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New Zealand and Peter Jackson · Mythmakers

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Hello and welcome to a new season of Myth Bakers. Myth makers is the podcast for fantasy
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fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is
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Julia Golding, I am an author and screenwriter but also I run the centre with its creative
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writing classes and all sorts of other things we get up to.
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And today I'm joined by my frequent podcast partner, Jacob Renica, who is over the other
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side of the pond. I think you sit in, is it Seattle?
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Seattle, correct. Yeah. And Jacob, as if you've listened before
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you'll know that Jacob is not only a very expert on talking but he also works for Ravensburger
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who creates some of those wonderful games which no doubt you've seen and maybe even been
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given this back in last Christmas. And so Jacob, welcome. Now, since we last spoke, I've
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been away in New Zealand on a fantastic, quite a long trip around both North and South
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Island. So for the very first podcast episode, I thought it would be quite good to think
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about New Zealand specifically and Peter Jackson and what's been happening there since well
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basically the turn of the millennium and its relationship with Tolkien because I found
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the whole experience of being there absolutely fascinating, really, really fascinating. So
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have you got any experience of New Zealand or is yours all through having watched the films?
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It's all through films, strictly films and special features up from Lord of the Ring
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of Extended Edition. So I haven't yet, that's on my pilgrimage site, but I haven't quite
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made it there. So I'm really interested to hear more about your experience there and what
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you found both while you were there, how it's influenced, how you think the world views
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middle earth and what while you were there, you saw this film series impacting New Zealand
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in general. So yeah, I think that's probably the first place to start with it because it's
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very clear even now. So when was the filming, the filming for the very first set of films
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was 1999 to 2000, 2001. It's that kind of era. So we're talking almost 25 years ago now.
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What is fascinating is to see how through a series of what is an episode of being is a mix
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of being really determined to make this and some luck in getting funding in Hollywood and all
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sorts of little elements that came into being the Peter Jackson went from being this kind of
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indie, slightly offbeat filmmaker of these kind of horror pieces and offbeat indie films
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to being a major director. So if you now go to Hollywood Boulevard, his star is pretty much
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outside the Oscar venue, the Dolby Theatre. So he's gone from obscurity to being central. And
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in the sort of slipstream of the Peter Jackson phenomenon, he's built a whole Hollywood in New
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Zealand. In fact, I think there's a sign in Wellington where he's based, well, he would or something,
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you know, they know this. So it's not just that he's built a sort of film studio there in an
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old paint factory in other places right on top of the airport there. He's also a major investor
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in wetter workshop. And wetter workshop itself is now one of the two leading special effects
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places. And there's them and industrial lighting magic, which is George Lucas. I mean,
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there are lots of other places around the world that do this, but these are two really big players.
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So then working on Avatar, they've done King Kong. I mean, they've just done lots and lots and lots
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of films since. And it's big. It's impressive being digital. It doesn't matter where you are in a
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sense, as long as you've got enough computers and talented people. So the industry is built
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pretty much on Peter Jackson. And the other sort of New Zealander who people know as the director
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is Tyco Wattiti. Wattiti, I forgot that right. But he doesn't have the same
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but hold there. I don't see him putting back into an industry yet. Maybe he's got plans.
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So it is very much hanging around Peter Jackson. And everywhere we went, there was people talking
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about him owning land. He's why he doesn't employments. Some good, some bad. So it's fascinating
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to find a country so dominated by one name. And that one name was made by a set of films
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from this obscure professor. It's quite a phenomenon, really. I read a very good book as well,
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which I bought at Hobbiton by in Nathan called The Making of Middle-earth, which all of you
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really keen keenies out there. I do recommend. It's quite funny because I was reading this book
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and how it came to be funded by Bob Shea at New Line. There's a bit of less desirable funders
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in the picture before. But it ends up with New Line. And I then, when I went on to do some
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meetings in Hollywood LA, I met Bob Shea's, I think he's his nephew who I'm working on a project
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with. So that was quite fun. It's not such a big world, the film world, when it gets down to it.
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So yeah, it was fascinating to see how dominant Peter Jackson is even now 25 years on.
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So yeah, if you were going to go to New Zealand, do you have any sort of on your must-see list of
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things to go to? Yeah, that's hard. Yeah, having watched it. So I know that with one of the reasons
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why New Zealand made for such a great filming location is the incredible diversity of the landscape,
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right? So you can within an hour and a half flight, you can get to, you know, mount snowy mountains
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and, you know, forests kind of rolling hillsides. As far as trying to do the only thing I don't have
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is a desert. So yeah, so that any of those places like I would be tickled. I mean,
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Hobbitim is picturesque. And so that of course would be fun for more of a, if on that particular
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travel day I was looking to relax a little bit more, slow my pace, I think that would be great.
