A few weeks ago, on my third to last day in Wellington, I met up with Bryn for coffee and he casually mentioned a contact at the Weta Workshop. And so, at 9 am on a Sunday morning, I found myself grabbing coffee to go at Peoples Coffee in Newtown and jumping into Jake’s car for a ride out to Weta’s studios and workshop for a tour of the new Thunderbirds Are Go! experience.
Now, for my American readers, you’re probably like me and have no idea what Thunderbirds is and why this is such a big deal for Weta Workshop. For others around the age of maybe 50, Thunderbirds might be a vague recollection, unless you’re British in which case you know them and love them and so forth.
Here’s some history. The Weta Workshop was founded by Sir Richard Taylor, Jamie Selkirk, and Sir Peter Jackson. In 1994, what started as Weta Workshop split into two separate entities: the Weta Workshop (practical effects and concept design), and Weta Digital (VFX.) We all know Peter as the driving force behind Lord of the Rings, but Weta Workshop – and its sisters Stone Street Studios, Park Road Productions, and Weta Digital – is much, much more than just that. Weta Workshop is an award-winning Design Studio and a Physical Manufacturing Facility. Their work spans creates everything from the armour worn by the elves in Lord of the Rings to a fully functioning vehicle for District 9 to hand-placing the hairs on a wig. They’re incredibly detailed and unbelievably lifelike.
Weta Digital, Stone Street Studios and Park Road Production provide the services necessary to create a film: the first designs to the final colour grade.
While the Weta Workshop creative team builds from the ground up, the Weta Digital team begins to merge the world of reality with the world of computer graphics. The tours don’t give you any access into the world of the digital team, but anyone watching something worked on by the Weta Group of Companies will know what I mean: turning the bare mountainside of New Zealand into a ravaged battle scene, or sending waves crashing over Tintin’s boat, etc.
But I’ve digressed far enough: I was there because the Thunderbirds interested me. Thunderbirds was an old 1960s supermarionation (electronic puppets, essentially) science-fiction show produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. It centers around the Tracys, a team of five brothers and their father, who are an international rescue operation saving human lives, their friend and investigator Penelope Creighton-Ward, and one rather nefarious villain. The Tracys had all the latest gadgets: submersibles, spacecraft, hot cars, etc, and every brother had a specific vehicle and trait. They live on a super secret island in the South Pacific, Tracy Island.
As a child, Sir Richard Taylor was obsessed with the Thunderbirds. He had all the collectibles, which are now displayed at the entrance to the studio space, and he narrates the introductory video. I was already impressed by the video and then when I saw the concept work and storyboards, I was blown away. The entire entryway of the tour showcases the original characters and vehicles alongside the new iterations and the process work it took to get to that level.
What Weta Workshop has done is to build scale models of the houses, the island, hangers for the space ship and airplane, etc. They’ve also got cast models for the characters – as stand-ins. Using old school filming techniques and some serious tricks, the show is a mash up of the scale model sets I got to see + the CGI digital animation of the characters. I was seriously impressed. One thing that I love is the way they have built the sets using ordinary household items and miscellaneous “stuff” – lemon squeezers, for example, were an item that was used repeatedly in the original series models, and Weta has almost comically reused them: they are *everywhere.* This process takes me back to my design school days!
I was not allowed to take photos, and there are things I saw that I can’t write about. My notes are a jumbled mess of random words. I was seriously impressed and all I wanted to do when I got home was look up the show and learn more. The miniature stages were phenomenal. I was blown away by the details in the mountain, the house, the hangers. They’re movable as well: to launch a plane, the trees roll back – by hand. The pool slides open. It was so cool. Anyone who has ever daydreamed their fantasy house can imagine my delight at seeing these futuristic home improvements.
The first season is out and done; you can find it on Netflix. If you’re heading to Wellington, it’s absolutely well worth it to catch the bus out to the Miramar Peninsula and tour the facility. Tours start at $25/adult or $65/family for the Thunderbirds experience. Jake also hooked me up with a documentary viewing and a workshop tour where I got to see more Lord of the Rings and District 9 props. I’ll be posting that a little bit later! For more details on the Thunderbirds Are Go! behind-the-scenes experience, check out Weta’s tour page.
*Huge thanks to Jake Downing for the Experiences, and also to Erik Hay, who kindly proofread this post prior to it going live!*
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