...it's time for Hobbiton. We finally made it! Josh was OVERLY excited and I was so freaking pissed that we had to pay $60 for some holes in the hillside... but to be honest... it was pretty cool.
We arrived in Hobbiton and heard the story behind how it came to be in Matamata. Apparently Peter Jackson and someone from New Line Cinema flew over NZ looking for a shire-looking place... they flew over this property and saw the big tree (the "party tree") by the lake and thought it was perfect. I mean, they picked a great location because you cannot see or hear anything that would get in the way of production from this location. Not a powerline to be seen, not a freeway to be heard, just beautiful rolling hills with mountains in the backdrop - pretty perfect.
Our guide told us lots of facts about Hobbiton -- and although I wasn't as stoked as Josh was to be there, I must admit - some of these facts are so crazy that they have to be repeated --
> The oak tree above Bilbo's house that is in all three movies a total of 40 seconds was not there naturally. Peter Jackson didn't want it to be computer generated so he sent out a scout to the neighbor's property and negotiated a price for one of their trees. He then cut it into little pieces and numbered each one, brought it back to the set, reconstructed the tree by bolting it back together, and hired film students to spend their summer tying on fake leaves from Taiwan... all for 40 seconds of film time... Ridiculous!
> They had NZ's Army come in and create a road from the main entry to the farm to the set area. It had to be structurally sound enough to support all the trucks and big rigs coming in with set supplies, food, generators, hobbit feet, etc, etc... the ARMY. They also had a mandatory "no fly" zone over the farmland before, during, and after their time filming to protect from leaked images of the set...
> There's one scene in the movie where the hobbits are all drinking away -- that scene was scheduled to take over 8 hours to film but Peter Jackson wanted to use real beer in the shots. However, he didn't want a bunch of drunk hobbits rolling around set. Solution: Buy a brewery from the south island, ship all its brewery parts to the set, and brew your own beer with only 1% alcohol. What? Want to build rock looking fences around the hobbit properties? Rocks are heavy, so why not make them out of styrofoam and spray a thin layer of concrete over them to make them look real? Not a problem when you BUY a styrofoam making company and a styrofoam recycling center from Wellington and transport their whole facilities up here to produce stones for the set! That Peter Jackson -- he's got some serious cash-ola.
> I asked if they knew how much Peter Jackson/New Line offered them for using their land and such but no such luck -- the family hasn't told a sole. I'm guessing MUCHO monies...
1 comment:
we didn't think we could deal with LOTR (sorry josh!) but daddy is going to check out the behind the scenes of the movie with National Geographic...he'll be in the loop.
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