Many of us weren’t at Comic-Con this year, and many of us felt a range of emotions about it. Oddly enough, there were a lot of people in San Diego sharing that same exact range of emotions. For those who didn’t get to make the trip and sleep on a hotel floor just to wait on a grass lawn for 5 hours in order to see a few scraps of footage, we missed out on at least one amazing thing: work from The Hobbit lovingly displayed by Peter Jackson.

But despair no longer! In his latest production blog (and, seriously, isn’t it amazing that he takes the time and energy to share the process so intimately with fans?), Jackson brings us all to San Diego with him and delivers the visual goods. That includes some behind-the-scenes greetings from a few soon-to-be-familiar faces.

Check out the video for yourself:

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Part 1 in a 47-part series) is due out December 14th. Hopefully we’ll get a few more production videos between now and then because they’ve all been fascinating.