Ringer Shalane recently went on a Red Carpet Tour. Between July 28th to August 8th, Shalane had the opportunity to wander New Zealand visiting many of the sets where the filming for Lord of the Rings occured.
I have just returned from a twelve-day tour of Middle-Earth (aka New Zealand) with the Red Carpet Movie Tour Company organized by Vic James. Our group of fourteen came from the US, the UK, Wales, Scotland, and Australia. Although this was the middle of New Zealand winter, the grace of the Valar gave us lovely weather, with only one or two overcast days.
I must say, this trip exceeded my wildest expectations! (And I had some pretty wild expectations, let me tell you!) It was, in a word, incredible! Vic has done an extraordinary job in researching the exact locations where filming took place, sometimes finding them himself by questioning the locals (many of whom worked as extras in the films), sometimes using Ian Brodie’s locations book, and sometimes by sheer determination and persistence.
Rather than a day-by-day detailed diary, I will list some of the places we visited, occasionally adding a comment. I do not wish to spoil the many surprises for those who might be going on a tour soon. So if you do not wish to know anything about the tour itinerary, STOP READING NOW!
Locations from “The Fellowship of the Ring”:
- Hobbiton (prepare to be blown away! Bag End and the Party Tree!)
- Mount Doom!
- The Anduin River
- The “Get Off The Road” site
- The “Flight To The Ford” site
- The place on the river where Sam and Frodo left the Fellowship
- Amon Hen (you can just imagine Aragorn fighting the Uruk-hai!)
- The Ford of Bruinen site (we were flown in by helicopter by a pilot who did many of the aerial shots and who flew the cast around)
Locations from “The Two Towers”:
- To Mordor! Emyn Muil (the place in the opening scene where we first see Frodo and Sam climbing up the mountainside….and, the spot where they both slept while Gollum crept down the cliff)
- The stream that Gollum swam down in pursuit of nice tasty fishesss
- Edoras (absolutely stunning! Be prepared to get wet; there are several streams to cross before hiking to the top of Edoras)
- Rohan and the village burned by the Wildmen (what business does an elf, a man, and a LOTR tour group have in the Riddermark?)
- The entrance to Fangorn Forest
- The site of the Warg attack and the cliff Aragorn fell over
Other notables: We stayed in many of the same hotels and ate at the same restaurants that the cast did. You can see the autographed T-shirts and the signed hotel registers on display. We also met many people who were extras (usually nasty orcses!) and who were willing to share their experiences. We got to see much of New Zealand since the tour took us from Auckland, Rotorua, and Wellington in the North Island to Christchurch, Te Anau, and Queenstown in the South Island.
This is the journey of a lifetime, folks! I cannot speak highly enough of Vic James and Red Carpet Movie Tours for putting this together for LOTR fans. For those on the December tour including the Premier of ROTK in Wellington, I am envious! Read the books, see the movies, and now, visit Middle-Earth yourselves! Elendil! – Shalane.
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Beh sends this in: Jon Labrie, former CTO at Weta Digital – who masterminded the digitalarchitecture behind the Lord of the Rings films.
Meet the Tech Wizard Behind Lord of theRings at Content World 2003
Jon Labrie, former CTO at WetaDigital – who masterminded the digital architecture behind the Lord of theRings films – is looking forward to meeting you at Content World in LA. Jon will be drawing on his experience with Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema to discuss the process of creating content for multiple delivery systems: film, DVD and Web, as well as examine the logical progression to his new venture, Kedidi Wireless.
Jon’s keynote presentation, “Something in the Air: Content for a Mobile Audience” is at10:30am on Wednesday, October 8.
To see the full agenda, and takeadvantage of early bird registration click here.
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Cinthia writes: I’m here to give a terrible news to all Latinamerican fans. Once again we receive a dissapointment. HBO Ole without any explanation has cancelled the showing of the extended LotR-FotR, they will show only the theatrical version. They even have erased the last paragraphs in their site which stated that it was going to be the extended one.
So, Peter Jackson, if you hear us through TORN, could you say something to New Line so the distributors in the Latin American region could produce a region 4 DVD or at least could the region 1 DVD have subtitles in Spanish?
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Ringers Needs your help!
Wanted : Atlanta Based Production Sound Person — August 29 – Sept.1st at Dragon Con Must have experience. (College experience is OK.) Must be over 18. We need a boom operator for our interviews at Dragon Con. We’ll be shooting field/ENG style but may do a few sit down interviews. We will provide the equipment, but if you have your own, that’s great too. Sense of humor a must! Presently, pay is on a deferral basis only. Meals and parking fees will be provided. Contact: ringers@theonering.net
Please check out the Help Wanted section for ways in which you can help the Ringers production or to be featured in the film.
Ringers Traveling to Dragon Con
The Ringers crew will be heading to Atlanta for the America’s largest sci-fi and fantasy convention, Dragon Con ; held at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta and the Atlanta Marriott Marquis from August 29th to Sept. 1st, 2003.
While Dragon Con will not see a return of the infamous Comic Con Ringers Confessional , we’ll be hanging around TheOneRing.net’s fan table and getting lots of great footage of Ringers in costume. We’ll also be giving two seminars about Ringers: Lord of the Fans and the history of Tolkien fandom in the Tolkien track. Times and particulars to follow! [More]
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Robin sends this in:
New exhibition in September at the Stephen Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles!
