Weta Workshop — Where Movie Magic And Movie Monsters Feel Real

#flathal #wetaworkshop #newzealand

From the moment we arrived at Wētā Workshop the tone was set… we followed colorful footprints left by monsters up to where our tour began beneath glowing bubbles near the ceiling!

The Flat Friends were a little uneasy when our guide said we were going to be out to work as interns. Fortunately, that just meant we got to play with a lot of the stuff we were shown!

We were taken through “the vault” (a reminder a lot of people actually want spoilers about the next Avatar movie, or some future Lord of the Rings project.)

After that we got a glimpse of the serious work done to create movie magic—wonder who had some spare time and left the “help me!” sign for his coworkers/friends?

Wētā Workshop is famous for practical, or physical effects, as opposed to computer generated. During our tour the Flat Friends saw models of tents that looked like they could house a mighty army— if the warriors were about six inches tall.

Towering monsters, and caged beasts were around every corner.

We saw a huge castle, that appeared at least “three stories tall” perched atop a mountain… and we walked around it in less than a minute! In reality it was closer to twelve or fifteen feet tall, towering over us, but hardly capable of housing hundreds.

Yet, when we looked at our photos, even we paused, wondering if we had underestimated the size and scale of this great fortress.

One of the things Flat Hal really liked at Wētā Workshop was their attitude of sharing information. This was not just a tour showing off what they have done in past movies, but about teaching others how some of the movie magic is made and can be done.

We were encouraged to handle the leather, to try sculpting with clay on face masks, to attempt to take a “forced perspective” photo that would make the giant robot look even bigger, and the human even smaller.

We saw common every day things, like empty yakult drink bottles, used to make engines on a model of a spaceship. It was not that our guide was spoiling the trick or demystifying the magic, he was doing something even more incredible.

He was letting us know we could create magic, just by changing how we view the world around us!