I'd forgotten that The Hobbit, Peter Jackson's two-part prequel to his Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy, was being shot in 3D. Way back in the days of yore, when Guillermo del Toro was still directing, the Mexican film-maker made his opposition pretty clear to any attempt to force him into stereoscope. Jackson's latest video blog highlights just how much he and his team are focusing their energies on getting the 3D right for the new films, the first of which arrives next December.

With the technology still in its relative infancy, it's perhaps unsurprising that some of the stereoscopic cameras look positively archaic. I wonder if in a few decades time we'll look back and laugh at the ridiculous measures required to reach the required level of immersion.

We're also treated to some techie insight into shooting 3D at 48 frames per second, twice the usual rate for cinema. Apparently this required the film-makers to paint Mirkwood in bright red and yellow so that the final shots of the famous forest ended up with a slightly hallucinogenic effect.

Jackson himself admits that it's pretty difficult for anyone watching his post to get much of an idea how great they are going to look in the final frame, but it's encouraging to see the level of behind-the-scenes preparation going into the movie. Will audiences and critics even notice? Probably not. Film-makers seem to be far more obsessed than filmgoers with technical innovations these days. With the hype surrounding this project, one suspects people will still turn up in their droves next December to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, even if it turns out Jackson shot it on 8mm.