Day 14 – Here Wētā – day, Gone Tomorrow

This entry will include many spoilers for the Wētā Unleashed experience. If you want to go, I’d recommend perhaps skipping this one. 

Wētā 1: a large brown wingless insect related to the grasshoppers, with long spiny legs and wood-boring larvae, found only in New Zealand. Translates to “God of all ugly things”. 

That’s it, back to reality. Our time here in Aotearoa, New Zealand is over today. We say goodbye to this beautiful country with one last hurrah, by spending our morning at Wētā Unleashed at Sky Tower in Auckland. We have received recommendation after recommendation to ensure we visit this exhibit before we leave the country, and after our morning there, I can see where the insistence comes from. Wētā is a special effects company that is renown throughout the movie community as the makers of such things as the endomorph suits from Alien Romulus, and many of the props from The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Avatar, King Kong, and District 9.

We started off our tour by meeting our guide for the morning named Case,  who explained that today we are not guests on a guided tour, but interns going through induction. We first got our “ID photos’ taken, then went through to a stock room while the people behind got their photos taken. In here there were floor to ceiling shelves stacked with boxes of props they have worked on like “dragon claws, Hobbit stilts, full body bald caps, left handed hammers and werewolf fur”. I guess it set the tone of the humour involved in this tour. While we were waiting in this storeroom, looking around there seemed to be no exits. It wasn’t until the photos were done and Case came back through and got Drew (this tours employee of the month) to reveal the secret door through to the studio, behind a box with a yeti sticking out of it. 

We shuffled through the newly revealed door to make it to a room with one wall fully covered in a display of movie character figures, one filled with trophies, one with movie posters and the last with a semi-circled panelled gate covering the top of a desk. Case told us that in this area we would be greeted by someone very special named Jeff, but since he was running a little late, he would tell us about the features in this room. He told us that the figures on the wall weren’t just pretty statues of characters in the movies they’ve played part in, but the masters that their artists sculpted and painted by hand before they went into production. This was the only area of the exhibit where we were asked not to touch, but that everywhere else was up for grabs – this was a fully tactile and interactive tour. But I can understand why we were told not to touch, some of these figures had tiny details that were immaculately executed. From the strands of the elvish hair of Legolas blowing behind as the horse he was on reared up, or the thin and delicate twigs at the end of Treebeard’s branches, as he is carrying Hobbits on his shoulders, or the flames coming off Balrog – it was incredible to take in once I knew these were the masters that artists created with their own two hands. 

We were then directed towards the wall that had the desk and the gate covering, and introduced to Jeff, their head of security! This was a full animatronic character, who moved and spoke and looked out at the group. It was a completely surreal moment. 

We were then ushered down a corridor lined with movie posters and into a new room with a large screen on one side. This is where Case introduced us to the 3 movies that Wētā created in order to own all rights, which meant they had no restrictions on what they could and couldn’t share about the behind the scenes, and what this entire exhibit it based around. They use these movies to show us how they go about creating characters, sets, props, scenes and everything in between that is required to make a movie. The first movie was called Fauna, a horror where the main character heads into a dark house going after her dog, but it met with a creature…
The second was a fantasy named Age of the Ever-Clan, which was based in a time where the dinosaurs never went extinct, but instead evolved like humans did, with communities and the like.
The third was Origins, a sci-fi following a large golden cyborg who was sent to discover humans on Earth, and ended up sacrificing herself to protect them. 

Knowing the basics of the plot lines, we emerged through into the next room, which houses their animatronics. This room was gorgeous! The walls and desks and even floor and roof is some places were lined with so many curious things. There was a corner that displayed bones, bugs, lizards, plants, skin and fur samples, everything they could possibly use for inspiration from nature in creating their characters and worlds. Case came over to us while we were looking through these and explained how they create fear for the characters they make by incorporating elements of nature which builds that uncanny valley feeling, and believability to their story, that this creature could really exist.

Another corner housed the skin suit for the creature characters and its fully animatronic accompanying mask, where we were able to interact with the buttons and levers to make it move. We were invited to feel the suit that was created specifically to fit the actress who played the creature in their movie, pick up the prototypes from the desk in front of us, feel the dints and markings left behind by artists sculpting them to create the desired texture. Up on the roof was the torso of the Mother Creature, that was tethered to a table of levers that we were able to pull on to make her face, jaw, arms and wings move. Behind that area was a model they used of the small creature splayed out on a table, with its torso opened and glowing organs inside. Case showed how it would interact with the person using the tools on its organs like a life sized operations game and make it legs twitch. 

Even further into this room is a display of how they made silicone casts and masks from real people. We were able to see how they make models, and the person who they modelled off was Adam Savage, a friend of Wētā and a Mythbuster, and here he was, sitting in front of us. It looked creepily real, like we were touching the face and skin of the man himself. Behind the model that displayed Adam getting his cast made was another model displaying how special effects makeup could be created for horror movies. It was incredibly impressive. 

To leave this room and transition towards their fantasy room, there was a full horror corridor that we had the choice to go through. There was a part of me that wanted nothing to do with this, I hate horror! But I mean… you gotta right? With an iron grip on Drews hand, we went through a butcher with hanging carcasses, a section with hanging tentacles and body parts, a corridor that pushed out towards you and squeezed you as you made your way through, to finish off with a jump scare. After all that you come out into the most beautifully set up shed.

Coming out of that nightmare fuel, you get to walk under stunning hanging wisteria flowers and into the Artists Shed. This room had another human silicone model of an artist named Boris sleeping on a desk. It was so life like that I didn’t notice him at first, thinking he was just another guest looking closely at the model castle in front of him. The walls were covered in concept art and artist notes, small models half painted, more inspiration in form of a shelf full of skulls and skeletons of small creatures. Honestly this was one of my favourite rooms!

This only lead to something even more impressive. Through the archway you are met with a giant model scaled at 8 to 1, of Boris peeping over some art supplies staring down at you. Now this was incredible!
Leaving Boris lead you to the next room where I was left speechless! This is a massive 1/8th scale castle, which meant that the average adult pinky finger would be as tall as you would be walking around the set. It took up half of a huge room, walking through it let you see all the details that go into models like this. There were lakes, trees, camps, stain glass windows on the castle itself, stairs carved into the stone it was all sat on, even a subterranean tunnel that you could crawl through and spot a baby dragon sleeping.

This led to a character building section, which invited us to get up close and personal with some of the methods of modelling. There was a sketch station, where character design was laid out, then a spot where you could made the base skeleton with foil and then model on top with clay. Getting involved in this process inspired me, I am definitely going to give sculpting a go!

Our last movie was the Sci fi Origins. This was a single room which showed us how it all comes together, from concept, to story board, to model and animatronic, and to film. This felt like such a celebration of art, I loved it. Plus you were met with an incredible animatronic that stood at about 4m tall, which interacted with a movie that was shown on a screen on the opposite wall that was skinned to look like a huge UFO.

This marked the end of our tour, and I would have to rate it as one of the best interactive experiences I have ever had. 

We had aimed to head up the sky tower itself afterwards, but we unfortunately ran out of time. Instead we grabbed a bite to eat and made our way to Jucy to drop off the car, and head to the airport. 

I’m writing this entry as we’re flying home, so this feels like the end. What an incredible day, and once in a lifetime trip.