The set, visible from State Highway 2, could be for scenes involving a battle at Helm’s Deep. A minuature of the fortress has also been built for Peter Jackson’s $360 million trilogy.

Filming is being spread among Wellington, Queenstown, and other areas including Waikato.

Producer Tim Sanders said he could not confirm details about the sets and filming locations.

Man, it’s come a long way from when I first scouted it out (way back in September). As far as I can tell there are 3 tiers of walls. The first one was kinda obscured by a hill, so I couldn’t really see much of it. The second one was the most impressive, you could see the entire thing from the motorway (and I’m sure many a driver has almost colided with another car due to staring at the set!).

It appears to look like a wall has been built into the rocky surface, and then the rocky surface gives way to about 5 “holes in the walls”, otherwise known as caves. This will probably be the holes that the “reserves” will appear out of. All of this is a rather dull black colour, not unlike the look of scorched rocks.

This tier is about 10 meters (30 feet) away and above the first tier, and is accessable via a dirt path (which
I think was created by vehicles going to and from the different levels). I don’t think this path will be shown in the movie, opting instead to show access via the afore mentioned “cave” route.

Above the second tier, the third tier, on angle to the first two, so that I could only see the side of it, with
the “rocky” side of it facing the rotunda.