You shall not pass

After breakfast we headed a little ways out of town to the Weta Workshop. Weta Digital is New Zealand's famous visual effects company and Weta Workshop is their physical effects branch, aka creating real life props, costumes and an array of other things for movies. We got a tour of part of the workshop as well as a screening of a short film explaining a lot about Weta Digital and its work that's only shown to people who come in to the shop. Special effects are so intriguing to me and getting that insight to how it all works was awesome. Weta Digital is responsible the phenomenal special effects in a lot of famous films. Obviously, with Peter Jackson as a co-founder, Lord of the Rings/Hobbit, but also King Kong, I, Robot, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, The Avengers, District 9, Avatar (which won them an academy award) and more.

Also I learned they pretty much hire anyone who's got passion and willing to learn. Our tour guide said they just throw ya into things and teach you how it works and as long as your willing to do it you got the job. A Maori man I got held up talking to at the Te Papa museum on Monday told me if I want to work in the film industry to work here because Peter Jackson and Weta will "take care of me". Perhaps i'll move back and start my career here...

Anyway, the rest of the day was relaxed, the weather was really nice. We ate dinner at a cool mexican restaurant and spent some time out on the town but our next bus to the second part of our trip would be arriving tomorrow at 7:50 a.m.

Rotorua bound, yo