We visited the WETA Workshop in Auckland on our return since we enjoyed the one in Wellington so much. The Auckland Workshop is much more "experience-oriented" with more hands-on interaction and a wider breadth than LOTR/Hobbit themes. We were a bit worried it would be geared towards children, but it's fun for all ages. The tour takes you through horror, fantasy, and science fiction genres to give a feel for the behind-the-scenes creativity that goes into film development. Spoiler alert - descriptions of each ahead.
But, first, we'll start with the entrance murals, WETA Cave (merch), and the "escape room" leading into the Workshop.
The trophies and figurines are pretty impressive.
The tour started with a walk down some graffitied hallways with the group gathering in a staging area to go over details of the tour.
The receptionist desk behind me opened up to reveal our animatronic host. It is well done, but his jokes (by design) were pretty awful.
Horror
The horror film, Fauna, is all about special effects, prosthetics, and monsters; nothing too scary. It gives you a sense of the volume of work that occurs when making a motion picture.
We got to "dissect" an alien.
Melissa got to play with a couple of the special effects stations, but we quickly ran out of time before we could experience them all or let Chuck have a turn. That was a little disappointing because it was kinda fun.
Fantasy
The fantasy part of the tour involves the concept art and design for a world of herbivore vs. carnivore dinosaurs for the movie Age of the Ever-Clan. The film explores the concept of what might have happened if dinosaurs had not gone extinct.
The journey starts in the Artists' Shed, where the creative team explores different concepts and ideas to bring the stories to life. There were lots of props and some groundwork for a guinea pig based tale.
And on to the movie and the miniature world created to portray the dinosaur world in amazing detail.
And a photo op.
Science Fiction
The final stop is a studio for the sci-fi film Origins. It's a set with some large-scale models of a robot and spacecraft. While the set was very cool to see, the show itself was a bit of a letdown in that not a lot happened over a fair amount of time. Still, neat concept and props.
To support my comments, I'll add some video here (sorry for the size).
Overall, I'd say the Auckland experience was less enjoyable for me. I felt somewhat rushed through the Fauna film interactive parts and somewhat bored through the Origins film robot/spaceship encounter. Perhaps I was biased by the Wellington experience and would have thought the reverse had we visited WETA Auckland first (doubt it!). My personal favorite was the fantasy setting for Age of the Ever-Clan; the attention to detail is fantastic.