Viggo Mortensen
“Miyelo”
September 13 – November 1, 2003
“Miyelo” is comprised of a series of large-scale, panoramic photographs of a Lakota Ghost Dance. They record a re-creation of the dance that was originally performed by members of Chief Big Foot’s band on December 29, 1890 near Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. These long exposures represent what was intended as a hallucination by a veteran of the Wounded Knee Massacre, as shot in the California Desert in March 2003 for the movie “Hidalgo.” The intent was to capture the event as a delirious remembrance, an ephemeral dream. The artist hopes these images might illustrate his belief that regardless of the context of any specific time or place, “we communicate, at best, as outlines and silhouettes to each other; blurry vanishing tracings of what we really see, feel and mean.”
There will be no reception or book event in association with the exhibition. Viggo has requested that calls to the gallery be limited, with emails preferred. I hope people will respect his wishes and not contact the gallery as they do not have a large staff and all the information regarding the gallery and the exhibition is already available on their website. [More]
Perceval Press is publishing a large format book to accompany the exhibition. It will be available for purchase beginning September 13th.
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Ahriell writes: After a very busy week of preparations for the party punctuated by frequent trips to Edinburgh to catch various shows, including Flight of the Conchords (Bret mcKenzie, aka Figwit’s show at the Fringe Festival)… a few times, the weekend finally arrived. On Friday evening (the 8th august), Silien (Claire from Wales) arrived at Edinburgh airport where I was waiting for her, not wearing my pointy ears this time, but flaunting my Ian McKellen t-shirt (the one with the Gandalf drawing he made himself), and holding a “lovely” Scottish Fellowship banner. We met up and headed for Rivendell (my house in Dunfermline, a few miles north of Edinburgh). Silien helped me a lot with the final preparations.
Saturday morning, and I was up at 7.30am (don’t ask me how I did it, I still don’t know myself), and I did my housework, the shopping and the tidying up (the things you can do in an hour when you know you have visitors coming which include an Elf ;-). Then off to Dunfermline train station (the 1st of many similar trips that day) to pick up Sky (Roxane from London) who had just spent a whole night on a coach to join our party. What commitment!
Back to Rivendell, where Silien and Lady Sirion (Sheena from Glasgow) then arrived, and there was a lot of activity, and a lot of excitement at the prospect of Bret McKenzie coming too a little bit later.
Everything was set up, the barbecue, the weather which was glorious too, the Council of Elrond garden furniture arrangement on my patio, the Scottish Saltire bunting, the party games (they were: Pin the Pout on Figwit, The Battle of Helm’s Darts and Nobody Tosses a Ballrog, LOL), the food, drinks, etc…
At 12.50 I drove again to Dunfermline train station to pick up our star guest. He got off the train, looking a bit bemused at the crowd of Celtic football supporters that got off too (there was a big game that day between Celtic and Dunfermline Athletics, and police everywhere, who thankfully were too busy checking out the footy fans to worry about an Elf and a mad SF woman walking around town), and we headed for Rivendell.
I was impressed at how well Bret remembered the area from last year, and arriving at Rivendell must have felt to him like coming home (I wish!!!)…
He was duly introduced to the other guests, and was immediately made to feel welcome: within seconds he had a drink in his hand, a burger in front of him, and Silien had shown him all the exciting auction goodies.
We had a fantastic time, chatting in a very relaxed atmosphere about the festival, the latest Scottish Fellowship members and news, last year’s madness when he was here with not only 3 other kiwis, 10 SF members, a friend filming a doco, a journalist from the local paper with a photographer, but also a NZ TV-crew to boot… nothing like that this time around! It was more a question of enjoying the calm and sunny day, and the most stressful part of the day for Bret must have been deciding whether to have mustard or ketchup with his burger.
We played Irish Bingo, a very new and probably very strange experience for an Elf, we took some interesting photos, and then unfortunately it was time for Bret to leave, as he had an appointment back in Edinburgh to do an interview with Brian Logan of the Guardian newspaper.
All guests received a party bag, and Bret’s included information about the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust: a video, some leaflets and a photograph of the group of 3 dolphins we sponsored first: PJ, Figwit and Tristan, which he was delighted to see. Imagine what you would do if you met you… as a dolphin (small in-joke inserted here for the people who have seen Bret and Jemaine’s show)…
Bret and Jemaine’s show at the Festival Fringe is doing extremely well. Audiences are growing in numbers every night, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the last week was sold out. The new songs are amazingly good, and it is a nice touch for them to do requests… I never miss an opportunity to shout out for the Frodo song 😉
After Bret left, the party went on! The auction was a resounding success (a huge thank you to all who placed bids, especially Silien who spent a fortune and must now be in talks with her bank manager now to re-mortgage her house!), and adding to that the money we made from the Irish Bingo and the “Nobody Tosses a Ballrog game”, we have raised A STAGGERING 258 GBP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This means that we can sponsor another 2 dolphins, and a 3rd hopefully after the dvd party coming up on the 30th of August. We chose the following 2 names for the new dolphins: Haldir and Lorien.
We also did the caption competition, and the winners were: The Greenwood, Silien (she didnt get to vote for herself!) and Lady Nurlhawen. More details in another email soon.
In the evening we all went to Edinburgh to watch the Flight of the Conchords, and we all had a fantastic time. Silien even had Bret and Jemaine pose on stage for her camera! Hilarious moment!!! This photo, along with many more, will of course be on our new website (when it is launched soon), but in the meantime, I leave you with 4 photos: one of Bret with Lady Sirion, Silien and Sky, one of Bret and me, one of the 4 of us with friends 😉 and one of Flight of the Conchords, when they posed on stage for me one evening last week!
A very good time was had by all… I can’t wait til the next party! But I’ll be wanting a bit of rest first.
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