Real essence of 'Rings' in Mid Canterbury

By MONIQUE DEVEREUX

Forget Matamata's Hobbiton or Middle-earth-wannabe Wellington.

As far as special effects guru Richard Taylor is concerned, Mid Canterbury was where the real essence of The Lord of the Rings was captured.

The double Oscar winner says Mt Potts, one and a half hours west of Christchurch, was his favourite filming location, and hundreds of fans and tourists have already made the journey to see for themselves.

The Mt Potts area played home to the city of Edoras, a set that took 11 months to build, in the Rings trilogy. The landscape features sweeping plains with snow-capped mountains as a backdrop.

Being used as a movie set is not new to the station, which has featured in ski films and advertisements for Audi and sporting equipment.

The station is vast, about 10,000ha, and remote, reaching to an altitude of 2300m.

"There was no place in my life that I have been to that more succinctly captured a culture than Mt Potts," Mr Taylor says in The Lord of the Rings Location guide book.

"To walk through this village, completely fabricated as a set ... , on this huge, craggy piece of rock with a 360-degree panoramic view of these massive, sweeping mountains covered in snow with the plains down below was an absolute treat."

Key cast members were also impressed with the film set.

Viggo Mortensen, who played Aragorn, has described the Mt Potts area as one of the most impressive locations to work in.

"Everything was constructed on this knoll and, reading the book, it's exactly what you would dream Edoras would look and feel like."

Ian McKellen, aka Gandalf, was also awed, saying the region had majesty.

So it is no surprise that Mt Potts has become a popular destination for Rings fans.

Queenstown-based Glenorchy Air has run sightseeing trips to Mt Potts for the past year. From Queenstown the flight takes an hour; by road it would be a 12-hour round trip.

The charter airline had a close involvement with the movie production and was often chartered by the cast and crew.

Chief pilot Robert Rutherford treats tourists with his own stories about the movie production during the trip. The airline has registered its newest plane "ZK-LOR" in honour of the films.

Monday's world premiere of The Return of the King has boosted interest in Mt Potts not only for fans. Some cast and crew are heading there next week on the Glenorchy Air plane named after their work.


* It's a Lord of the Rings weekend at nzherald.co.nz. Join us throughout this weekend for updates from Wellington as the city prepares to host Monday's world premiere of Part 3 in the Rings trilogy: The Return of the King.

Herald Feature: Lord of the Rings

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