in New Zealand, visual effects supervisor Eric Saindon said yesterday that there was a lot of excitement around the Weta Digital office when news of the win came through by text message.

"Everyone's pretty ecstatic about it, it's pretty fun to get this award."

Weta Digital spent three years on the film, which features a computer-generated world and race.

Saindon said creating a believable world from scratch was an immense challenge, but the end product was a sign of director James Cameron's vision.

"He made this world that everyone wanted to go see."

The 3D film has made more than $2 billion worldwide since it opened in December.

The team is also nominated for an Oscar next month.

Michael Hedges, Brent Burge, Chris Ward, Dave Whitehead and Ken Saville were up for the best sound award for their work on District 9, but lost out to The Hurt Locker.

Burge said it was a thrill to be nominated as the sound team was entirely Kiwi. "This was the first time that a wholly New Zealand crew has been recognised."

There was also a consolation prize for the team, which won the Motion Picture Sound Editors best sound editing award for a foreign film, he said. "We were really stoked by that."

That award went to the whole crew, not just the five nominated for the Bafta.

Ward said that award was a big achievement, since it was awarded by industry peers.

"Especially on such a low budget flick like District 9."

The sound team has missed out on an Oscar nomination.

The Baftas came after a successful weekend in which three Kiwi films were honoured at the closing awards ceremony of the 60th Berlin International Film Festival.

Taika Waititi's film Boy was awarded the Best Feature Film; Tom Burstyn's documentary This Way Of Life was runner-up in the Generation Section; and Mark Albiston and Louis Sutherland's short The Six Dollar Fifty Man, received a special mention in the short-film section.

- © Fairfax NZ News