Visit to Hobbiton

Back in January, we celebrated our Anniversary by visiting the Hobbiton set in Matamata, north of Taupo. I had wanted to show the photos here much earlier, but was unfortunately prevented from doing so by the Non-Disclosure Agreement they made everybody sign there (as you buy your ticket).

However, it seems that Common Sense has prevailed, and they're now allowing people to show their photos finally. It's not like we haven't already seen what it looks like in the Lord Of The Rings movies, a decade ago!

So, this will be a lengthy blog entry - there's almost 50 photos here. I'll add the occasional comment but in general I'll let the photos do the talking.

As always, the photos are mine, and I retain my copyrights. The sets themselves (and the rights to them) belong to the studio - but I took these pictures. If you want to use them, please check with me first, and also the Hobbiton people themselves. They still don't want them to be shown commercially (so, not in the general media).

As always, click on the pics for better quality. The detail is terrific!

The road to Hobbiton is (coincidentally!) named Buckland Road.

My wife Alex, in front of the bus named after her favourite Middle-earth citizen.

A chair, ready to be relaxed in. If it wasn't half-sized.

The ladder reached to my chest. So good to be "tall".

A yellow door.

The garden needs some work. Apparently there are lazy hobbits also.

A blue door.

A green door.

"Just check if anyone's in?"

Another yellow door.

Another green door.

The wood neatly stacked ready for winter.

I love the little overhang so the rain doesn't get in.

A much tidier garden. Obviously well-to-do hobbits.

Another yellow door.

Yellow is obviously a favourite colour in this part of town.

The fence has been made to look much older and moldier.

Gorgeous house, with chimney.

Presumably the house of the cart-maker. Note the rounded gate and the squared door. A bit of a rebel hobbit, this one. Square doors are all the rage in Bree, don't you know?

Another blue door.

The fence is kept shut with an old horse-shoe.

Fantastic gardens everywhere too. Rows of cabbages and other vegies.

The view across the lake. On the other side, still off-limits, is the bridge-house, the Green Dragon pub, and the mill.

Three hobbit-houses at the lakeside. Behind it, a familiar sight!

Going uphill now, with houses uilt in to the hillside, and chimneys everywhere from the houses beneath.

The view from the hill.

More gardens near the top. To the right of this hobbit's abode, a beehive.

More detail. By the way, the tree at the left is fake. Could you tell?

I don't need to describe this one. We all know who lives here!

We felt an overpowering urge to knock on this door. With a staff. Incidentally, I couldn't find any "secret signs" on it (but then it wouldn't be secret, would it?)

No really, it's fake. Trust me. It's life-sized.

Signs everywhere, in case you get lost. The writing is in the unmistakable script of Daniel Reeve.

After a visit to the Green Dragon, you might need the signs to get home, I'd imagine.

And that's where Mr Bilbo lives!

The road to East Farthing. Gandalf came in through here on his cart.

The magnificent Party Tree. It's real, don't worry (but it's a Pine Tree, not an Oak).

The Honey Factory. Two hobbit-child's toys on the left.

Two beautifully painted See-Saws, on the Party-Field.

The mold is real mold, artifically grown.

And the cabbage is real too. A whopper!

Warning - Hobbits Underfoot!

A special sight. The tour went past this but didn't go into it. Apparently this much more overgrown section was Guillermo del Toro's vision of the Shire. It looked a lot darker and more mysterious!

The wood-shed.

A wishing well, covered to make it safe for hobbit children.

And one more child's toy - a swing under a tree. I'd imagine it would be a nice place to enjoy a pipe as well.

Back in the Shire's Rest, everything was Hobbit-themed. The clock...

...the Fireplace, ...

...and even the Toilet-roll Holder had the right shape.

The Shire's Rest is the cafe, by the way.

I'd love comments! Are they on the right track? Are you green with envy? Better yet, are you planning a visit?

Leave me your thoughts!

Hobbit Casting Call Chaos

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12:05pm - update - If you want to read how disappointed people were, read this report.
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11:53am - Update - an application form has now been posted on TradeMe. You still have to send it in by physical mail though.
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Complete chaos ensued after the studio totally underestimated how many Hobbit fans live in Wellington.

NZ Police closed the event, an hour and a half in.

What was advertised on TradeMe (NZ's auction and job seeker's site) as "The Hobbit Official Extras Casting Call 2012", ended up causing massive delays on Wellington's motorway, and according to NZ Police, at least two traffic accidents. The whole event, which was supposed to start at 1:00pm and finish at 4:00pm, was shut down by the NZ Police just after 2:30pm, when it became obvious that there was no crowd control or traffic control organised.

