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Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana as her digital character Neytiri in a scene from the film Avatar - Source: Reuters -
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A team from Weta Digital in Wellington has won an Oscar for visual effects at the 82nd annual Academy Awards.
The team of Joe Letteri, Stephen Rosenbaum, Richard Baneham and Andrew R Jones won the Oscar for best visual effects for their work on the film Avatar.
The team won the Bafta award in the same category in London last month.
The movie's director of photography, Mauro Fiore, won the Oscar for best cinematography, thanking "everybody in New Zealand" in his acceptance speech.
Aucklander Kim Sinclair, the art director for Avatar, has also claimed an Oscar. Sinclair was one of four members of the Avatar arts team.
Wellington celebrates
Thousands of people gathered at The Loaded Hog in Wellington on Monday to watch the awards ceremony including the hundreds of Weta staff who worked on the film.
Visual Effects Supervisor Dan Lemmon says it is a significant day for the team, marking four years of hard work for around 8,000 people.
One of the company's visual effects supervisors on Avatar, Wayne Stables, told media that the team spent "too many hours probably" working on the film.
"But we all work together and that is one of the great things about our company and why we love working," he says.
"We are incredibly proud of everybody we work with."
Weta Digital is part of a number of companies in Wellington which includes Weta Workshop, Weta Productions, Weta Collectibles and Park Road Post Production that are co-owned by previous Oscar award winning director Peter Jackson.
It was founded by Jackson, Richard Taylor and Jamie Selkirk in
1993 to produce the digital special effects for Heavenly Creatures.
Letteri, its senior visual effects director, was also appointed a
director.
