It doesn’t really need to be said, but the Weta Workshop is simply amazing. Obviously in the Lord of the Rings movie the Shire is a lot more expansive and Hobbiton is a little more lively, but simply watching what goes into this is impressive since it obviously takes a bit of work and isn’t something that can be rushed all that much. There might actually be people that would be bold enough to say that they could recreate Hobbiton in this manner, but it’s kind of funny to think that unless a person built these kinds of sets for a living or as a hobby that anyone would think that it would be that easy. There’s a good deal of material, practice, and skill that goes into this type of thing, and simply doing it without really knowing what you’re attempting to do isn’t always possible. The practice and attention to detail that’s need to create something like this would be intense since just trying to get everything right, to get every detail down to scale so that it looks right and fits the way it needs to, would be nerve-wracking for some people that aren’t into fine detail and don’t want to sit there and pore over one little hillock or hobbit hole for hours on end. But hearing that they only had four days to make this happen is even more intense since one kind of assumes that they would be trying to pair efficiency with speed, and one might think that they would have to sacrifice a bit of each in order to get it right.
But the end result looks great and it looks like something that could be used in a movie if it was completely finished. Just thinking of the many other things that Weta has made for LOTR though is enough to make someone sit back in amazement since the number of different projects that are produced on a regular basis by Weta and many other creators is mind-boggling since movies and TV shows require a lot of effects and props that can be used for various purposes. When looking at Hobbiton it’s almost as though someone took a simple example of a rolling set of hills and went from there with a great amount of imagination. The idea that anyone would live in what is essentially a hole in the ground is kind of off-putting in a way, but when one looks inside the hobbit holes, or at least inside the one that the audience was allowed see in LOTR and The Hobbit trilogy, it’s quickly noted that they’re quite cozy to be fair, even if they do have low ceilings thanks to the diminutive height of the occupants. A hobbit hole isn’t the kind of domain where you might find a lot of people pushing five feet or more since a hobbit is about the size of a large child really, with the tallest of them still being pretty short when compared to other races. This is why hobbits and halflings are generally referred to as children by other races sometimes since if they’re young enough it’s hard for people to tell at a glance given their shorter size.
But the creation of Hobbiton in this fashion is great since if one can imagine this expanded and given over to an entire region worth of construction and careful detail, it’s fair to say that this would be weeks in the making if the amount of work that it would require was given the proper time to unfold. With a big enough crew and enough skill pooled together to make it happen this would definitely be possible, but only days to make something this detailed and impressive it’s hard to say just what might have been missed and what might have been a little better. It’s very difficult to say this simply because it does look very impressive and it’s hard to criticize it that much without being able to replicate it in the same amount of time. Those that work in the Weta Workshop and anyone that happens to do this kind of thing for a living is to be praised for the ideas that they come up with since there are plenty of times when the most practical of effects can be created using some of the most mundane items in ways that they weren’t originally intended for.
There are a lot of us that likely wish we had the talent, the time, and the patience for something such as this, but then one has to remember that those working in the Weta Workshop do this all the time, and what’s more, they enjoy it. To be fair it would be fun to be this talented and have the kind of patience it takes to watch something like this come to life.
Follow Us
