Yup~ i went for the movie tour in wellington, a cheap half day tour that runs about 4 hours though~ as i'm not really a big fan of TLOR~ haha~
The trip starts off by visiting the place where the first shot of TLOR was done~ it's in a woods at Mt Victoria~ a few shots were done here and our tour team had a great fun re-acting the scenes~
next stop was the production studios that were owned by Peter Jackson himself. It was a factory like studio which covers a huge piece of land~ extremely expensive studio~ We aren't allowed to step into the studio as they are constantly doing secret movie projects here~ including the AVATAR set~
Just beside the huge studio, it's an resident area. When they are doing those secret movie projects, even the neighborhood won't notice what they had done~ superb in hiding the secrets~
There are a few funny stories about the studio though~ The studio itself is located in Miramir, an area near wellington town, also the location of wellington airport. In order to have smooth filming, all studio building are build with sound proof material, so that when aircraft flies by, they wont hear a thing in the studio.
Unfortunately, this method failed~ in the end, they have a very effective system called aircraft detector instead~ it's not some very complicated system, it's just they hire someone that keep an eye on the sky and informing those who are shotting in the studio when aircraft is going to fly by~ the whole team will stop and wait for the plane to pass, before they continue their work~ lol~
There are another smaller studio called Park road studio, where they do all the post production work. Beside this studio was a few warehouse liked building where they store all the movie props~ All studio of Peter Jackson is on low profile~ all buildings won't have the word movie production, or studio on them~ so normally u will just pass by without knowing that these are the place that produce so many wonderful and high tech movies~
TLOR was filmed for about 7 years~ so for the ease of the filming crew and the actors, they actually bought houses around the seaside for them to live in~ they can bring in their family and stay with them while they are filming~
Most of the design in TLOR is created based on the things that can be found in wellington~ after TLOR success, wellington is known as middle earth and film industry in wellington is known as Wellywood~ the filming of TLOR is located all over new zealand~ most landscape scene was done in south island, where the scenery was simply breathtaking~
The premier in wellington was so grand where they placed a 1 km long red carpet from the street to the main door of Embassy Theatre in Wellington town~
The success of TLOR was so great that so many years after the movie, there are still so many company that organize tour to visit the filming location all around new zealand~ although all the film setting was removed~
The next hit will be the Hobbition series that they are building film setting now~ it'll be a good timing to visit new zealand after the Hobbition movies come out~