Mordor & Ithilien

Went to Mordor this morning - spooky place.
It was very misty up on Ruapehu, but perfect weather for Mordor. I spent quite a while waiting around for the mist to clear, so there was something to look at, but eventually got a shot of Mears Wall, where Gollum snook-up on the sleeping hobbits, & some area shots of the Dagorlad Plain. It was very atmospheric up there, & quite apt having no sun. I mean, Mordor in the sunshine - I don't think so.
It turns out that the volcano photo I took yesterday was Mount Doom. It was just too misty & drizzly today to see it from the angle they used in LOR. I will put up a photo, but although the photos from the card (but not the vid clips - more of that later) are now on the memory stick, I haven't worked out how to get them on here for you to look at. Maybe manana?
Anyway, I had lunch at the Grand Chateau, up on Ruapehu. This was where the hotshots stayed when they were filming up there. It's only 1/4 hr from the location.
After that I drove back to Ohakune & up the mountain road to Ithilien. I got some shots of the stream where Gollum caught his fish. I remember watching that at the cinema, & wondering how on earth they managed to get the water to act as if someone was splashing about in it. I now know, of course :-)) having watched hours of the extra bits on the extended DVDs.
I had tea at the Powderhorn Chateau in Ohakune where a load of them stayed while doing the Ithilien locations up the hill & had a nice chat with the really friendly waitress (about my NZ leg & Orang Utan bits of the trip). Unfortunately, I never got her name, but she asked the receptionist, Sophie (only 1 e hahaha), if I could go & see the suite where Peter Jackson stayed. On the way up I cuddled a lovely, moulting marmalade & white puss, who weighed a ton, purred like crazy & left me covered in cat hairs: almost like home!
Sophie was really kind & let me shoot some video in the suite, & then showed me a massive LOR T-shirt signed by Sam & Frodo (Sean Astin & Elijah Wood, for those of you who aren't ringies), as well as the guest book showing Gandalf was there too!
The days filming would have been great, except that the German girl I asked to show me how to put the stuff from the card on to the stick, transferrred the stills, but not the vids, & then deleted everything. That means I've lost all the video clips :-((
On the bright side, Hopalong Clarke won't get on the web for everyone to laugh at ;-)
I have an empty card in the camera, ready for Anduin tomorrow, & if I manage to get off early & get down to Waikanae by midday, I'll detour to Rivendell before heading on to Wellington.
Hopefully when I get there, someone will show me how to do the copy & paste from stick to blog, & there'll be some photos for you to look at tomorrow.
Finally here's a few funny/odd/weird things:
- The Hobbiton location is on a farm whose address is Buckland Rd.
- I should have gone to Hobbiton on Wed., but was delayed. Consequently, I went on Thurs, & met an Orc. I may never have met him if I'd gone as planned.
- I had planned to do Mordor on Thurs, when it was sunny, but ended up doing it today when the weather was much more in keeping with Tolkien's description.
- Because I'm slightly behind schedule, I may now do Rivendell in the car rather than the bus, which would free up more time for the Weta Cave, Mt Victoria & other Wellington LOR stuff.
So, all in all, it was quite a serendipitous delay on Wednesday, after all!
About to get booted out of the system here in Ohakune, so TTFN & more manana.
OAO SPC