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If I was in a frenetic mood, I would perhaps want to be a little more adventurous and go hiking
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out of the caradras. Yeah, that is quite exciting. Yeah, no, I mean, the funny thing is that
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even though I sort of think I'm fairly, you know, I did geography at school and I sort of knew a
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map vaguely of New Zealand and I'd watched the making of I hadn't really grasped
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until I went there exactly how it all works. So if you're planning your chair, tell us,
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you're planning your pilgrimage, the two islands, the south island is sort of a rounder and
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fatter island. It's further south, so it's colder and that's where the dramatic
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out type scenery is, not that the north island doesn't have mountains, but it's the ones you're
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thinking of in the fly past, but it's also very, very sparsely populated. So it's real wilderness,
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you can go to places where there are no farms, there's no fences, there's no sign of people for miles
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and miles and miles and miles, it's quite a phenomenon. So if the population is something like,
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don't quote me on this, but it's something like five million, only a million of those
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live in the south island. The north island, which is kind of longer in thinner,
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like a diamond shape, very roughly, with Wellington down the bottom and Auckland up the top has
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everybody else and a lot of those people are in either Auckland, which is the biggest city
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and Wellington. So it reminded me a bit actually of Iceland. Iceland has a similar thing,
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except east to west, where a lot of people live around yet recubic and the rest of the country
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is fairly empty. So it had that feel to it and no wonder both places are used for fantasy films
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because they have so many faces you can set up a camera and do a 360 pan without seeing anything
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else. So if you're actually planning to do your Lord of the Rings tour, we did it an unconventional
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way. Most people start up in Auckland and make their way down to Queenstown. I actually did it the
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way around. Why not? So I would say my top five places to go would be in order of visiting them,
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this is. I would go to the lakes around Lake Tecapo, which is quite near Christchurch,
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so you're on the South Island and Lake Tecapo and the lake next door to it, whose name escapes
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me just now, are the lake there. You see them in the the Hobbit for Lake Town. It's that sort of
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amazing, really, really blue, wonderful lake, very beautiful, also a great place to star gaze.
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Then going down, I'd go to Queenstown, which is like number one, Queenstown is almost everything,
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it's almost everything. It's the remarkable mountains, as I've range called the
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remarkables, are used again and again. The barrier mountains for Mordor, they pop up
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loads of times, they use for part of the retreat where they go up into the hills in Rohan and
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they get the sword. I'm just trying to remember what that place is, near the parts of the dead.
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And then of course, up at the near Queenstown, if you go along the lake to a place called Glenorhe,
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this is a couple of hours drive right up towards the foot of the mountains there, you see Keradras,
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there you see Zirac Zigil, where you know, Gandalf, Fort the Bauer of, there you see Beon's house.
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I mean, it was multi-purpose, bits of Lothlorian. It's absolutely beautiful. I've got it as my
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desktop saver because it's such a beautiful place. So I highly recommend Queenstown. I mean,
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there are other places around there, deer heights, deer park heights, which is right on the edge
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of the town. I mean, you can see the town from there. That was used again and again for
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where the wags attacked and where the people are escaping to Helmsteep,
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wending their way through landscapes, there's some of those big shots all around there.
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So Queenstown, you're spoiled for choice. Oh, it's also got the Argonath, you know, I could go on.
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So... No, were you were you doing a kind of self-guided tour around?
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Mainly, but we did do a lot of the Ring Safari that day and run by people there who
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who actually do that and they have a, all of their jeeps have like Arwen or Saraman is their
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number place. And I would say that I totally loved the morning. This was New Year's Day. It was the
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best New Year's Day our family ever had where we went off and dressed up and ran at each other
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with swords, good family bonding stuff with a great guy called Justin who when he found out I knew
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about Tolkien got really into us as a family and he just was milking me from information about
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Tolkien. My family gets like, shut up mum, I want to talk to you. But he was really, really good.
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The afternoon was less fun because we lost Justin and it was, I preferred the morning.
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So if I was going to do a half day tour from Queenstown, I'd definitely go to Glen Orchie
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rather than to Arrow Town, which is what we did in the afternoon.
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Anyway, so that's probably a bit too minutia for people, but you never know, you might be listening
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to this thinking, I've got half a day, where should I go? That's where to go. Go up to Paradise.
