TheOneRing.net and Red Carpet Tours is celebrating the 5th anniversary of the release of The Return of the King with a cruise to where it all began. Be among the first to join us on Celebrity’s Millenium as she sails for 14 nights from Auckland, New Zealand to Sydney, Australia, leaving on November 23, 2008. Red Carpet Tours has customized a Pre-Cruise tour for us and come up with several day-long excursions to LOTR filming locations reachable from the ship. We want to know if you are interested in this cruise, so please click on the following link for more details. [Details]
Category: Tours
Recent travellers on Red Carpet’s Lord of the Rings locations tour have been wowed by a new guest attraction – none other than Brett Beattie, body double to Gimli. Tour chiefs Vic and Rae James say they’ve been fascinated by the stories Brett can tell from his long days on the set. Brett probably spent as much time as any of the actors filming up and down the whole country, and his recollections can hold a tour party spellbound. Check out tours
The March tour was so enthused by their tour experience that some members put together a messageboard for past, present and future LOTR tour parties to share their stories. [More]
Xoanon here, this morning my wife and I were lucky enough to get an advanced look at the new Lord of the Rings exhibit at the Te Papa Museum in Wellington, New Zealand.
The Te Papa Museum is the pride and joy of Wellington, boasting some half dozen events, it sits on Wellington Harbour like a jewel in a crown.
Housed on the fifth floor of the sprawling building this exhibit features something for everyone, costumes, weapons, bigatures and more. Each character from the story is given his or her own small section of the museum with costume displays, photos, props and other items seen in the film. TV screens at every stop play small clips from the DVD documentries that tie into the display. There was an entire room dedicated to armour from every race, hidden speakers gave us battle sounds from the film, and the mood lighting really got you into the spirit of the moment.
There was another section devoted totally to the One Ring. The ring insignia floated around the room as the One Ring floated in mid air. Another section housed the Minas Tirith bigature and the model of Bag End as seen by Frodo in Galadriel’s mirror.
The Elven boat that carried Boromir’s body was on display, with a dummy that looked uncannily like Sean Bean himself. Weapons were on display, both behind glass and others out in the open available for you to touch and feel.
One of the really neat touches was the forced perspective demonstration with two versions of Gandalf’s wagon, visitors are able to get a photo taken with a guest, one looking decidely Hobbit-sized.
My favorite model on display had to be the Corsair ship proudly displayed at the main entrance to the Te Papa Museum. It’s sails held high, this ‘miniature’ model looks seaworthy as is!
If you can get down to Wellington from now until August I highly encourage you to stop by and take a look!
Earlier this morning I was allowed access to the coolest place on earth, WETA Workshop. Located in a non-descript area of Wellington near the airport, this small groupings of offices and warehouses has produced some of the best practical and special effects seen in this century (and the last one too). Not only that, but it is also a digial studio, miniatures unit, production facility and more. If you’ve seen, held, or heard anything from Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Narnia and a few other films in the last few years, chances are it was made here.
My tour began with a meet and greet with Richard Taylor. Richard gave us a detailed background of WETA. From its humble beginnings to the huge powerhouse operation it is today, Richard outlined it all for us. The conference room at WETA HQ is most likely the most ‘polished’ place on the complex. It is filled wall to wall with photos, plaques and awards on one side, and the other side is full of WETA Collectible statues, busts and figures. One shelf in particular holds 5 golden Oscars that Richard proudly displays for all guests. He promptly took them out for us and passed them around. Richard was kind to take time out of his busy schedule (two cell phones that kept ringing) and was not short on words detailing their work on King Kong as well as LOTR and Narnia, easiest the three biggest projects they have taken on so far.
The details that went into the Skull Island people was so complexe that I felt I was listening to an anthropolgy course about real natives than a film production house. Richard and his team really work on these characters from the ground up to make sure they seem believeable to the movie going public.
We were next shown the WETA showreel. This, I assume, is shown to producers or toymakers or any sort of suit who need a quick demo of what WETA can do. All the ‘money’ shots from the LOTR Trilogy, King Kong and Narnia was seen on this video. We were given a great DVD copy to take home and enjoy as well.
Next we were introduced to an old friend of any TORN regular, Daniel Falconer. Daniel took us on the rest of the WETA tours. After saying goodbye to Richard we headed down into the main complex of the building that housed the metalworkers, leather area, paint, sculpt, models and more. The folks at WETA seem to pride themselves that they are still very down to earth, which in itself is kiwi philosophy. You can tell by walking around the complex that they don’t like to pamper themselves with things that will only get in the way of their work. However you can also see how proud they are of some of the major work they’ve accomplished. All along the buildings there are props, art and photos from earlier work. Swords and other weapons, maquettes, paintings, models, clothing, along every hallway and around every corner. I got the feeling they use it to inspire themselves to achieve even better and higher quality of work.
These days the team seems to be in between major projects. The buildings were not that busy today. Daniel assured us that during LOTR production people were working 24/7 on models, props and other things. Today we saw some great Narnia bookends they plan to have out by Christmas. We also saw one of the Venture ‘bigatures’ alongside a corsair ship being repaired for the grand opening at the Te Papa museum (It seemed very surreal to see those two together). There were also a few smaller jobs being worked on like a plane wing model and some sculpt work for a children’s feature.
WETA‘s latest pride and joy is a new computer animated feature called ‘Jane and the Dragon’. Canadian fans can currently see season one on YTV. We were given a tour of the digital studio they use to create the show, as well as the ‘mo-cap’ stage where they shoot the main characters. (Think of an entire show being made the same way they made Gollum and King Kong with Andy Serkis). We were then privy to a special few minutes of an as-yet unfinished episode of the show. I have seen the show on YTV before back home and think it’s a great show for kids. You can tell the folks at WETA are very proud of it.
That led us back to the main offices where we started. It really went WAY too fast and I know the folks with me and my wife wanted to hang out a bit more just to smell that air of creativity around the place.
I know a TON of fans have made the trek to Camerdown Street to see the studio and only managed to get a shot of the front door, so I feel extreemly lucky to be able to get down here and see a place I have only read about for years. Thanks to Richard Taylor and Daniel Falconer for the tour and special thanks to UBISOFT for the trip!
Haldirriel writes: My friends and I just returned from touring the north island of New Zealand. Whilst there, we were informed that Jane Abbott has some of the horses from the movie and offers tours. We were able to pet and take pictures of Asfaloth, Brego, Hasufel, Gandalph’s cart pony and 2 Ringwraith horses. Jane showed us pictures from filming and told stories. She welcomes tours and for more info you can go to the website moviehorsesnz.com. Our thanks to Jane & Karen for a wonderful and informative afternoon!!
Ben writes: Our mapping site – zoomin.co.nz has just released aerial photography of New Zealand. I thought you might be interested because you can use the maps to create a group of lord of the rings group and locate all the places that the film was shot. For example – here is wellington – where a lot of the filming for fellowship was done – Weta studios are also located here. Press the ‘aerial’ button to get aerial photography of Wellington. [More]