Welcome to another fascinating episode of The Quest for New Zealand’s Lord of the Rings by MEE!!! Today we will be…visiting many of the Lord of the Rings’s shorter scenes.
Yeah, okay. I don’t know who wrote that introduction, but I’m not so sure about that whole ‘visiting’ thing. We either saw it way off in the distance or really had no idea where it was (somewhere in the next mile). Anyway.
Just to save the suspense, we spent the majority of the day driving in the rain (and then the snow and then the rain…). And mostly we saw mountains. Lots of mountains. Well, might as well turn (perhaps wearily) back to our TV or computer screens and the DVD therein. Today we will be ranging over most of the movies, so let’s get started.
Here’s a list of mountains we kind of passed and maybe saw. Ehm. First of all. Very beginning of The Two Towers. A little iffy on this one. So, opening scene. Snowy mountains. Sun. Keep going. Gandalf (overvoice) shouts, “You can not pass!” Frodo replies, “Gandalf!” And the scene switches to new mountains. Much more snow. Gandalf talking (can’t really understand him). Watch carefully. A bit of the mountain straight ahead should be flashing. The scene’s going to change again in a second, but pause before it does. I think this is one of the mountains we drove by.
Second. Flip to your DVD menu. The scene is The King of the Golden Hall. Start the scene and STOP! Backdrop. We saw those mountains. Yeah.
Third. Back up to my previous journal entry and get directions to the lighting of the beacons scene. We saw a couple more of those.
Onto something a little more exciting. Argonath. Yeah, I know. Fellowship of the Ring, second disc (for those extended edition people). Scene called: Parth Galen. Rewind. The Argonath are those huge stone king figures that were digitally imposed into the mountain. If you’re having trouble identifying exactly what I’m talking about (although it should be fairly obvious), Aragorn says, “Long have I desired to look upon the kings of old. My kin.” And a couple seconds later you get this nice long shot of cliff, (really) blue water, boats, huge stone things.
To get to that spot, we got to drive on a really fun mountain road, partly through the snow. The scene location had something to do with a vineyard and a bungee jumping company. We weren’t positive about where on the river the scene was actually filmed, but it was obviously there somewhere. Did I mention it was raining (aka we wanted to keep moving and not spend forever freezing).
Next. Same movie, but first disc. Head to Rivendell and then rewind back to Arwen ferrying Frodo (on a horse) across a ford/river. The Nazgul are just coming out of a forest. So. White horse runs into river with black horses coming in behind. We go to long shot with large river and many horses. Got it? If you get to a quick shot of Arwen’s face, you’ve gone like two seconds too far. And if she starts talking, you’ve definitely gone too far.
So, another scene we’re very iffy on. The river has been cut in half but a hill of rocks, so it’s now much deeper, faster and smaller. We were also there in the summer (lots of lupines, bushy trees etc.) instead of fall…or winter…or something. This shot mainly consists of pine trees. We unfortunately, were unable to find pine trees. So, like the previous scene, it was obviously here somewhere, but we couldn’t really say, “That’s it.”
Okay. Coming to our final destination of the day (other then our hostile. We won’t talk about that, it’s too scary…not the hostel, the hill that got us to the hostel). Very beginning of first movie. Just fast forward. Getting rings…Elf talking…battle scene…’death’ of Sauron … Isildur gets ring. Stop. Isildur will now ride through a forest (aren’t those trees awesome?). Galadriel will say, “and the ring of power has a will of its own.” After that, things get fuzzy. Orcs attack. Okay. They attack for a while. That battle scene was probably filmed in several different locations. We might have passed by them. The only thing I’m sure about is a couple seconds later.
I need to go to sleep…Ehm, sorry. Isildur puts on the ring, jumps in the river, losses the ring…and, why do you keep missing the scene? The scene switches to a bunch of orcs firing bows. We were there. Yeah. So, let me explain what you’re seeing. Starting from the top. Sky between two trees. If you were to walk between those trees, you would encounter a green field. And then a town. But avert your eyes an inchish down from the top of the screen. There is a path running along the upper quarter of the screen. Now look down at the orcs in the foreground (so, that was one hill from the top to the path and then another hill from the path to the riverbed). The orcs are firing into a shallow (very swift) and probably empty river. The river Isildur was in, was somewhere else.
I’d also like to point out this scene had some serious greys added. I mean, that place was green when we were there.
The Quest for New Zealand’s Lord of the Rings by MEE!!! will return tomorrow, exploring new and uncharted territory. We will bid you goodbye before our narrator drops to the floor of exhaustion.
