Glenorchy Air Photo Essay
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Robert Rutherford writes: You may be interested in a photo essay we took on our three ring tour of the locations of Lord of the Rings.

The star of this production is our brand new aeroplane that we have registered LOR in honor of our time working on the LOR films here in New Zealand. This was the first time that we have been able to use the new aircraft on our long tour. The photos depict as follows

“Rohan 1” LOR and our company at the Poolburn Rohan location. From where we parked the aeroplane is a five minute walk to what we now call the Uruk-Hai gorge where Pippin drops the lothlorien clasp and Aragorn finds it. We then followed the “Orc trail” to the “Rohan village” This set is about the only one left in New Zealand of which some remains. It was here that the Rohan mother puts her children on the horse and tells them to ride to Edoras. We then flew to the Edoras location at MT Potts where we had lunch with “Marie Clair Desbough”, she and her husband Mark own the station on which Edoras was constructed After lunch we took to the air again and flew past

“Edoras/Mt Sunday” The backdrop of this photo is the Two Thumb range into which was inserted Helms Deep as a CGI. We then flew onto the”Pelennor Fields” location where we landed smack bang in the middle of the location that will I am sure be the most monumental cinema battle ever filmed. We then walked across to the grip road from which the cavalry charges were filmed. I still remember well first visiting this site with Barry Osbourne back in 2000 when it was decided exactly where to build this road.

The cast and extras must have had a pretty rough time filming these scenes as the ground is still scattered here and there with the bits of the plastic scales torn from the armour they wore. The last photo of the set is ” Pelennor Fields battle field” taken from the air you can see quite clearly the straight lines of the grip road and airstrip.

We are all looking forward to the release of the film in Dec.