Galadriel’s recent report on the sets for Rivendell and Helm’s Deep in the old chemical warehouse in Miramar sparked my interest, because not two days before I was talking to a contractor who had delivered “some stuff” to an indoor set in Miramar, and got to hang around and watch the Maori blessing on the site. (Why? I don’t know. I didn’t know there was a tapu on chemical warehouses.)
My contact described a set that looked like a large amphitheatre the height of a two-storey house and maybe 30 metres across, paved with stone and apparently made of stone, though as usual it was polystyrene. There would have been room for a hundred people or more. At the top of the tiers there were carved faces looking inwards, with beards, he thought. I asked about crowns but he didn’t think so. The surrounding walls were all blacked out so they wouldn’t show up during filming.
That was all he saw.
There’s no real use for something like this at Helm’s Deep, but no reason why the Council of Elrond couldn’t be held in such a structure, so maybe this is one of the sets that Galadriel was talking about. Though probably not the one they’re filming in first, if Elrond’s only just been cast.