Welly-moot #2, a chaotic but fun time

I've just come back from the second Welly-moot meeting, a coming-together of Hobbit fans here in Wellington, although at least one of the attendees had come from Auckland just to attend (well done, Haldirriel)! The first meeting was attended by 12 people - this time it had gone up to about 17. I think next time we'll have to find a "proper" venue! If anyone has suggestions for the next meeting, mail me!


A variety of subjects were discussed at the coffee meeting - Barbara had recently been to Hobbiton, and had printed her photos, so we all got a look at the almost finished sets there (I understand they are now completed but the photos were taken just before that). I didn't get copies - and I'd be prevented from showing them here in any case...

I'm currently trying to source a group-photo from Brian, who took a few snaps at the meeting (I'll post it here as soon as I have it). Brian is a huge Hobbit fan, and likes to collect news clippings. Brian had brought with him a large folder labelled "The Hobbit - Book 4"; yes, he has already filled three books just on The Hobbit! At home he has 22(!) large volumes filled with LOTR newsclippings!! Brian's partner Suzie was also there, as was their son Harrison.



Nicolás has recently moved from the Milford Sound in the South Island, and is currently looking for a house here in Wellington - he's hoping to get a job on the set in some way.

Also attending today were four US students from Wellington's Victoria university, three of whom I'd "rescued" off Mount Victoria a few days ago while they were taking photos of the wrong tree. The three are currently studying Film Studies here in NZ, while the fourth is a Psychology student. A bunch of Hobbit geeks together is probably a good homework assignment for a Psych student! (Unfortunately I didn't get names, so if you're reading this - drop me a line?)

Heike was there as well - I met her some time ago through the blog, she's left quite a few comments on the blog over the years. Today Heike brought me some home-made jam made from local wild blackberries - I've been eating the berries all over the region (Rivendell, the River Anduin, the Hobbiton Woods, and Brego's River all have blackberry bushes!) so the jam will go down nicely - thanks Heike! It will be enjoyed...

Jenifer and Ryan, and little Hawk, were there as well, although they were at the far side of the table (from me), so I'm afraid I didn't spend as much time talking to them as I wanted to this time - the same unfortunately went for Brendon and his partner Keryn. Brendon did bring his amazing copy of The Hobbit book, with at least twenty autographs in it!

I turned up with my lovely wife Aiko, who unfortunately had some other business to attend to for the rest of the afternoon, so she left me to it. I brought along my brand new map, recently created by Daniel Reeve (LOTR's Cartographer) for Wellington Rover Tours. I wanted to use the meeting to "officially" introduce the map to the world, so now that that has been done, I can start talking about them properly. If you look at the top of this page, you'll see a link to the "Wellywood Map" - if you want one as well, they are now available for purchase.

I'll write up another blog entry about that a bit later, but at the Welly-moot I had arranged with my boss that Wgtn Rover would donate a map to all attendees (they are usually $24.95 each). So thanks to Wellington Rover Tours there were a few lucky people there today! The other way to get yourself a map is to come on a LOTR tour, and we'll give you one!


I also tested interest for a possible Wellington Tolkien Society that I've been thinking about starting due to a total lack of a NZ chapter. There seems to be enough interest in it for me to pursue that further, so I'll be talking to the UK Tolkien Society in the next few months to see what I'd need to do.


All in all, it was a fun afternoon - it was very noisy and chaotic, there wasn't really an agenda other than "let's meet, drink coffee, and talk", and everyone had a great time! On to the next one!

Garrett Robinson should work on the Hobbit

I met up with a fellow blogger the other day, he's come all the way from the USA with a single goal in mind - to get a job working on The Hobbit. His name is Garrett Robinson - I'm expecting to see his name in The Hobbit credits somewhere.

Now, I get a lot of email from all sorts of wonderful people who ask me for a job on The Hobbit, something I'm afraid I REALLY can't help you with - if I could do that, I'm sure I'd be working on The Hobbit myself. Garrett seems different though - he basically got himself sorted out, went through the official channels to get a proper Working Holiday Visa for a year, left his life back in the USA for as long as it takes, and is currently making a video blog about his efforts to get onto the set. The blog is here:

http://www.ishouldworkonthehobbit.com/the-blog/

Garrett and me on Mount Victoria, Wellington

He's got a good sense of humour about it, which I think prompted me to contact him when I found out he was in Wellington, and I spent a very pleasant morning with him. Originally it was just going to be a coffee at the Botanic Gardens, but pretty soon it was another coffee at the Embassy Theatre, and then a fun wander around some of the Mount Victoria LOTR locations. He filmed some of it, and the result is up on his blog. If you've got 6 minutes, it's a lot of fun to watch. If you've been on one of my tours, it's worth a look as well - there's some unexpected angles that I can't take everyone on during the "regular" tours, but this took us on an unexpected path, and we saw other stuff. Take a look for yourself!




