Weta Workshop Ltd

[Stayla Casillas]

Ourattractions in Auckland and Wellington let us share our creativity with the world, offering up-close and personal experiences into the artistry and craftsmanship that happens within our workshop every day.

In Auckland, we invite you to get hands on and immerse yourself in a wacky world of special effects, props and larger than life sets. Explore three film projects from the imagination of our crew, and discover how we bring sci-fi, fantasy and horror movie concepts to life.

In Wellington, we take guests behind the scenes of the workshop, providing an exclusive glimpse into where all the creative magic happens. You might recognise some of our props, weapons or costumes - especially if you're a fan of Middle-earth.

A global award-winning movie-making tour. Explore interactive and immersive make-believe film sets, focusing on the worlds of horror, fantasy and sci-fi. It's your chance to get up-close and hands-on with enchanting environments, resident creatures, one hyper-realistic giant, a galactic robot, and much more.

From The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit to District 9: learn about the making of props, costumes and creatures created for your favourite films. Interact with cool stuff from our creative departments and, if you're lucky, catch an artist at work on our tour stage.

How does one create a world? Do you start from scratch and proceed meticulously, one step at a time? Or does it usually come as a burst of inspiration, where everything happens all at once? Where does this creativity come from? Is it innate, or can it be learned? Can anyone do it, or is it a kind of everyday magic reserved for the chosen few?

More than two decades ago, I found myself in the vast cinema hall at the Colosseum in Oslo, Norway, watching The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time. Little did I know this film would be the first of three to become my all-time favorites. They would literally change my life.

And then you have, of course, the people themselves. We have incredible talent in this country. Not just our cast and crew but the people who provide the services and support that we need, whether it be caterers, builders, or electricians. We have incredible service providers. We have incredible ingenuity. We have incredible inventiveness.

And all of this is being done in this relatively small corner of the world. And it just so happens that it lined up very, very nicely. There are many other places that you could have gone in the world to make these movies, that would be magnificent in their own right. But it is difficult to know whether they would have been as easy or as forgiving or as magnificently beautiful as the landscapes of New Zealand were. It is not lost on me; believe me, how blessed we were to have this incredible resource at our disposal.

But watching that unfold monthly, as the very first tests were rolling out of Wētā Digital, no one really knew whether this approach was going to fulfil expectations. Then, seeing libraries of motion-captured movement being put into the computer, which would then randomly draw from these movements to create authentic performances on huge battlefields to give these sweeping, dramatic scenes, was mind-boggling. It was groundbreaking and brave. Brave for Peter. Brave for the producers. And it is very brave for the digital effects artists that did the work and pulled it off.

We briefly considered it. We actually took one of our designers, a guy called Chris Guise, who, at the time, was incredibly slim. And we made prosthetics for his hands and the back of his head so we could shoot over his shoulder. I think it was only ever used in one scene. At the time, this caused a bit of a realization.

At some point in the production, Joe Letteri joined Wētā Digital as the visual effects supervisor, and he ultimately collaborated with Gino Acevedo, a physical effects technician who had come down from the USA to work with us to do all the character paint designs in our workshop. Gino helped Joe and his team understand how to create a sense of translucent skin that looks terrific to the camera. So, in collaboration with the incredible digital artists who also worked on Gollum, there was this amazing transference of knowledge, ideas, and inspiration that went into the creation of what we saw on film.

Likewise with Minas Tirith. Alan provided a series of sketches for us to build from. For this miniature, we literally piled a whole lot of cardboard boxes together, sprayed them with urethane foam, carved them back, and then started building onto them. Never could we think that this miniature would end up going on to be exhibited in a museum, having a life well beyond the movie. If we had known, we would have built it a little better. But we were building them so cheap, so fast, that I really was of the view that the only thing that mattered was that they just needed to hold up for the filming.

If I rephrase the question slightly, what is the most important thing for me to get out of these movies? It is the knowledge that we were able to take a large group of people who otherwise had never had the chance to work on something like this before. Through the infrastructure of our company and, hopefully, the inspiration of the project, a group of people were empowered to achieve things that they could never have possibly imagined before we got to work on these movies.

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We watch a 3-minute video introduction by Richard Taylor, Creative Director of the workshop and the co-founder and co-director of the Weta companies. Includes a highlight reel from some of their most famous film projects such as Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and Avatar.

It feels like every inch of available wall space is filled with props. I count 29 distinct props in this first room, plus display cases at foot-level filled with prosthetic masks and puppets.

A significant portion of this room focused on the movie prop design process, featuring a gun from the movie District 9. Across several informational posters, we see how it goes from sketch to final product.

This room has lots of armor, a real working Warthog car from Halo, more swords, WotWots animatronics, a CNC area featuring Phyllis (they name each of their CNC machines), and a 3D printer that was definitely an afterthought in the room layout.

There were also three elaborate display cases in this room, with numerical labeling on each object, holding a bunch of assorted props. Perhaps these will be helpful in the upcoming New Zealand Film Museum.

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