Old Spy Reports | Lord of the Rings & Tolkien News - TheOneRing.net Fan Community, since 1999

This arrived to the in-tray of one of our correspondents (via the Herald’s reporter Russell Brown, at a guess):

“SGI to open training suite with Rings preview.

$100,000 central Auckland suite marks a dual first for SGI
Silicon Graphics has lined up preview footage from Lord of the Rings to mark the opening of its new training suite in Auckland tonight. The company announced this week that Weta FX – a long-term SGI customer – had bought 16 dual-processor SGI 1200 servers running Linux as it builds capacity for post-production work on the Peter Jackson-directed films of Tolkien’s trilogy.
Weta has provided work from the project – although it’s not clear whether it will be the same six-minute package shown to an industry audience at the recent ShoWEST trade show in Los Angeles, or new footage.
The $100,000 central Auckland suite marks a dual first for SGI – in that it
contains eight Linux workstations alongside another eight running the company’s flagship Irix OS, and because it is the first of a planned string of training bases ..” Sorry the rest was just tripped my boredom overload so I cut it.

An alert local went and reported on this softwarefest:

For my $7 parking fee I got a Silicon Graphics mouse pad, a Silicon Graphics yoyo, Compaq mini-frisbee (“for the office”), highlighter and ballpoint pen, drinks and food, and lots of good info on using Silicon Graphics O2 systems for digital video. Not too bad for the opening of a training suite that wasn’t going to have technical info like that at it.
(yeah, but nothing beats my cherished shirt from one of these things that says ‘The power of a laptop, the personality of a thinkpad.’ Whoever thought that up had the personality of a carpet tile. -T.)

[And from the seminar this morning I got a free Sky City ballpoint pen that keeps on stopping (figures), a small pad of paper, and two plastic-wrapped mints that I was told tasted really bad (and so haven’t eaten yet).]

But in the “world premier” of what they showed (basically an interview about technical details on how many computers Weta uses and how much data they’re pushing around) we DID see a computer generated horse in wire frame and shaded forms, and we can theorise on the implications of _that_ for the next one and a third years. And there’s talk that PJ may apply a “Middle-earth” filter on the whole movie to make it look more “Middle-earthy”.’
Avid mousepad collectors may like to check out Amyd’s SFX site for the details on SGI and Octane and all that stuff, if you’re still curious.
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“Hi Tehanu, a report on the Wingate set from The Watcher in the Water.

The Wingate set has been converted into a swamp, yessss it hass. There iss a great black and gray cover over the blue screen, which gives the set a dark gloomy appearance, and there are weeds and clumps of long grasses in the large pool. Is this the Dead Marshes? We wonderss, yess we doesss.”

And another report along the same lines came in today:
“Filming of what is believed to be the Dead Marshes scenes was happening at Wingate today. Frodo and Sam were seen on the set, and there was a lot of smoke that could be seen from quite a distance. Great secrecy surrounds the set, and a lot of trucks are parked to block the view from the street.”

This reporter also checked in a few days ago to say:

“I went down to the Hutt River after they had removed all the sets, and I believe they were doing scenes of the Anduin. The locations were very nice.

Here is something for the ‘Silly LOTR rumour’ file:

Word has it around Wellington that some scenes for Russell Crowe’s “Gladiator” movie were shot at the Helms Deep set at Haywards Hill. As the HHelms Deep set is of an ancient fortress, and looks nothing whatsoever like anything from any scene in “Gladiator” (Which I believe was filmed in the Mediteranian area), I don’t know where or how this rumour started.

Cheers

Robbit the Hobbit”

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Ringer Spy Laron sends in word on a recent casting call near Timaru on the South Island.

I recently attended a casting session at a local high school, I got measured all over, had to draw around my foot, get my picture taken along with everyone else wanting to be an extra.

Also I know Golden Bay quite well as my Dad lives in Collingwood, near Takaka.

Just read the news post about The casting company , probaly the company that did the casting at the school here in Timaru.

From what I have read so far, my guess is that they would have filmed on top of the Takaka hill where the Takaka gathering takes place each yeah, never been to the gathering my self but I have been over that hill many a time.

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this small tidbit of news comes to me via a reliable source we’re going to call Puff. Puff has managed to score some great little bits of news (under different names) so that’s why I trust his/her/its word. Take it away Puff:

Apparently when they burnt down hobbiton, they didn’t do it for the scouring of the shire, this may not be part of the script.

There was a lot of speculation at the time and the farmer who owned the land wanted to turn the set into a theme park. After a few weeks of buzz on set someone asked Peter Jackson and Woof!! it was burnt down.

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