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It's literally called Paradise. So that's the second place I'd go. And then the other places are on
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the North Island. So Wellington is spot number three. Wellington has wetter workshop where you can
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do a tour of the special effects studio. It's a small tour. It's not anything on the scale of a
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studio tour in LA or even the Harry Potter tour in London, but it's an interesting tour because it's
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like the working, you know, where it all comes from. And just by there in Wellington, you can go up
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and see the places where they did some of the early filming in Victoria Park. So the very first
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shots of Lord of the Rings where they're leaving the shower film just in the backyard of
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where to workshop. Basically, I've just held parochial, how local everything was. And then I would,
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so that's number, we've got to number three, haven't we? Three, right? Yeah. Number four, I'd actually,
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so this is where it gets tricky, because I know what number five is. There's quite a few places I'd
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love to go, but I think number four might be Rivendell, which is quite close to Wellington, but I just
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thought the the combination of the River Valley and the woods, which were sort of a beautiful,
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fresh green were very atmospheric. It really felt a beauty. I mean, you can see why they chose it
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for Rivendell, because of course Rivendell is that place we all want to go. And I love that very
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much. And then the absolute top joint top with Queenstown is Hobbiton. Hobbiton was so much better
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than I expected. I mean, just a hundred percent better. I had gone thinking it would be
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as that kind of Disney experience. I kind of have fear that might have people walking around as
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Hobbits or something, but no, it was really, really well done. They, you meet outside the village,
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outside Hobbiton, and they take you through in well timed, you know, coach loads. So you never
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feel bunched up or crowded. I was there on a beautiful hot day, and it looked amazing. They have
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a team of gardeners who keep it all running beautifully, and they've developed it so that it's not
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just front doors in a hillside. Since December, they've opened up a a Hobbit hole. So that was never
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never a Peter Jackson location, because the inside places are all built in studios. They've
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actually replicated their own version of a Hobbit hole. And it's huge. It's as big as my house
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on one floor. It's got a living room, a bedroom, a bathroom, a dining room, a kitchen, a study. I
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mean, it's just really, really wonderful. And you can touch everything. You can sit on the beds. You
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can look at the little props they've made because it is all props. It's nothing is valuable in a
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sort of, it's been in a movie sense. But it was wonderful. And then you finish at the green dragon,
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which grew its own beer insider and not our collect drinks. And that was really nice, really
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decent beer. So that whole experience was far better. I live in a village, which is a bit like
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a kind of Hobbitan village. We have thatch houses and thatch walls. And I guess we're a bit
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hobbitty with our gardens. And I was going thinking I was going to be a bit kind of, well,
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I should have stayed at home. But actually, I thought, no, no, no, this is really well done.
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And I highly recommend it. So there's just one thing that you do in New Zealand involving
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Lord of the Rings do go to Hobbitan. It's well worth it. It really is.
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Excellent. Well, that sounds great. I'm really interested to hear maybe what struck you being
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at some of those different locations that you knew so well from the film. What sort of additional
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insight, dealing perspective, did you get when you were at, say, like, you know, to talk about
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Lothluorian in particular at Hobbitan. So some of these places, what were there,
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were there meaningful, I don't see like differences or things that in your imagination are from
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where we saw it through the camera, what was different from that experience versus actually
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being there on the ground that struck you? Yeah. I mean, I don't know what you think about
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the difference between the first trilogy and the second trilogy. So Lord of the Rings versus
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the Hobbit. It really brought to mind how important it is to actually go into locations.
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So for example, in Rivendell, a lot of it in the studio doesn't work as well for me as the
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bits when they're outside and even with the best kind of lighting, you still get that sense of
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expansiveness and like a breath of fresh air when it is actually in the real place and they're
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standing in a location. So obviously, there's no longer any of the sets have gone, you know,
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because it's a natural beauty spot. But you can sort of put them back in in your mind and see how
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they pieced it together. And it may be think that one of my problems with the Hobbit, I mean,
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there's several things with the Hobbit. One was the very overextended storytelling, which is
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probably its fatal flaw. But there was also the punch truck colors because of the particular
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frame rate that was used, which also made it feel a bit unreal. So having said that colors in New
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Zealand do sometimes feel unreal because they're so, I mean, I've printed them off and put them on
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the wall. I thought, hang on, that looks like I put a filter on them. But no, they do come out like that.
