Today we went to Weta Workshop which is a local business that started as a small special effects company and is now responsible for the effects in massive titles such as Lord Of The Rings, Avatar, The Avengers, Power Rangers, Ghost In The Shell, King Kong, Narnia, Elysium, District 9, Chappie and even Thunderbirds!
Once again we struggled to find parking but eventually found a spot a couple of streets away and walked over. We were greeted by giant trolls out the front and crowd of people out the front of “The Cave” which had a gift shop and a small theatre which played a behind the scenes documentary that can only be seen here.
We bought our tickets for The Weta Workshop tour and went around the corner to go inside. We were not allowed to touch anything except for very specific props and not allowed to take any photos or videos. This was a little surprising but it turns out that even though Weta made these props and house them, they technically don’t own them and therefore they can not be used in anyones photos without permission from the owners which in this case are the movie producers, etc.
We saw some amazing props in there and got to hold a “real” alien gun from District 9. They walked us through the various stages of how the majority of the props are made. From the 3D modelling step on a computer to the final casted product which is generally made from a very rigid plastic. The plastic used is very strong and when painted to look like steel or wood it was pretty hard to tell it was plastic. Even with this gun, they fill the inside of it with steel so it has a more realistic weight to it. It was actually pretty heavy but they do this so the actors don’t look like they’re just throwing around plastic guns because the momentum is actually real!
The workshop was amazing to see, I couldn’t recommend it enough. They even had a fully functional Warthog from Halo. This vehicle could actually travel at 100kph and the wheels could turn independently and can actually drive sideways!
From here we headed back into town to get some sushi from the same place we did the other day. We normally try not to have the same thing more than once on a trip but we all agreed this sushi was worth it (and the queue to get in). This time I got even more!
After lunch we walked over to the waterfront. This was a pretty popular spot, there were people everywhere and the view was pretty nice for a city but not quite as nice as Queenstown!
Along the waterfront is the Te Papa museum and they have three exhibits: Gallipoli war, Mountain to sky and Awesome forces. The tour guide from Weta was telling us about the Gallipoli war exhibit as Weta made the giant-sized models for it. There were huge, very detailed models of soldiers and other people who had a story to tell from the war times. It was quite an interesting exhibit, not only was it moving to learn about such a treacherous war but I have never seen giant models like this before. They were also miniature models, video projections over 3D models, walkthrough rooms with props along the walls and even some 3D video sections.
After this exhibit we had a quick look through the other two exhibits which were also quite good but not as impressive as seeing the giant models. One other section of note was the earthquake simulation which was a small room with some videos playing and then the room would shake to show people what it would be like to experience an earthquake.
After walking through the exhibits we stopped for lunch and worked out what we would do for the rest of the day. We wanted to have a fairly quiet one so we ended up picking a movie to see and walked over to the shopping center. The group were a little divided but the majority of us went to see The Lego Movie while the others went to see The Fast And The Furious.
Along the way there was a t-shirt printing place and because we were joking about getting t-shirts made with the star wars picture I made from the other day we quickly stopped by to see how much it would cost. It turns out it was pretty affordable and they could do it within half an hour! We all got measured up and went to go see the movie but because there was another group seeing The Fast And The Furious which was much later that night they offered to pick up the t-shirts while we were in the cinema.
After the movie we went to a Japanese restaurant for dinner and went back to the hotel. After the second group got back we all got to try out our new t-shirts and ended up watched YouTube for the rest of the night.