Hopefuls waiting in the park next to the hall

What happened? Originally, the advertisement was listed on January 19th (NB - this link may stop working, so I have saved the files, available for reference). By 7:00am, the next morning, close to 19,000 people had seen the advert. By the morning after the event, almost 150,000 people had seen it. Wellington only has a population of around 200,000 people, so the equivalent of 75% of the Wellington population saw the advertisement.


The casting call took place in the Belmont Hall, which is listed as a venue with a capacity of accommodating a mere 150 people, with carparks to match. The hall is located right next to NZ Highway 2, the second largest road out of Wellington.

Also using the Hutt Motorway on January 28th was large amounts of traffic for the annual Wellington Cup. This is one of New Zealand's most important horse races, and draws big crowds every year. This year was no exception. This event is well advertised, and has been going since 1874.


To make matters worse, Wellington was host to two large cruiseships (the Pacific Dawn and the Dawn Princess), with an estimated 4000-5000 tourists in the region as well. Although 74 cruiseships visits are expected this season, there are only seven days this season when two ships berth on the same day. Today was one of those days. This information is available online, and has been available since August 2011.

Production company Three Foot Seven told 3 News they had expected 1200 people to attend the casting call. TV 3 reported that "thousands more" showed up. NZ's news website stuff.co.nz estimated that at least 3000 people had turned up by 1:00pm (ie, before the traffic seriously began). One report I heard from an anonymous source at the studio was that at least 4500 people attended.

Early in the day, there were still orderly lines

Quit long lines, in fact

 
To cope with all these 1200 expected people, the production company 3foot7 had put a skeleton staff in charge. The hobbit hopefuls I spoke to all reported that only one or two studio people were desparately trying to manage the crowds outside. One report said this guy wasn't actually working for the studio but had taken it upon himself to sort things out. Well done, mate. Good on you for giving it a go.

This unsung hero WAS the crowd control

Some of the hopefuls had been free-camping in the park next to the hall overnight, although most showed up after 10:00am on the morning.

Most online reports agreed that roughly 800 people had made it through the doors before the Police turned up (www.stuff.co.nz incl video) (TV3 Video) (Hutt News). The most distant report I read came from Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, so this fiasco is being reported worldwide.

The lucky 800 fans that did get in had their photos taken, their measurements recorded, and contact details entered.

The lucky few, before the Police showed up

Application forms were handed out to many people in line, but not to all. When it became clear that the event was being stopped by the Police, an announcement was made that all attendees would also be able to send in their details online that evening, something which at this stage (a day later) has not eventuated.

Filling out application forms outside

The disappointed, heading home again

And how necessary was it all? The lucky few who got inside only had their details taken. All this could have been done online. In fact, it HAD been done online, and through this blog. Just check through my blog in the last three years. At this stage I'm unsure what happened to the details of all the people who previously applied online, or actually printed out their CV's and sent them via mail. If anyone from the studio is reading this, please drop me a line! I'm more than happy to keep people informed.



All in all, a day that the studio could learn two important lessons from.

(1) The studio does not exist in a vaccuum. Other events may clash and interfere with badly organised studio plans. These other events are not hard to discover.

(2) There are MANY thousands of people in Wellington who want to be involved in The Hobbit. An event such as this will always be attended by people who are not even hopeful - large numbers of people were obviously too tall, too short, the wrong build, or had had no working visa. They just wanted to BE there. For any event related to The Hobbit, there will be more people present than expected (even if you take this statement into account). How many people attended the "Pro-Hobbit Rally" last year? How many were present at the ROTK Premiere in 2003? Take a look at these two photos from those events.

The Pro-Hobbit Rally in October 2010. We showed our support

This 2003 crowd (which continued from one end of the city to the other) was estimated by ABC News at 400,000. Ridiculous of course - Wellington hasn't got that many people.

At the end of this year, Wellington will be hosting the Premiere of the first of the Hobbit movies. Let's hope that goes a bit smoother than this weekend's fiasco. To begin with, it would be nice to know a date for the Premiere, so that the city can begin to plan around it already. We already know that both TORn and Middle-earth Network are planning Hobbit tours for the fans around the time of the premiere but are unable to confirm nbumbers until we know when the actual event takes place.

My message to the studios - please get yourselves better organised. The fans deserve better than this.

Been busy!

As you can see, I've updated the look of the NZ Noldor Blog - or as it's now known, "The Noldor, New Zealand". Nice and pretentious, hehe. The link stays the same, don't worry.