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But also the use of a lot of computer generated scenery and interiors and characters running through
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like sort of video game style. And it made me just say, oh, it's so much better doing it old style
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where somebody's actually in a muddy field or in a local park. Or I just thought that that
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approach to the first time around, I know it was hard, hard for the actors, unreliable weather.
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You can see why people take these choices, but it did make it feel so much more authentic to the
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book because the book is all about moving through a landscape and the difficulties of walking the
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saw feet, the roots poking in the back, you know, all those things which make it feel a very
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grounded fantasy. So yeah, going there made me think, oh yeah, they got it right the first time
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around, didn't they? I think it was my feeling. That's great. Yeah, the difference between filming
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on location and filming in front of a green screen, you're right that there's a lot of different
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factors that come into play. And certainly with fantasy films in particular, is oftentimes
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dependent upon spectacle, computer generated images. So it's more convenient sometimes, but certainly
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there's a there's a different feel. And I know that since the open Jackson film, Lord of the Rings
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that more films have filmed in New Zealand once that would be perhaps relevant to this audience,
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the first two Chronicles of Narnia films were filmed in New Zealand as with the first two Avatar
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films. So when they did, although Avatar does heavily, heavily CGI, Chronicles of Narnia not so much,
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but it's utilizing that landscape for a kind of a more fantastic heightened sense of reality.
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There's something yes, yes, you can create that digitally, but you're right, there just seems to be
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kind of a different feel just as it seems to be a different feel when you have practical puppets
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that you're working with that you're acting alongside and not just somebody holding a tennis ball,
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which is where you know, the Andy circus and in that book that you mentioned talks about, you know,
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what his process and how transformative that was for the actors to actually have him there in the
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scene and not just have, not just tell the actors look, look in this general direction, this person's
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going to be talking to you, but actually having the person there to interact with that that is
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tremendously helpful as a person as a human being who's conditioned to respond to physical
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environment and stimuli like that means you can't help but lose something when you're filming
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and just having to just imagine it versus feeling like you said kind of like feeling the sun,
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feeling the wind and being there with your feet on firm ground and actual trees and rocks and
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mountains around you. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to take it away from the very clever people
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to build sets and people who do the digital effects, I mean, they do an amazing job and I imagine
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there are quite a few things I don't notice which I think are real and actually whenever they're
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because they've got so good, but I think in terms of performance that feeling of
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water being wet and sun being hot and go, you know, it just feels it brings something else out,
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I think in performance. Anyway, so I think one of the other things which I wanted to ask you about
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is do you think actually the such a strong association between New Zealand and Middle
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Earth is a good thing for readers of Tolkien because in a way it's skewed our, whereas before
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we all had our own private little imaginations about what Middle Earth was like,
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unless you've, I think it's always impossible to avoid any imagery from films now,
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but almost all of us now are seeing it through New Zealand lens. Do you think that's a bad thing
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or a good thing? Well, it is an interesting question because I know with rings of power,
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you know, they started filming in New Zealand, right, because of that, because of that,
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you know, kind of culturally embedded tie between Lord of the Rings Tolkien and New Zealand,
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but then they moved filming to the UK and that there was an uproar among certain loud segments
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of Lord of the Rings fans on how could you possibly move it from New Zealand? It is the one true
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and living embodiment of Middle Earth. So I think there's certainly people who would
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would want that. Like you said, it's impossible to get around that imagery if you're coming to
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Tolkien through the films first, then of course that's going to color how you imagine the words
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themselves of the book, but even vice versa, when you're reading, having read the books first,
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it's still hard to sometimes disentangle your purely self-generated imagery, which is,
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which is much like what AI is doing, right? When you're reading a book and you're putting images
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in your mind, you're just scraping all of your previous memories from films, from places you've
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been, and you're kind of creating some sort of imaginary composite in your own mind for what
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this book would look like in your mind's eye. So it's hard if you're going back and revisiting
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that. It's hard to keep that original Christine self-analgunated image of what this looked like
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with what you've seen on the big screen because it's so visually powerful and arresting,
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especially if you saw it on the big screen because it's even more probably imprinted on your
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retinas and imagination because of the scope and scale that you saw it at. So it's hard to
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disentangle those. So I think it's yet inevitable that there will be a connection there.
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But the scope and the audience, right? Just the sheer number of people that saw those films
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versus rings of power, which there's a significantly fewer audience space. And so
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in them moving there, filming to the UK, it's, I don't know that it'll have as big of a cultural
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impact in how we view middle-earth and especially others, there's clearly a lot of heavy reliance
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on CGI, especially when you're looking at different cities. Numenor in particular, right? So
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there's all the striking visuals that are entirely CGI because, unfortunately, we don't have
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large scale sets. We don't have space to get Atlantis anywhere.
