Oscar for Kim Sinclair

Auckland production designer Kim Sinclair won the Academy Award for Art Direction on Avatar with American colleagues Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg. “Each virtual set had trees and plants that were moveable, like real props. When director James Cameron finally signed off on the digital version, Sinclair and his team at Peter Jackson’s Weta integrated real props into the virtual backgrounds. Some film sets, Sinclair said, can cost $7,000 per second of footage, but a few sets can be a staggering $50,000 per second.” An architecture graduate from the University of Auckland, Sinclair film work includes The Last Samurai, The Legend of Zorro, Cast Away, and Willow; his New Zealand film credits include Under the Mountain, Black Sheep and Quiet Earth.