LOTR Weta Cave

LOTR Weta Cave

Weta is the company that made all the costumes and special effects in the Lord of the Rings movies. They did all of the digital work like Gollum or placing the Isengard on top of a real New Zealand location [LINK], but also all the crafting of armour, cloths and weapons.

Weta has grown from a small group of motivated and talented craftsmen, that helped Peter Jackson with his first movies (e.g. Braindead and Bad Taste) over a company helping TV-series with armour and weapons (e.g. Xena) to an internationally renowned design studio which took on movies like Narnia, Avatar or District Nine.

While the actual studio is closed for public, they working on new unreleased movies after all, they have created a little display area called Weta Cave.
In the Weta Cave you can samples of their craftsmanship, miniatures from movies they worked on (the miniatures are created from the same people working on the movie) and watch a little 30 min DVD about Weta's history and work.

weapons from District Nine

Dr. Grordbort

more cool weapons, these are from Dr. Grordbort

from Halo

One guy working for Weta was asked in the movie how he likes to work for Weta and he answered: "If I wouldn't work here, I'd do the same stuff at home anyway". It's seems to be a really cool place. You got all the time and means to put a lot of love and effort in the things you create, you can fully live out your creative energies. 

Bilge Rat and I thought that we also would love a job like this.

bilge rat was not scared of this Uruk-hai

the original armour of Sauron