They have a Cave Troll!

 Monday 3/4/2024 

We were recommended to go to an experience called Wētā Workshop unleashed.  This was a creative experience showing us how this company created and worked on films, and showed us horror, fantasy and sci-fi experiences.  It was a 90 minute hands on guided tour!  You will see from the pictures that we decided to have loads of fun with it.  The company Wētā Workshop themselves specialize in concept design & manufacture for the creative industries: from film, TV & gaming to themed attractions, collectibles & more.  Most notably, for us anyway, were the Lord of the Rings films.  But they have many films to their credit including  Rebel Moon, both Dunes, Cocaine Bear and countless others.  They have a website if anyone was interested to see what else they worked on.  https://www.wetaworkshop.com/

These weren’t cave trolls, but they were mountain trolls, and we had fantastic fun with them!






And of course we had to visit Smeagol/Gollum.

And Smaug……
After we were done posing with the displays, we headed into our workshop tour!  We were all set to be shown the different ways that they created horror, fantasy and sci fi films!  
But first, we went thru their prop storeroom….
We were greeted by a corny, but well done animatronics ogre…

Saw many cool collectibles, like Gandalf the White on Shadowfax…..
……and Treebeard with Merry and Pippin! 
We moved on into the horror movie workshop and were able to use levers to make this monster move…
Operate on an alien…
View heads and eyeballs on the wall…
and ceiling…..

And see virtually how we would look as monsters….
Which one of us is cuter?
Then we found some missing arms….
After a quick bathroom break we moved on to seeing how they made fantasy films.
The Wētā experience built a 1 to 28 scale castle and surrounding scenery to show us how film shots are done.  Christine is passing by the castle during sunset.  
Another angle of the same castle during a sunset shot. 
Surrounding area at night..

They showed us how they made chain mail.
Before we left the fantasy area, I decided to play a bored and haughty queen!
Last but not least we moved on to a sci fi movie set.  It was dark in there, so I didn’t get a lot of good pictures, but here a robot is pointing towards a spaceship.  Then they “ran the scene” for 3 minutes….
The robot started moving and speaking.
……and the spaceship lit up and did some maneuvering with the help of a changing screen behind it.  It was cool, but not as fun as all the hands on stuff we did.  

Goodbye Wētā Workshop Experience.  

Thanks for having fun with us!!! Mary 

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