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Right, right. Exactly. So yeah, so that's a good question. So is that a good thing to
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excuse our imagination or our knowledge of Tokyo and how we view it? I imagine, you know, as we're
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reading the books, it's a personal individualized experience. Even if you've seen the films, it's
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hard not to, or even rings of power, it's hard not to use those images to fill your own imagination,
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which is useful. I think any more grist for the mill of your imagination is a good thing.
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And then it's just, I guess, yeah, it's a net that I suppose it's inevitable at this point,
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just because of the culturally, how far those images kind of see. So I'd be interested to see how,
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if as they're producing additional order of the ring films, how much the imagery that they use
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there and their filming locations play into the larger kind of cultural imagination of Tolkien,
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which has evolved over the past, you know, 40 plus years. So I'd be, I'm very interested to see
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how it continues to evolve with additional films, including animated Tolkien films.
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Well, that's true. I mean, of course, we should also put in this space, the huge influence that John
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Howard and Alan Lee had on the Alan Lee Fox at the right. Yeah, yeah. Just hang on a moment,
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but I think it's not the way they had on the way it was then interpreted. So it's come,
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it's as though they drew it then New Zealand found it in the, you know, it's that kind of
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combination. So it did start off as a painterly approach. And of course, anybody who's bought
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Tolkien books or calendars over the years will know there are other artists available who do a
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different version of, so there are other ways of imagining Middle Earth. That can be sort of
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laid upon our imaginations as well. It's hard to get away from it though. I find it easier to kick
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to the curb character faces of some of the characters because the Hobbits weren't cast as they are
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in the book, you know, Frodo's too young, Sam's too American, frankly, you know, his sensibility isn't
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quite, you know, I can quite easily make him into something else in my head because I already had
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quite a firm view. Harder with Gollum, because Gollum seemed a more spot on performance,
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though I am quite fond of the BBC audio drama version as well.
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Yeah, so, but the landscape's a tricky and I'd actually really welcome in my lifetime,
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that sounds bit dramatic. I would welcome a different place to stand in from Middle Earth,
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just so that we can break the, I don't, I mean, it would be really nice to see somebody else
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interpret the books in a new way, finding just so that we can sort of have more than one
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version of this in our head, a bit like you don't want just one hamlet performance or one with
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some a night's dream, it's fun to see it set one place and then another place.
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And one of the things that I have always, obvious easy gains for me would be to actually take
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seriously that these are places where people live. So, Edirass though, it's an amazing location,
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it doesn't seem to be, it's very, very isolated and there's not much sense of a lived landscape
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around it. And that's even so true of Minnes Tirith, which we know from the book has a wall
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around it in farms. It's much more like the Battle of Waterloo happening on an existing series
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of farms. So, you could actually go more historic and actually have traces of people in the landscape,
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more rather than these vast plains, which I know are easier to animate. They haven't got pesky
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things in the way, but that's not how it's described in the books. Also, I think the other thing I
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would do, which is taken from living in a landscape, which has lots and lots of layers of history
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in it. When they do put history in the landscape there, it's very much, oh, here's a bit of
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architecture that's been left behind, but actually in the book you're dealing with old roads and
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get the old forts, but you've got the barrows. And I live near some old Roman roads, which
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are sort of hidden under the grass, but there is a discernible road there. So, you could quite easily
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think, again, I think it's doing the more historic version, as opposed to the fantasy version,
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that'd be fun to see. And for me, that would be a fresh take, more believable, and it would perhaps
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could help give me another version to think about, just set up in Scotland or the Isle of Sky,
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it got some nice pointy mountains up there. I think talking himself, where it was partly inspired by
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a visit to the Alps, so you could actually have some of the Alpine mountains as your amazing
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landscapes. That's lots of very far away. What about in America? You've got a lot to be said.
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It's a big country. I think one of the landscapes that has the greatest diversity,
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Utah is great for incredibly high mountains, arid deserts, forest spaces, so there's a reason why a
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lot of films are set there. And I think it depends on the type of film, but for Lord of the Rings,
32:46
in particular, kind of the more harsh, dramatic imagery does work while so there,
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forests and whatnot. If you're in the Eastern United States, Atlanta, Georgia is another
33:01
popular filming location, for a lot of shows where there's emphasis on woods. That's good.
