New Zealand Road-Trip: Part Six

Now it's been very clear that you've been wondering about the Lord of the Rings scenery I've seen while traveling around New Zealand. Well, up to this point, I hadn't seen any specific locations. But that changed on the next day of our trip. The next three days were all about Lord of the Rings! Here we go!
Wellington Tour
Alex and I treated ourselves to the full-day tour, but before we saw any locations, we received an interesting bit of information: the mountains from the movies are from the South Island. That's right, the same island we just left. That means the mountains we had been seeing for about a week now are the ones from the movies. Isn't that neat?
Helm's Deep/Minas Tirith

No, Minas Tirith and Helm's Deep are not actually there. In this quarry, both the Helm's Deep set and the Minas Tirith set were set up. However, not the entire buildings were set up. In the movies, for full shots of Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith were made by creating 'bigatures' (big miniatures) and shooting them with South Island mountains put in the background. For scenes with people (and not when they can see Helm's Deep or Minas Tirith in the distance), a set was made that was about two-stories tall. At the time of shooting, Wellington citizens did not know that the quarry was being used for these movies, that is until people saw actors driving around with Uruk-hai makeup on. After that incident, the buses had darker windows.

The River Anduin

 'Now wait a minute, Drew' you're asking, 'The River Anduin is surrounded on both sides by tall cliff-sides. Why would you lie to me? Is it something I said? Do I smell?' First, yes, you do. Please shower more often. Second, this location was used for the close-up shots of Aragorn and Boromir. The shots of one of them are mirrored (I don't remember which).
Now how did they get shots of hobbits with these regular-sized characters? A few tricks actually. The hobbits were put in a bigger boat to look smaller than they actually are. When you see hobbits talking and there's a person in the background, it's actually an extremely tall person in that character's costume (notice that his face is not shown). When a taller character is talking and hobbits are also seen in the boat, the hobbits are actually dummies (and they're also replicas).
Some of the other parts of the River Anduin are in South Island, near Queenstown. Apparently, we drove by it during our travels. Oops.
Rivendell
Trivia: This is the only location (besides the Shire) that has a sign referring to what it is.

Aragorn finds romance here. No, wait, that was a set after it didn't work here

I think Frodo's room was here

Elrond lived here, in the grass. It's comfy

There was some Rivendell over here

Those in relationships may want to avert their eyes, for this picture is simply too attractive. You ready? Are you sure?

Yeah, that's right

Let's test your LOTR knowhow: Which character also had pictures taken at this tree, and what movie was it for?
???

The above 3 pictures are all from the same LOTR location. I have 3 questions for you:

1. What location is this?
2. What scene are we doing?
3. Which character am I?

While here, we learned several movie facts that may give you hints on the questions. My character rides into this location through a gate, which was filmed using a small gate and a perspective trick. Also, the location has been mirrored because the 'good guy' (which I'm playing) needs to appear in the scene from a certain side of the screen.

Wellington Sights

On the way to the next major location, we stopped at a scenic view of Wellington. Needless to say (but I'm saying it), it's expensive to live here.

Outer Shire ('Shortcut to Mushrooms')

The 500 km tumble

No, this is not the Shire (yet). This scene was shot 500 km away from the shire set. In fact, when the hobbits start falling, they are in Matamata, but this shot of them falling is in Wellington, 500 km south.

Who am I in each of these pictures? A clue for the second one: there is supposed to be a CGI (I think it was CGI) tree over us while the Black Rider searches. Also, if you watch this scene from Fellowship, you'll notice that the Black Rider seemingly appears from nowhere in the shot, since he didn't come from the right side of the tree. This was not on purpose.

The Black Rider appears!

But where's the tree that hung over the Black Rider? More CGI? No, that was a perspective trick. Don't be stupid. Also, did you notice the Black Rider doesn't have visible breath, but his horse does? The horse is supposed to appear alive, but the Black Rider isn't. Did they edit out the breath? Wrong again (you're really bad at this). The Black Rider was using a long snorkel that ran down the back of his cloak so that his breath wouldn't appear in the shot.

Running hobbits

 This location is where Frodo, Merry, Pipen, and Sam run away from the Black Rider. But why is Sam only in some of the shots? It's a funny story.

When Sean Astin got the part of Sam, he was what I would call 'Sam size', slightly portly like many hobbits. But before shooting started for LOTR, Sean Astin decided to get fit, and he did. This did not please Peter Jackson. So Peter Jackson changed Sean Astin's diet to doughnuts and KFC before starting shooting. Sean Astin quickly became 'Sam sized' again. However, this new diet was (obviously) not very healthy for Sean, so he was physically unable to run in every shot, especially since Peter Jackson likes to shoot extra shots for good measure.

Lunch Break

I neglected to tell you that during this entire tour, I was slowly starving to death. You see, the morning of the tour, Alex and I underestimated how long it would take to find a good (as in free) parking spot for our car, so we skipped breakfast (besides a mueseli bar). The tour bus picked us up at 8:30 am and lunch was scheduled for about 1 pm. What's worse, our tour guide gave us a snack after showing us Rivendell, but the snacks were brownies and muffins. Both of those have milk in them. But eventually, lunch time arrived.

Between the times of those 2 pictures, we drove by Peter Jackson's house. It was smaller than I imagined, but it had nice architecture and it was by the water. We were asked to not take pictures of his house.

This is where we had lunch. I had 'Smeagol's Salmon Benedict' and a feijoa fizzy-drink. Interestingly enough, a feijoa fizzy-drink tastes exactly like sparkling-cider. Who knew? You didn't. That's who.

WETA

WETA made many of the LOTR props among other movies (such as District 9). We got to tour a gift-shop and one of their offices. That feeling welling up inside you is jealousy, by the way.

I'm a great photographer! Turituri!

Most of these things were for sale (including the statues, I think). Along with browsing and brewing desire for collectables, we were shown an exclusive movie talking about WETA's origins (which is fuzzy) and their all-around awesomeness. Following the gift-shop tour, we were lead through one of WETA's offices. We learned their design process and saw many of the original props from LOTR. That is except for Aragorn's sword. Viggo Mortenson used a real sword in his scenes (including ones in which he was holding a sword straight up with one hand), unlike the other actors. So that's cool.

That concluded our Wellington LOTR tour, but those weren't the only LOTR sights we saw in New Zealand, or even that week.

Bonus: Embassy

Before we left Wellington, we stopped by a local movie theatre. In fact, this was the movie theatre used for the world premiere of Return of the King and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Also, this thing was outside

Since I'm writing this from the San Francisco airport and my flight boards in 20 minutes (or so), I'm going to stop this post here. Never fear, I will finish this road-trip and I plan on continuing the blog because there are many things I didn't even mention. Until then, cheers.