A long expected party

By RUSSELL BAILLIE entertainment editor

Strange things happen when you put a very big film of a very famous, very long book into a very small country. (Quite the least being that the biggest newspaper in the land devotes an entire section to it.)

For one thing the locals tend to get involved. Really involved. If you count all the extras, more than 20,000 New Zealanders have worked in some way on The Lord of the Rings trilogy. And that's not counting 250-odd horses. Which means quite a few people here probably know someone who knows someone who has had some association with the biggest single movie project in cinema history.

That's from the Nelson jewellers who designed and forged 40 gold rings - surely soon to become the most valuable bits of movie memorabilia - to the Matamata farmer who had Hobbiton built by army engineers out back of his place; from the horsemen and women from the South Island hinterland who donned cloaks and headgear and galloped again and again through the alpine tundra, to the Wellington bakers of Bilbo Baggins' eleventy-first birthday cake, to the Motueka fish'n'chip shop that found itself with its biggest order in history when cast and crew were rained out of their location in the nearby hills.

And then there are those who will have to wait quite a few minutes when the end credits of The Fellowship of the Ring roll to see their name - the workers of Peter Jackson's Weta Digital and Weta Workshop, some of whom are profiled in these pages.

It's been big. It's been an event, even before the first foot of the first film goes through the projector, and that's what this section hopes to celebrate - and it all happened right here.

But maybe we shouldn't get too attached to the idea of playing-spot-the-location - and there's been more than a hundred of them. Asked what it's going to feel like being a New Zealander - who knows the light, the colours of the bush, the true scale of the Misty Mountains - watching his films, Jackson says he hopes it won't feel much different.

"We ended up shooting in such remote areas that it's unlikely you are going to see many familiar places - unless you are some sort of rugged South Island deerhunter or tramper.

"I think every New Zealander is going to have a certain bias because they are aware that the film has been made here. Unfortunately, every Kiwi is going to go into the movie with that in mind, which defeats the purpose of a film like this. What I am trying to do as a filmmaker is transport you away to Middle-earth. I am wanting more than anything for people to forget the real world ... and be transported away with a bit of escapist entertainment.

"In a way I hope the film overwhelms people in the sense that they actually forget that it's New Zealand after a while. That would be a good thing."

We'll do our best.

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Feature: Lord of the Rings