33:08
And just north of the United States, just north of Seattle, Vancouver is another
33:13
popular filming location. Yes, right. So that's again, because the woods, the scenery
33:21
a little less populated, so it's easier to film there. So all those locations have places where
33:27
you can film without running into loads of people and having to remove them digitally.
33:33
But it does seem, thinking about adaptations for Hollywood films, for big budget films,
33:44
that the more dramatic, the landscape, the better, the more arresting the visuals,
33:50
whereas where you're looking at a kind of long form television or limited series,
33:57
you don't need to have as much dramatic, dramatic environment because there's more emphasis on
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individual characters, and you can spread out over more characters. So it seems like if you're
34:10
looking at the farmland that's surrounding Minnes Tirat, that it'd be easier if you're to do
34:16
kind of like a limited series or turning out Lord of the Rings into a television into a series
34:23
instead of films that you could spend more time on the ground and looking at some of those,
34:28
you know, slower, slower scenes, landscapes that aren't visually jarring, arresting, or
34:35
particularly memorable, but there is something tonally that happens when you slow down and can focus
34:40
on character interactions in a different setting like that. So yeah, so I think I think it would be
34:46
fun, I agree with you, there'd be fun to see someone else do a different take on the Lord of the
34:52
Rings on where it is placed visually, there's some elements in the book itself that certainly
34:58
deserve to be highlighted there that could help shape how we view the story and what the characters
35:03
are experiencing. That's a very good rationale actually because in a way I feel the films
35:09
such a good version that it's very hard to go into competition with them, whereas the rationale
35:16
of having a long-form TV series where you're not needing to do your sort of huge David Leans
35:24
you know sweeping landscapes, you would put them in, but you don't need to have them every
35:30
three minutes or whatever. Exactly. Rate it, then I don't know, there's probably one that
35:34
10 minutes. Okay, well that's very helpful, thanks, that's a really good idea and we are both
35:40
available to organize the locations for the next version of this. Between us, I'm sure we can
35:48
come up with a good list. Right. So we're going to finish on our top fantasy tip. So Jacob, where would
35:57
you say is in your backyard and I'm allowing you the whole of the United States as your backyard?
36:03
Oh wow, that's quite gentle. It's the place you've gone and thought wow this feels so much like
36:07
something I've read in talking. Yeah, I think it would actually be, again, so in the United States,
36:16
it's actually in the Pacific Northwest of Seattle area, the Olympic Peninsula, it's a actual
36:22
natural rainforest in North America. So just giant trees, you know, just really ancient
36:33
feel to it. So, you know, so parts of that thinghorn forest, even parts look lorian-esque,
36:40
but just in terms of kind of like the natural green, just kind of this like the hum of living natural
36:48
world is certainly present there and close runner up the Redwood forests in California or they have,
36:58
those redwoods in massive, so those in terms of spectacle on scale, just massive, ancient trees,
37:04
different feel to more red out, more airy in the in the redwoods and more dense in the
37:12
the rainforest in the northwest. So those are the ones, yeah, that I think for me definitely would
37:21
have evoked that sense of kind of a middle-earth sense, sensibilities in the spirit of
37:27
middle-ear. How about for you? Yeah, so I've given my New Zealand tips, but actually my own backyard
37:34
and literally in my backyard where I walk my dog every day is the downs. That's what's missing in
37:43
New Zealand because the downs are a huge part of the fellowship of the ring, so you've got
37:50
fog on the downs, the barrow, right, whites and so on, and even actually Rohan is quite like the
37:56
downs and it was a kind of backyard for where you go if you were talking, living in Oxford,
38:01
you can drive out to see the downs and what the downs are are rolling green hills and on top of
38:10
the hill is an ancient track called the Ridgeway which was an old droving road and there are lots of
38:17
like Roman forts and well an old temple in fact and burial mounds and things still left in
38:25
the landscape. And even though we're in a densely populated part of the world, you can still find
38:31
views where you don't see hardly anything. In fact just at the back of my village where I live now
38:38
they filmed the battle scenes for Napoleon, the film, the recent film because you could do this
38:45
pointy camera and run horses across the fields without there being anything in the shot.
38:52
And we you know I'm only a not that far from London so it's one of those little
38:57
pockets of landscapes. So I suggest going to the downs, not spectacular but very talking-esque,
39:04
very atmospheric. Right well thank you very much Jacob and thank you for talking to me about
39:11
Peter Jackson and Middle-Earth and many other locations scouting between us as well. Thank you.
39:22
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