I discovered that Google's Blogger service has a few new features, mostly in the background but also some that may prove useful for you, the readers. For instance, it's now possible to reply to comments, and have the replies linked with the original comment. This will make conversations here a lot easier.

The changed blog is still a work in progress, so if there's anything amiss, can you drop me a line please...? (and please note the new address there!)


I've also been working hard on the new website for Welly-moot, the Wellington (NZ) Chapter of the Tolkien Society in the UK. Kris and I have been setting it up here in Wellington, and we'll be arranging regular meetings from now on, every last Sunday of the even-numbered months. The schedule for the meetings are posted on the Welly-moot blog, but for now, the next/first meeting will be on February 26th, 2:00pm at the Embassy Cinema, upstairs in the lounge. Come join us if you have a chance!



I've also managed to take a quick break from LOTR touring last week - Alex and I celebrated our 3rd/7th anniversary (met/got married) by driving up to Matamata and visiting the gorgeous Hobbiton set. On the way there we made a quick stop at Mount Doom (Mount Ruapehu) as well.

I'll try to get more pictures up later (non-disclosure-agreement allowing!), but in the meantime, here's my Gollum face on Mount Doom:

More soon!

Welly-moot number six was a total success!

It's almost 11:00pm, and I just got back from the Embassy Cinema in Wellington, where the 6th Welly-moot just took place. It was the second meeting in the last month - the previous meeting wasn't quite as well attended as I'd hoped, but this one made up for it. All in all I think there were 14 people there, and a lot of business was discussed.

Clockwise from me in the green shirt - Peter Kenny, Todd Rippon, Astrid, Erica, Kris, Viviane, Sven, Kim, Mervi, and Paul. The others joined later.

Apart from myself and my beautiful wife, we met up with Mervi from Finland, and Kris who is living here in the Wellington region. Mervi represented the two Finnish Tolkien Societies, while Kris and I are halfway through setting up the Wellington one (but more on that later). New Zealander Erica from TheOneRing.net joined soon afterwards, and then Peter Kenny (Australian's Brisbane Tolkien Appreciate Society) and Astrid (Austria's Tyrol Tolkien Smial) came in as well. Peter and Astrid joined me on a LOTR tour yesterday, in fact they are both interviewed on the TVNZ News segment about our reaction to the new Hobbit Trailer.


Also in attendance were Paul from the UK, Brendon and his partner from Australia, and three lost backpackers I found on the side of the hill during yesterday's tour, Viviane, Sven and Kim.


If that lineup wasn't special enough yet, we had a ANOTHER special guest for the evening - Todd Rippon also joined us, and he spoke about his time as an Oliphaunt rider, and his ultimate demise at the hands of that cruel elf, Legolas (but "that still only counts as one!").


Todd had some exclusive photos from his time on the set, which unfortunately I can't reproduce here but were enjoyed by all present (so attend next time!).


During the evening, Peter Kenny also recited some of his Hobbit poetry, which went down a treat, as did the cake and the ice coffees.


Other business of course included a discussion about the new Hobbit Trailer released yesterday. I "happened" to have it with me - it's downloadable from Apple.com after all, and my iPad 2 does the job very nicely, thank you! In fact I think we played the trailer 3 or 4 times, in all. Also on hand was our newsclip from yesterday, of course (that's definitely bragging rights), and a small clip from The Hunt For Gollum as well, once the discussion mentioned it. It's a solid piece of Middle-earth film, and if you haven't seen it yet you definitely should!




One final point that was discussed was that Kris and I are definitely setting up the official Tolkien Sciety in some form here in Wellington, and that will be announced properly as things happen in the near future. I'm hoping that by the next meeting we will have the official approval from the UK as well. Exciting times!


  - Jack

Hobbit Trailer released - and I made it to TV News again

By now I'm sure everyone has seen the brand new Hobbit Trailer - just in case you haven't yet, check it out at Apple's Movie Trailer directory.


I got a call from TVNZ this morning, to see if I would be available to comment on the trailer later, for their evening news. I told them I'd be touring with a group of LOTR fans, so they invited the whole group along, to watch it at 4:00pm (local NZ time) on the satellite feed! Well, we didn't have to think about that too long, that's for sure!

They interviewed us all at length afterwards, although most of that was reduced to some very excited soundbites. We got a few words in towards the end though.

You can watch the whole reaction-interview at TVNZ's website.

Overall a great trailer - I had expected more of a teaser trailer - you know, fade in, one quick image, and fade out, and repeat. Instead we got one full of exciting content, and lots of mystery! Was the elf in white actually Galadriel or not (I don't think it was, personally)? Where were the ruins that Gandalf was walking through?

