LOTR Ultimate Movie Tour

The Lord of the Rings Ultimate Movie Tour was Thursday’s all day activity--I’ve told you that we are fans! We walked to our designated pickup spot and were picked up by Ted in his video and sound equipped van promptly at 10 AM. Many different scenes from the movies were filmed in different areas in and around greater Wellington. Ted drove us to the spots, showed us movie clips from the exact places we were standing (carried a laptop with him for that purpose), provided props for those of us wanting to pose as hobbits or other characters, and fed us with all kinds of “insider” tidbits. We enjoyed a sub sandwich lunch at a sunny picnic table in Rivendell a.k.a. Kaitoke Regional Park near Upper Hutt.

Legolas??

Sando and Markwise have a pipe while Markwise makes supper

the movie scene

our re-creation of the scene

how it was done by us :-)

At the end of the tour, he took us to Mirimar, a suburb of Wellington. Peter Jackson has multiple film studios there. It is also home to Weta Workshop. According to the company homepage, the name comes from “...New Zealand's coolest little monster, a bizarre and prickly prehistoric cricket…”. WW did the special effects, digital visual effects, costumes, weaponry, and “bigature” (Weta Workshop's nickname for a very large miniature model) for the LOTR movies as well as King Kong, the Narnia movies, and Avatar. We visited the Weta Cave which is museum and shop combined. (FYI, for those who know the book/comic series, one WW project now underway will be a film production of Tin Tin.)

Ted dropped us off after dark. We had a blast!!