A treat for all you NZ Ringers: Sir Ian McKellen was interviewed for last Sunday’s Backch@t with Bill Ralston, and it’s being repeated at 11pm on Thursday, on TV1.
According to our correspondent, the interview with Sir Ian was recorded at the opening of the OutTakes Film Festival in Wellington. It included a brief chat after his speech about all the New Zealanders involved in the production – a good thing in his opinion. He also discussed the state of television in New Zealand, decrying a lack of quality. In the snippits of his opening speech he talked about the makeup process for Gandalf taking several hours and requiring early starts and late evenings, and joked about his movements between makeup and filming.
Thanks to Jake for that.
Month: June 2000
Super Ringer Spy Altariel strikes Olympic GOLD with these photos of PJ bearing the torch:
We arrived in Wellington’s small Civic Square on a very grey and cold winter’s afternoon. There were only about twenty or so people around and a suspiciously jazzy looking band was setting up to entertain us and keep us from scuttling away to our warm holes… [more]
From Ringer Spy Altariel:
We arrived in Wellington’s small Civic Square on a very grey and cold winter’s afternoon.There were only about twenty or so people around and a suspiciously jazzy looking band was setting up to entertain us and keep us from scuttling away to our warm holes. After half an hour the band started playing and I suggested to my camera woman that she call loudly for a selection of Jimi Hendrix, a portly man walked passed and demanded first sausage from the barbeque. Now you’d think that this being the Olympic torch and all someone would have made an advertising effort, but no, there were few in the city who even knew it was going to happen let alone the details.
After an hour the handful of people grew to a crowd of around two hundred and as is customary for anything olympic related there were many school kids, red, green, yellow, blue being marched around by excitable olympic committee members who seemed to be the only ones enjoying the music.
We waited a while as the grey and black cloaked officials wandered in and up the stairs to the stage where the cauldron was to be lighted by ways of Garreth Farr climbing a human ladder – never mind that the thing was only about two feet off the ground.Photographers started arriving and we took our place at our chosen photo spot and discussed the various obstacles involved in taking pictures in poor light conditions with a camera that can’t zoom.
Finally the jazz band stopped and a percussion band headed by torch bearer Garetth Farr began pounding out a distinctly pacific island beat. In the distance we could hear the Royal New Zealand Airforce band advancing towards the square.We watched and waited as the sound grew and small flags were thrust into our hands. Presently there came a lull in the drum beats and then the Airforce band exploded around the corner behind which could just be seen the olympic flame held aloft by a strange creature who appeared to be made up of fuzzy hair and glasses. I prodded my camera woman into action and clapped exitedly along with the rest of the crowd as PJ came into full view . I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a look of pride on a man’s face as was on PJ’s when the crowd started cheering and waving at him. He grinned widely and waved back as the procession stopped right in front of us and PJ honoured us with a big smile and a wonderful photograph. While the officials ranted on about the importance of such occasions the music swelled and the band parted letting PJ walk proudly toward the bottom of the steps to pass on the flame. Once done our hero slipped off before anyone knew what had happened, he was gone and the spell had broken. Gareth made his way to the cauldren without the aid of the human ladder and set it alight to the cheers of a somewhat warmer Wellington crowd.
Iwikau Village
Ringer Spy Ian sends us news and pictures from the set up at Iwikau Village, in Tongariro National Park. Seems to be a great place to shoot Mordor… Check it out! [More]
Just to clarify… the filming up at Tongariro is finished for the time being, but we’re still receiving Ian’s wonderful photo-essay in installments.
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.
You can catch Sean Bean (Boromir) in ‘Airborne’ on Cinemax. [More]