Today we went on a Lord of the Rings Location tour (one of many I’m sure we will enjoy here). It was absolutely fantastic, our guide was very nice and very knowledgeable about the movie (His brother even worked on it with Weta!) All the sets have been removed and anything that was placed for the movie, no matter how natural for example trees, have been removed! It was still fun and lots of the scenes were still recognizable! It was imagination time!
What follows will probably be the geekiest post ever but to put in in non-geek terms I will put the photos of the scenes from the movies beside the pictures I took… because as I understand for some reason not everyone is as obsessed with Lord of the Rings as I am!
We started off the morning in a park just North of Wellington which was the site for the tower of Isengard and the garden of Isengard
Gardens of Isengard
The park was actually quiet happy to have the movie filmed there and didn’t want to take away the path to Isengard, but because of the contract they signed with the government of NZ they had to! To get around it they planted a different kind of grass where the path used to be so you can still sort of see it… sneaky buggers!
Next to where Breamar helps Aragon onto his back after Aragon falls off a cliff!
I make a pretty awesome breamar!
The next scene we got to visit was a short one where Faramir sees his dead brother Boromir float down a river in a boat.
very exciting I know!
We then went to a beautiful national park which was the site of Rivendell!
Which again was completly dismantled and pretty much left no trace of itself 
the picture on the left is a movie still from Rivendell… Look you can see that tree on the right was in the movie!!!! ZOMG!
But it was also the shot of the promo shot of Legolas that graced ever so many teenage girls bedrooms/ceilings
Personally I think people should hang mine on their walls…
The best part of the tour was defiantly our venture to Mnt. Victoria, aka Hobbiton woods!
First we visit the site where Sam and Frodo make there first camp and Sam cooks up Mr.Frodo some delicious eats!
I’m relaxing in the tree making a good Frodo!
Next.. a Shortcut to Mushrooms, if one recalls, the hobbits (Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pipin) are wandering across Farmer Maggot’s field, Merry and Pipin have raided the farmer’s crop. They hand the crops off to Sam when they collide with Frodo and Sam before taking off into the field.
The hobbits then come to the edge of a cliff before tumbling down it. I couldn’t find a good screen cap of this ANYWHERE despite my elite internet skills, so all you get is this crappy one…
Thankfully you may get a crappy screen cap but you DO get our elite rendition of it…
then if you do recall the Hobbits all pile up on top of one another like so…
Beautifully executed…
Then something scary happens in the forests of Hobbiton! Frodo Hears something
“GET OFF THE ROAD!”
then under the log they go! Hidden from the black rider at the last second
but wait… no log? That’s right that log was a real tree that was PLACED there for filming, but because they had to return it to it’s intial look it had to be removed
Nothing photoshop can’t fix!
excellent.
Then the hobbits have to escape to the Buckleberry ferry! They have to be very sneaky though the forest…
need it to be spookier?
scary! but not the most terrifying thing the hobbits have to see, as they decide to make their dash towards the ferry they see at the top of the hill the silhouette of the black rider!
I’m not sure what’s more terrifying, the black rider or our uncanny ability to make a Black rider out of our bodies?!?
It was an awesome day and so much fun to galavant around imagination in tow seeing some of the sites from the movie. I’m definatly going to do the LOTR tour when I get to Christchurch as well as I hear that one is even better!
7 responses so far ↓
NABOOOKI // October 29, 2008 at 5:00 am |
JEALOUS!!
Kait // October 30, 2008 at 12:47 am |
PRETTY MUCH THE BEST POST EVERR!!!!!
did they give you props for those pics or did you bring some with you?
either way – fantastic.
dekanerab // November 1, 2008 at 3:20 am |
haha, not they provided them for us on the tour, I don’t have that much forethought!
It was AWESOME.. so much fun it was ridiculous… glad you liked the post
ouiparapluie // November 2, 2008 at 5:56 pm |
this blew my mind!!!!!!!!
Brightstar // May 4, 2009 at 9:16 pm |
This is freaking cool!!! I lol’d a lot!!! LOVE the LOTR!!!! Obsessed is actually a better word. This is the BEST post eva!!!!
Omg that pic of Legolas is…unexplanable, i can’t find it anywhere else, anyways, if you type in Legolas in Google images, your pic is one of the first!
hehehehe! Great job, especialy in the part where you acted out the scenes!
Samhainlilly // May 16, 2009 at 1:25 pm |
Brilliant, very funny!!!
2kiwis - Kaitoke // June 28, 2009 at 3:52 am |
[...] to stand on and recreate the Legolas hero shot (see an example about a third of the way down on this page). The glade looked nice for a picnic but the passing of LOTR tourists was obviously having an [...]