Ringer Spy Ian checks in with the latest filming going on at Tongariro National Park. check out the cool pics and some commentary!
Problem: Iwikau Village – great view, no street lights.
Apparently always game to cart around more equipment, PJ’s crew strung out long ropelights along the pathways up to ski lodges on the slopes around Iwikau Village used for accomodation.
Extremely pretty, really. They even used them to light the path up to one of the Mordor film scenes while they were packing up. When they were finished putting everything else away for the evening they simply coiled up the ropelights, and were making good progress when the ropelights were turned off. (After that it was little hard to tell what was happening out in the darkness.) Mead’s Wall is at the right of the first very dark picture, behind the floodlight.
Mead’s Wall, by the way, is a reasonable sized cliff very handy to the Mordor filming location that could very easily be used to film scenes such as (for example) where Frodo and Samwise climb down a cliff then Samwise pulls the rope down on top of himself.
But I keep mentioning Mordor filming. Hmmm.
When I first arrived at Mt Ruapehu filming of a huge battle scene was in progress on the side of the road. No photos of that were allowed, but on a later date I returned to get an overview of the location.
On the filming day I had very graciously been allowed to climb the slope behind the filming to get a fantastic view of hundreds of Orc, Elf, and Human extras rushing into battle and having huge amounts of fun, against the biggest bluescreen I’ve ever seen. It ran along the road edge, as indicated in this photo. It may even have been longer than I’ve shown here.
Mordor filming, Mt Ruapehu-style. The huge banks of orange lights were apparently not to counter the strong blue sky, but to give the filming an evil colour (such as beneath a thick smoke layer in Mordor).
One very strange thing was the character a little to the right of the white screen. I believe it was a woman in costume, picking up a large flat object. The strange part was that she looked like she had a tail – I thought it didn’t quite seem to move like a scabbard would. Looks like Hobbit folk in the foreground.
