Caption: PREPARING FOR WAR – A fortress, believed to be for the Helms Deep battle in The Lord of The Rings, takes shape in a quarry in Haywards Hill, PICTURE: CRAIG SIMCOX
Category: Old Spy Reports
Way back when this film was first announced and Peter Jackson gave his first interviews on the subject, he mentioned that a Wellington knitting club was making the chainmail that the background extras would wear. Once sprayed with metallic spray, it would look great from a distance…at the time I thought that was pretty inventive.
A while ago I was talking to somebody in a pub who rather demanded attention, given that he was leaning on a sword that was longer than I am tall. He and his mates had gone in to an electroplating workshop here to get their armour done and there they saw racks and racks of plastic armour.
The guys at the workshop admitted it was for Lord of the Rings, and that they were going to chrome it. It would be worn by the extras in the background. My informants scoffed at the notion of plastic armour but had to admit that it looked very good and would certainly pass muster from a distance. It was made in India, according to one person I asked.
There be DRAGONS…
and goblins and elves
The Hobbit
Theatre Royal, Sydney
There’s nothing to beat the thrill of a shivery, skin-prickling fright when you’re a kid. My childhood fascination with scarifying literature ranged from the sadistic cautionary tales of Strewelpeter, which make the Grimm Brothers’ stories look like the work of a pair of sissies, to the Victorian Gothic of Edgar Allan Poe.
And then there’s nutty, Norse saga-loving John Tolkien and his gang of dwarfs (sic), elves and trolls. “Warning,” runs the tongue-in-cheek advertising for this stage adaptation of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, “parental guidance is recommended. Contains giant goblins, scary spiders and dangerous dragons.” Woo hoo!
As much as I enjoyed this visually stunning production, which combines superb puppets (small, large and extra large) with amazing lighting effects and a strong musical score, the highest praise I can offer is that I wish I could see it again through the eyes of a 10-year-old.
Not that I had difficulty being transported to Tolkien’s Middle Earth (sic), Henri Szeps, hidden behind a lengthy grey beard, plays the wizard Gandalf, who narrates the story as well as proving to be quite handy with a “goblin cleaver”
Bilbo Baggins, pint-sized Hobbit, is recruited by Gandalf for his band of crotchety dwarfs (sic) and they’re off in search of Smaug the dragon, a huge pile of gold and along the way some “nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable” adventures.
If this rough outline sounds overly familiar, then it’s because the same mythology Tolkien drew on continues to be reworked by his imitators, In the space age Bilbo would be Luke Skywalker, Gandalf Obi-Wan Kenobi and the dragon’s lair the Death Star. What’s missing, regrettably, is a princess, because there’s no much in The Hobbit to temper all that masculine energy.
Guest reviewers for the evening, Joshua (nine) and Eliza (12), loved it. Josh couldn’t decide whether he like the dragon (which is spectacularly huge, has fiery red eyes and belches smoke) the best or the lumbering, dim-witted trolls. Eliza was particularly impressed by the fine detail in the look of the dwarfs (sic) (Philip Millar designed the puppets).
And as their mother pointed out, when the 11 puppeteers step forward to take their curtain call after two-and-a-bit hours of goblin bashing and giant spider slaying, this is one fantasy that’s clearly over. There’ll be no need to check what’s hiding under the bed when you get home.
Director Christine Anketell, playwright Gilly McInnes, set designer Mark Thompson and lighting designer Philip Lethlean have crafted a seamless piece of imaginative entertainment.
At $140 for a family of four, parents may hope they too had a share of the dragon’s gold: a special pre-holiday treat perhaps.
Playing to December 18
(Sun Herald, Australia. Sunday November 21, 1999)
Thanks to Trufflehunter for the article!
Super Ringer Spy Sam has scores some amazing pictures from the quarry set!
Think of Lord of the Rings. Think of The Two Towers. Think somewhere in the middle. Think Helms Deep. What images does it conjure into your mind? To me, it conjures images of resiliance, honor, bravery, strength and plain old good.
And that is what was radiating from The Dry Creek Quarry, Upper Hutt, one night. Having my evenings activities unexpectedly postponed for the night, my friend and I decided to take a chance. We got out the map and searched for the Quarry. We drove up there and parked opposite, beside another car. Thinking it probably belonged to a security guard, we had to shiver as we crossed the road towards the Quarry and the lone light that emitted from a building at the front. Or maybe it was the cold Wellington night…
…whilst marvelling at the bulking shadows in the distance (Helm2.jpg – taken from Site 1).
We moved on up to Site 2 (Helm3.jpg) which seems to be a couple of towers on a wooden platform (one tower is out of sight, to the right of the photo. They’re about 8 feet high.
Site Three (Helm4.jpg) is next door, and up a gravel bank. It consists of two walls, with gaps in between. This is from the rear and (Helm9.jpg) is from the front. Talk about huge! As of yet it’s mostly scaffolding, except the front.
Site Four is further up the hill – (Helm7.jpg). So far, from the bottom,it consists of a curved wall and a doorway, with steps carved from the gravel leading up through it. It leads up to (Helm8.jpg).
There were two other windows to the right. It can be seen in (Helm6.jpg), (Helm5.jpg) shows the wall in front of the stairs leadingup, as well as a wall to the doorway’s left.
It sure was exciting to know that *this* was where John-Rhys Davies would stand, *this* is where the orcs would charge..
Also attached are some photos from a while back of Bree, in Seatoun, from various angles.
Ya, boo, Balrogs. What I can’t wait to see on the big screen is the Riders of Rohan. I know they’ve been mustering horses and riders in the far South on NZ to train for the movie, but a friend of mine got into a conversation with some racehorse-owners in a pub here in Auckland. They were saying that they’d had to move their horses from their usual place in the Waikato (remember, those very green plains near Hobbiton?) because the landowner or trainer had taken up a contract to work with horses for Peter Jackson. Lots of horses, they said. About 500.
Further questioning around the horsey community seems to clear things up slightly: a small number of higly-trained horses will be bought ( a friend who was hoping to achieve a highly-trained horse for nothing found this out…) and they will have starring roles in the films; in addition to that, a large number of extras with their own horses will train up in cavalry manouevres. People weren’t sure that this was in fact in the Waikato. Either way, some place must be needed with a great deal of space, privacy and the ability to cater for hundreds of horses and riders, all getting used to working with weapons and so on.
Whether the two cavalry groups from the North and South Islands will ever meet up for some huge battle scenes remains to be seen. Because that area is so much greener than the South Island film locations, I’m beginning to wonder whether some of Rohan will be filmed in the North. Plus the Waikato is where some of the fastest horses in the world are bred, and the whole area is swarming with them.
Do you live in Wellington? Do you know hardly anything about WETA Workshop? Would you like to learn more? Do you, or a friend, subscribe the cable TV Saturn?
If the answers were yes to all the above questions, then you are in luck. Saturn is currently previewing a short documentary on WETA. This is on channel 18 (OnTV), and the last time they showed the story was at about 7:20pm. I’m not too sure when the next repeat will be, but it will be later on in the evening. You can contact them (to ask when the next showing is on) at 0800 299 300.
Although from what I saw they didn’t show any “spoilers” on Lord of the Rings, it was just an interesting insight into the people behind the camera.