Also, some revealing moments - we now have a much better idea about how Frodo fits into the Hobbit movie (considering his character hasn't actually been born yet). That will put a few minds at ease, I'd say!

One little detail I loved was that Bilbo shows off his (newly found) sword Sting, and the markings on the blade are correctly incomplete - the elfish lettering which appear on it during LOTR refer to an incident that happens during the last half of the Hobbit book, and the writing doesn't get added to the sword until after he vists the Elves again in Rivendell. Well done, Weta Workshop!

All things considered, it was a great trailer. It gave lots of hints that The Hobbit would be part of LOTR's story line, but different as well. Get the old audience back onside, and add new ones as well.

By the way, if you want to keep the trailer, it's actually downloadable from the Apple site.

TORn's MrCere on tour with Rover Tours

I had the pleasure of showing Larry Curtis (TheOneRing's MrCere) around Wellington's LOTR locations last week. We had planned to meet in the evening but unfortunately he was unavoidably detained elsewhere and couldn't make it.

He did manage to write up the tour on TheOneRing.net's blog, and it looks like he had a good time!


So, instead of meeting with MrCere and Tehanu (also from TORn), I met up with Kristi, who has attended earlier Welly-moots, and we discussed setting up as an official Tolkien Society spinoff - a "Smial". The official plans are now underway, so watch this space!


Meanwhile though - in a week and a half there will be another chance for Wellington's Hobbit friends to get together, again at the Embassy Theatre.

Peter Kenny, from the Australian Tolkien Society will be in Wellington, and he's keen to get together with like-minded people here. Also with him will be Astrid from the Austrian Tolkien Society, so a good get together is promised!


The details of the meeting again - it will take place at the Embassy Theatre on Thursday the 22nd of December at 7:30pm.


Hopefully we'll see you there!

  - Jack

Two Wgtn gatherings in the next two weeks!

Heads up for all Wellington Hobbit friends - your presence is requested! I'm meeting up with some international guests this month, and would like you to come as well!


The first gathering will be in honour of Larry "Mr Cere"Curtis, from www.TheOneRing.net, who is gracing NZ with his presence right now. He's Hobbit-chasing his way across the country, and will be in Wellington this week. On Thursday he will be going to the Weta Cave, but I probably won't be making it to that one. Knowing the Weta Cave, it'll be a seriously geeky affair, and probably very noisy and crowded - no doubt fun, but I've got a better idea!


Instead, I've arranged to meet him and Wellington's own TORn representative (read: TORn founder) Erica "Tehanu" Challis. The meeting will take place at 7:30pm, upstairs at the Embassy Theatre. The big differences between Weta Cave and the Embassy is that the Embassy has (a) seats, (b) coffee, and (c) cake. It'll be a better place to catch up, and have a good old-fashioned chat with everyone.


Meeting two will be a few weeks later - on the 22st of December, just before Christmas, the Australian Tolkien Appreciation Society's Peter "Proudfoot" Kenny will be visiting Wellington, together with Astrid from the Tyrol Tolkien Society (Austria). I'll be taking them on a LOTR tour the day before, and just before they leave Wellington, we're going to meet up once more time.

And of course, we'd like to show the Aussies (and the other Aussies - the Austrians) that we do things properly here in NZ, so we need a good turnout for an evening of Hobbit-loving madness. It will be at the same venue, the Embassy, and will start at the same time, 7:30pm.

So, those details again:

• To meet TORn's Mr Cere, come meet us this coming Friday the 9th of December at the Embassy at 7:30pm.

• To meet Peter Kenny, be at the Embassy Theatre on Thursday the 22nd of December at 7:30pm.

They'll both be fun evenings, and you're all more than welcome to come to both, of course! Bring friends!

Can you please drop me a line if you plan to attend, so I can put a few extra tables together on the night?

More fame (but still no fortune...)

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Update - the iTunes link has now been posted... also, a direct link to Council of Westmarch's own streaming media server.
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I was interviewed a few weeks ago by Danbo Brandybuck from the Council of Westmarch, a Montana (USA) based Tolkien community group. It looks like the interview has been edited for release, and has made it onto Middle-earth Radio, and has just finished streaming for the first time.

My bit is in the section The Golden Perch (complete shownotes here). During the interview, one of the things I talk about is a particularly cool visit to the Park Road Post Production facilities - Sir Peter Jackson's studios.

Hopefully it will be available as a PodCast soon as well, so it can be downloaded via iTunes. I'll post a link to it as soon as I know it.

In the meantime, the schedules for a reply are found here. Look for "The Council of Westmarch - The Wardens of Westmarch Ep1".

  - Jack