Wellington

My first night in Wellington started with a pub crawl around some of the Irish bars so my first full day started quite late.

I stayed in Base Wellington which was very dissapointing. After staying in Auckland and Rotorua at Base which I thought were really good I thought Base Wellington would be more of the same - I was wrong! The staff were strange - one guy marked the Base location on a map for me and I was glad I had marked some other stuff on there from the Lonely Planet as he had marked it about 3 streets away. My door key card stopped working a grand total of 7 times and the Kitchen was rancid (rant over!)

I had good room mates in the hostel - an Irish lad and a guy from Chile. One day the Irish lad a girl friend visiting and he was joking because his bed was a mess and I'd made mine all neat and tidy. However I have learned my lesson that a tidy bed is not a good idea in a hostel - when I returned that night at first I thought no-one was in the room until I looked down on my bunk and there was a new bloke fast asleep in my bed!! I managed to wake him up and get him shifted onto the empty bunk(he was drunk and very confused which was quite entertaining!)but now I always leave the bed unmade and my pack on top!!

I headed for the Lord of the Rings exhibition at the Te Papa museum. It was pretty good exhibition with costumes and models from the film as well as loads of concept art. There was also video clips featuring the actors as well as some from the special effects guys telling you how some of the effects were created. There was a lot of stuff about how they made the hobbit actors look small using camera techniques.

Other stuff I saw included:

A huge model of Minas Tirith which had been created for longshots but had been so good that they had used it for close up panning shots.

A lifesize model of Boromir dead lying in the boat - Weta the special effects company had to make this model after the main filming was complete as Jackson wanted a shot of the boat being launched onto the river and it was not possible to get Sean Bean back to New Zealand.

A Cave Troll model smashing through a wall.

A Tree Beard model and a presentation about how they had combined the model with digitally animated footage.

There was also a section on "Massive" a program created especially for the films. The program allows huge armies to fight on the screen without the need to animate each soldier separately. Each digital soldier is assigned a behaviour pattern and can move and react independently.

The next day I had a bit of time to walk around Wellington. I caught the cable car up to the botanic garden and walked around the parks and gardens back down into the city. In the afternoon I went back to the Te Papa museum which is free!

Some of the stuff I saw:

Blood Earth Fire - about how the landscape of New Zealand has changed since the arrival of the first settlers.

Awesome Forces - The story of New Zealand’s dramatic landscape and the part that earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the weather play in its shaping.

Mountains to Sea - New Zealand's diverse range of creatures and plants.

Bush City - which takes you outside on a short walk through a recreated natural world.

The Marae - a carved meeting place mixing traditional Moari carving with more modern design.

One of the strangest things I saw was a film about the key moments in the life of New Zealand. You enter the 'theatre' through an old junk shop and the items in the junk shop come alive as the film plays!

Theres also loads of stuff on Moari history and the culture of the Pacific Islands.

On my last day in Wellington I did the Wellington Movie tour.

There was only 4 of us on this tour which took us out to see some of the Lord of the Rings filming locations around Wellington.

We left the centre of the city and travelled north through the Hutt Valley, stopping along the way to see where the Mines of Moria, Dead Marshes, Flooded Isengard, Osgiliath and Court of the Kings scenes were filmed. The first stop was very dissapointing as the site was just a car park and could have been anywhere really.

Fortunately after this the tour improved as we headed for Harcourt Park. Here we saw wherewhere Gandalf rode Shadowfax to meet with Saruman at the Tower of Orthanc, and where the two wizards talked in the garden. The guide had a laptop to show us the scenes so we could see exactly how the location was used.

We moved on to Kaitoke Regional Park stopping by the Hutt River North to see were the "Aragorn Washed Ashore" and "Departure of Boromir" scenes were filmed.

The Kaitoke Regional Park was were the Rivendell set was built and there are signs marking the way to the site.

The first picture is me chopping down the "Legolas tree" using a genuine Orc axe! The tree was used for promotional shots of the film - Legolas stands in front of it to shoot his bow.



We stopped at Rivendell for lunch and did a small walk around the park.

We then headed back towards Wellington City and stopped at the Dry Creek Quarry where the Helms Deep and Minas Tirith sets were built.

Back in Wellington we visited Mt Victoria for a walk in the woods to see where scenes including the Outer Shire, Hobbiton Woods, Dunharrow Plateau and Weathertop were filmed. This photo ("Get off the Road!")is where Frodo looks back up the road just before the Black Rider approaches.



During the tour we also drove through "Wellywood" where Park Road Post, Weta Workshop and Stone St Studios are based. When we passed Stone St Studios there was a big blue screen up in the lot where they were getting ready to film something no sign of any stars though!

We stopped at a wharf close to the studios where we saw the SS Venture used in King Kong.



From Wellington I headed North back up towards Auckland. The first stop on the way was Napier.