The rain hammering on the roof of the van woke us during the night. It never stopped until late the next night. We were late rising, eventually eating breakfast and driving into Wellington for another Lord of the Rings scheduled stop. We drove to the Weta Workshop where they make models and sets for films. Now, they also have a CGI studio. They have worked on many films, including, of course, The LOTR & Hobbit Trilogies, plus the new Bladerunner etc etc and the re-launch of the old Thunderbirds show.

On the model side we saw the models of Tracey Island, various rockets and other scenery used in the Thunderbirds series. They build the sets and film these from many different direction, to form a library. Superimposed onto these shots are the CGI “actors”.  The studio has a sense of humour and so wherever they can, they include a lemon squeezer. This originates from the first series when a viewer wrote in to complain about the lemon squeezer (purporting to be a rocket motor), threatening he would never watch anymore episodes which contained one. Back then, the model makers decided to put a lemon squeezer in whenever they could. This tradition has been continued into modern days. To replicate the very first lemon squeezer, they ended up having to 3-D print one, having failed to find the real thing.

The next tour was the LOTR and Hobbit tour. Here they explained the making of the armour, chainmail and the various costumes which the actors wore. The swords were mainly plastic, but they still they made steel swords for close ups where reflections and weight mattered. They made a great deal of use of CNC machines to create the initial moulds used for helmets. Another interesting use of these machines was to create replicas of actors who were too busy to travel to New Zealand for costume fitting. The costumes would be fitted to these replicants, and so fitted the actor exactly.

Unfortunately, they do not allow photography of most of the workshop. These photos are from the area where they allow pictures to be taken. 

After our excellent tours, we searched for a pub on the outskirts of Wellington. This failed somewhat, even several miles from the centre, parking near a bar seemed at a premium. It also started to dawn on me, the P60 pointing along a road does not mean 60 parking places, but 60 minutes parking time. I am expecting to see a lot of parking fines ☹.

Giving up, we drove back to Lower Hutt for a bar there, a pint of beer (yes, a real imperial pint) and some loaded wedges. We did a wander along the street looking into charity shops (well, Rosemary did, think she bought something) and other such places. It was then back to the campsite to sit in the dining area in the dry and cook our supper in the kitchen while we charged are devices