Today I went to the WETA Cave in Miramar, Wellington and it was fabulous.
It was great fun to step inside the walls of an actual movie workshop, even more exiting to note that this is the Multi Academy Award winning company that created The ‘Lord of the Rings’ Trilogy and ‘District 9’…and yes I did see actual, real life props from these films (unfortunately you can’t take any photos in the workshop).
The main mini-museum and shop are completely free, but you can pay $20.00 and see the WETA workshop, a little insight into the inner workings of the hands-on creative side of WETA. You can see some of the props and models that they have created through various films and the processes that they use. It was interesting to note that for every prop that is made within the WETA Workshops another replica is made for the archives/storage.
The tour starts with a video showing interviews with WETA co-founders Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor, Tania Rodger and Jamie Selkirk. In it they explain how WETA came about and their journey to make it the company that it is: they started their first film with eight people working for three weeks and when working on the Lord of the Rings Trilogy they had 6,000 people working for seven years!!!
At the front of the building, before you actually enter WETA, there are three Trolls. They are models of those used in the first Hobbit film and it is impossible to resist taking funny photos with them!
In the free mini-museum there are life size models of the characters for people to take their photos with. One of the ladies working at the cave told us that the actor who plays Lurtz (Lawrence Makoare) didn’t actually have much added to him in order to play the character: he used prosthetic feet, hands and obviously head/face. He is naturally very muscular and tall. I was actually amazed at this. I said that i bet all of the women on set loved it when he walked around in his loin cloth!
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