  - Jack M

Blog feedback wanted - how am I doing?

Hi y'all! Hope you're all enjoying my little corner of the blogosphere!

I just wanted to make a few things clear about the purpose of this blog. There seems to be no lack of Hobbit Rumours blogs around - I'm currently subscribed to about a half dozen or so. The big one of course is TheOneRing.net (or TORn, to the initiated). You may have noticed that I've put their headlines into the side bar of this page. I'd be a fool to try to compete with them, and that was never my intention.

However, I've noticed that most of the other blogs seem to delight in reposting TORn's items on their own pages. This seems a bit pointless to me, as I'm assuming that most Hobbit fans will already have a permanent link to TORn anyway, so the link (and soon after, the blog) just becomes noise in an already noisy world.




Which brings me to the purpose of my blog. My blog isn't a high-volume one. Sometimes I'll not hear anything interesting for a week or two, other times I'll suddenly have half a dozen items in one day. In general I try to only write about local Wellington related news that I've come across myself. I have a good network of spies out there, some of whom have little or no access to the internet (I know, who'd believe that!... ((you know who you are, B&M))) :)

I always copy my entries to TORn's spy report email address - sometimes they think it's worthy of spreading further; sometimes they don't. That's cool - I'm always honoured to be mentioned by them. However, since they don't always feature all my entries, it's worth adding my blog (or my RSS feed) to your newsfeeds, if you want to stay up-to-date with the latest local rumours and news. I'm fully expecting to have a big increase in cool news in the coming months - that's the whole reason I started writing them up in the first place!


I'd like to ask a favour of you all - can you tell me what else would you like to see? Should I add a Facebook group you can become a fan of? A twitter feed? A usable email address? Something else? Leave me a quick message here with suggestions - I'd love to hear from you!


One request I've often had from my tour guests is why I don't sell t-shirts or other merchandise, either on the tour or here online. Simply put, I've generally concentrated on being a tourguide rather than becoming a retailer, and let's face it, there's already plenty of online shops to choose from.

Having said that, I've recently been playing on zazzle.com, and I've designed a basic t-shirt that I think looks quite cool. Would there be any interest in stuff like this? Do you like this one? Do you think it's the most awful design you've ever seen? Should I stick to guiding and blogging? Don't hold back! Tell me!

Get off the road, Wellington, NZ by NZNoldor

I often have access to local items that Weta Cave can't sell online for legal reasons (some of the LOTR related stuff can't be sold outside of NZ - please don't ask me for a legal explanation but that's what they've told me). I'm quite happy to buy off Weta Cave at their retail prices and pass them on to anyone out there, if there's interest in that. For instance, they've just started selling an ultra cool Sauron t-shirt designed by Daniel Falconer that they can't sell online - let me know if anyone is interested in one.

One cool shirt - it's just under $nz50.

Get in touch if you're keen on one

(I'll add a small fee for p&p and my time).

The floor is open - let me know your thoughts!

  - Jack M.

LOTR filming Day One 10th anniversary in the "too hard" basket?

Sorry, this entry looks like it's going to be another rant. Originally it was going to be a short account of where things went wrong but it's looking like it's a bit longer than that. If you don't like rants, please skip to a different page.

Still here? Read on...


Despite telling many people about it for months, and attempting to call in more than a few favours, it doesn't look like the 10th anniversary of the first day of filming of the biggest movie ever filmed in New Zealand (if not in the world) is going to be remembered by anyone other than myself and a few hardcore LOTR fans here.

October the 11th was Day One, when the first scenes were being put to camera on Mount Victoria right here in Wellington. The now famous scenes of four hobbits hiding under a tree root, and then running away from a Nazgul are well known to everyone we take to the location - I've actually taken people who haven't seen the movie yet, recognise the scene as soon as we walked in (apparently they recognised it from the trailer or from the posters).


In the last five years, I've personally taken literally thousands of people to the spot, sometimes three times a day. Various tour companies visit the location - I work for Flat Earth Tours but Wellington Rover goes there as well, as does Wgtn Movie Tours, and Hammond's has a few tours that visit it (although they're not actually LOTR tours, it's still a point of interest to most people). Of course, Red Carpet Tours come through every month or so, when they tour the country. And finally, there are a large number of LOTR fans who simply purchase Ian Brodie's LOTR Location Guidebook, and find it by themselves. I've even seen various official roadmaps for sale in NZ that include little golden rings all over the map.

I would estimate that at least 15,000 people visit the location every year. And almost all of them come to stay in Wellington for at least one day, and probably two.

