Weta Studios Wellington

Interislander Ferry: Enjoying the beautiful landscape of the sounds on the ferry with a seal swimming close by. After we left the South Island, Lukas and I started a Mario Party match as a team against two extrem coms. For the first half of the game we were slowly falling behind and we lost a few Minigames. We caught up to them and then slowly turned the tides to our favour. When we thought, we could win the game, the last 5 rounds the duel fields appeared. The first duel started with 1 Star each as the bet and the Minigame options were challenging. Some Minigames are impossible to win against extrem, but we were lucky and Lukas defeated the opponent. Right after I stepped on another duel field and now we had to bet 2 Stars each. The tension was making my hand shaking. The Minigame was collecting/catching Gumbas, where you have to draw a small circle around them, but not around the bombs! I did a practise run and lost it quite hard, because extrem was way faster. I still had a little hope but loosing the duel would be loosing the Party. I started the Minigame and in the beginning I kept up with the com. I almost circled a bomb while trying to get 3 Gumbas at once. We were even 15 / 15 then right before the finish 20 / 20. In the last second I got a golden Gumba which brought me the win and also saved us the game.

Weta Cave: We arrived early at the place and looked around the gift shop. So many things I would like to buy, but because of this amazing craftsmanship spending days for one piece, the sculptures and replicas have a proud price. The tour itself was fascinating and we learned a lot about their history, how they create thier artwork and how they combine modern technology with craftsmanship. Our tour guide did a great job, explaining everything. For one movie scene they created a full bodysuite which took about 12 hours to put on, so they started at 7 pm and filmed the scene at 7 am.

Mt Victoria / movie settings: The Hobbit hide out is next to a walkway in a forest. You can only tell from the trees in the background, but the roots they are hiding under don't exist. For people who never watched the movies, it must be weird that people take a picture of this place (last pictures). The video is another place close by, where they made a short scene with a Vertigo effect, but it's impossible with the phone and it looked quite different back then.Read more