Admittedly, I am not a fan of J.R.R. Tolkein as an author. Years ago I painstakingly made my way through The Hobbit only because I rechecked the book from the library multiple times. In the end I was able to find my way through the agonizingly flowery detail of every mountain vista all the while listening to whiny hobbits complain about not getting to have "tea". Sigh. And you're thinking, "But Bridget loves books!" and you're right. But for some reason despite the incredible following these stories had even long before the movies I have been unable to get into them. After my experience reading The Hobbit I openly refused to read the other books but eventually did see the trilogy of movies. But know that that was years ago.
Lately, I've been taking stock of our experience here in New Zealand thinking about the things that we'd still like to do. With that in mind, yesterday, we bussed out to Wellington suburb, Miramar, that is home to the Weta Workshop and connected to the Weta Cave. Weta is a company that provides a wide variety of creative input into projects we know as the following movies: The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Avatar, The Adventures of Tin Tin, King Kong, District 9, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, and to my great delight, a personal favorite, Hellboy.
Upon arriving at the Weta Cave we luckily snatched two the of the last tickets to the next Weta Workshop Tour. While we waited we wandered around the Weta Cave where various pieces of movie memorabilia where displayed on every surface including the ceiling. We saw suits of armor, all manner of statues of movie characters and souvenirs to take away with you. Soon our tour was off and our group stepped into an anteroom for a few intuitive instructions like, "Do not touch anything" that proved too challenging for people to handle throughout the remainder of the tour. Come on, people! Sadly due to the possibility that we might see something from an upcoming project photography was not permitted in the Workshop.
Our guide ushered us through the door and we were in the Workshop! My eyes were darting here and there as every surface was covered with movie props, costumes, weapons, design ideas in various stages of completion, as well as models of non-human characters the smallest of which were able to move around in their respective movies thanks to good old fashioned puppeteering skill.
The guide used a gun model made for District 9 as an example of how a prop goes from a 2D idea to a 3D object you can handle. Starting with sketches on paper the design evolves to incorporate color, texture, and weathering details. Then a rough prototype is hewn on a 3D axis mill out of chunk of wood. From there additional details are fine tuned and then a mold is constructed. The mold is then filled with the appropriate material, most likely a hard but lightweight plastic. Lastly, it goes through the paint shop where the colors, faux textures and weathering elements are added.
When we were standing there listening Tim nudged me and pointed to a huge leather holster and its gun that were hanging on the wall just above us. I nodded that I saw it and then, suddenly, my brain snapped to attention as my eyes scanned the tag next to the items that told me of their origin. It read, Hellboy, which, as I said earlier, is one of my favorite movies and by far my favorite comic book series. I would've never imagined that on this tour I would see something from Hellboy! This particular gun, deemed The Samaritan, is used in the first of the two Hellboy movies and fires four gigantic, albeit entirely fictitious, rounds. Upon taking this in I despaired because I was so excited to see something from one of my favorite movies but I couldn't take a photo! Gutted! Despite this fact I've included a couple photos below that I found on the web because you should be able to see The Samaritan.
After seeing The Samaritan my day had been made but we still had a good portion of the workshop to peruse. In the end I wished we had had more time because there was simply so much to look at and I know that I probably didn't see everything they had displayed. I should tell you that we prepared for this excursion by watching the first of The Lord of the Rings movies the night before. With the details fresh in mind it was amazing to see villain Sauron's suit of armor in all its glory in the Workshop. We learned that, in an effort to make him as tall as possible, the shoulders of the suit actually sat up higher than the actors shoulders. The actor was 6'4" and dwarfed by the costume as, even at that height, he had to look through the holes in the helmet at mouth level. All together they achieved a giant, terrifying Sauron who towered over, well everyone, at a staggering seven and a half feet tall!
From there we heard about how the Workshop, for filming things that were too large to recreate full scale, would create detailed models. They had one of these castles in the Workshop and we learned that, as you would imagine, the closer the shot, the more detail needed to be added. This is staggering to consider when you have a giant castle in miniature that you need to shoot close up; that means someone has to go back and add detail, by hand, to each of the million and one tiny bricks in the castle walls.
The Workshop employs a full time sword smith. He was originally an accountant but enthusiastically pursued medieval reenactment in his free time. He decided to build a sword by hand and soon had commissions to build them for others seeking high quality and craftsmanship. Eventually, Weta heard about him and, as they were looking for a sword smith, snatched him up into the Workshop family. While he wasn't working yesterday we were able to catch a glimpse of his workshop where he built many of the weapons for The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
We then learned about chainmaille (chain mail). The real deal is incredibly heavy and while warriors of the past endured this crushing burden during battle, today's actors benefit from advances technology. In short, the chainmaille used in modern movies is actually a special type of plastic that has the look and motion of traditional chainmaille but is considerably lighter and more comfortable. At the same time building chainmaille into shapes that can be donned by actors is a time intensive job. These dedicated artisans have to piece the small links together and fasten each one on its predecessor to ensure that the garment stays together during filming.
Our tour group was in luck as two Weta employees were busy at work when we came along. One was a gentlemen building a giant sculpture that replicated, although was greatly increased in size (~100 times), a small statute (about one and a half feet tall). He was starting to work on the legs of the man and we saw that the inside of the sculpture was a light expanding foam material. This base was then layered with a type of molding clay to mimic the folds in the man's clothing. Incredible.
The other artisan was a women who was working on a beautiful gown you might expect one of The Lord of the Rings she-elves to wear. We could see the ideas sketched on paper and colored in loosely. On the mannequin was the lining of the gown where seams marched across the bodice. The next layer of satin would follow these seams and all of this would be carefully covered in a light burlap type fabric with swirling metallic threads to create the outermost seams of the gown. She said, if it turned out to her liking, she might enter in The World of Wearable Art fashion show held each year in Wellington.
After hearing from these two artists we turned to peer into the machine-shop portion of the place. There we saw lathes cutting out tiny details on huge pieces of wood. I also noticed giant pieces of Styrofoam waiting to be cut into shapes. I thought to myself, "Timmy would be right at home in there". :)
Before leaving the Workshop we stopped by a model of the great ape who stars in King Kong. This particular model never appeared in the movie but served as an intricate point of reference for those working to produce digital King Kong. Upon close inspection you could see the close attention to detail and we learned that every hair on his frame had been hand punched. This took a whole team of people several weeks to complete. It is difficult to fathom the work that goes into these projects. I found the intersection of art and engineering fascinating. These artisans are able to conceive designs and build the products that look and move correctly so as to believable in a movie setting. Amazing!
After the toured ended we headed back to the Weta Cave for another look and then outside to see The Lord of the Rings trolls that guard the front yard. I had to get a picture of me next to one of them for scale. :)
We're planning to watch the other Lord of the Rings movies in the near future. Timmy has deemed them a tour de force. And that, they are.
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