So, figuring everyone would understand how important this would be, I approached a few people about 10th anniversary plans.

First, I asked the Embassy Cinema if they were interested in showing the complete trilogy. Apart from its physical proximity to the first film locations - it's located at the foot of Mount Victoria, and less than a mile from the movie locations - it also has a rich LOTR related history. In fact, it would be fair to say that the building would no longer exist if it hadn't been for Peter Jackson - he was the chairman of the "Save The Embassy" trust, and saved it from being turned into a carparking building.

Once the $4.5million dollars of council money was spent on renovating it, it became the magnificent venue it is now. The first two movies had their Australasian premieres here, while Return Of The King enjoyed its world premiere in the same place - an event that drew anywhere between 120,000 to 300,000 people, depending on whether you believe CNN (300k) or everyone else. Even a conservative figure of 120,000 people isn't bad for a city of (then) approximately 150,000.

At first, the response from the Embassy was positive - they were interested in doing something for the 10th anniversary, and would definitely look into it. Everything went very quiet for a month or two, and after enquiring again I was told we'd "missed the boat on this one", and the day had already been booked for other movies. I wondered if we could perhaps squeeze Fellowship into the day's schedule, but apparently not. An email came back with "there are no plans to play LOTR in October. There are plans for some screenings perhaps during the summer but nothing has been confirmed as yet".


Hmm. Ok. Next. Perhaps Peter Jackson's office was planning something then - I had heard some murmerings but nothing solid. So I emailed Peter's spokesperson, who is sometimes curt but always courteous. His reply was simply "no truth to that rumor, I'm afraid". So that's a no-go as well, it seems.

I floated the idea with Weta Cave staff but it never went further than that - or at least, I've heard nothing of any plans (and they have in fact denied that there are any plans).


So about a month and a half ago I spoke to someone at the Wellington Council, who have in the past been quite receptive to these things, and I proposed a few possibilities, like an early morning hobbit's breakfast on the lawn below the filming location, at Ellice Street (where incidentally also the Dunharrow scenes were filmed for ROTK). It all fizzled out unfortunately, and I've heard nothing back there either.


I figured, maybe then just advertise online that I'd be on the hill by myself if anyone wanted to join me for the day, put on a couple of hairy feet and a wastecoat, that sort of thing. Sort of a desparate "last resort" plan really.


It sounded feasible at first, but I hadn't counted on the power of the council's complete lack of consideration.

Last time I was on the hill, this new sign had been put up, advertising the upcoming mountain bike race. Yes, the date is the 11th of October. Incidentally, the route of the mountain bike track has the bikes riding directly over six of the eight film scenes' locations, making it completely impossible to take tourists to the location during a race.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for mountain bikers, and I do think they should have a place to ride - but the Wellington Town Belt is literally miles and miles long - couldn't we exists side-by-side instead of on top of each other? We can't move this (by now) historical site, but they can surely move the track a few meters east or west?


I must admit, I'm close to admitting defeat. If anyone local wants to contact me with good plans, please do. I think it would be a shame if the largest Wellington entertainment project ever had its 10th anniversary skipped through lack of interest. Surely we haven't forgotten so soon? I mean, everyone came to the party in 2003, where are they all now?

Please drop me a line if you live local, or if you have any other suggestions. I had plenty of time to organise something when all this began, but these last rejections came through in the last few days, and we're running out of time.


Alternatively, maybe I'll just get into a few brews on the day. I hear it comes in pints now.

  - Jack M.

Hobbit Photo on Mt Victoria

A few days ago I received a FaceBook Friend request from Mallory from South Africa, who's been on one of my tours. At one point during the tour (on Mount Victoria), I used her camera for a cool technique called (among other things) "forced perspective".

Basically, it's the same technique Peter Jackson used to turn Elijah Wood (5'6") into Frodo (3'6").

I don't usually get to see the result of the photo I take (since it's always on other people's cameras), so it was nice to see the picture on her FaceBook Gallery. I thought I'd post her photo here (after checking with her first, obviously!).




The photo was with about 30 seconds preparation, of two people who didn't really know what I was doing, with me using an unfamiliar cameras, and with no digital enhancements afterwards (ie, it's just as easy to do it with a 35mm film camera).

New sign on Mount Victoria!

Looks like the Wellington City Council is showing signs of actually recognising us - the fairly basic (but cool) signs that were previously posted on the hill have been replaced with official City Council signs.

Where the old signs used to say "Lord Of The Rings Filming Locations", the new one simply states "Hobbit's Hideaway".

I'm guessing the picture shows an adult and a child but the smaller one could be a hobbit, I guess. :)

Excuse the bad quality picture, it was taken on my phone, which usually has a dirty lens.

- Jack