How did you come to film the Hobbiton sequences of the film in Matamata?
The town of Hobbiton symbolises what Frodo is leaving behind when he goes on this journey, what he is fighting for and what he’s coming home to. We wanted this lush, picturesque land and we found it in the centre of the North Island, in a town called Matamata. We found this wonderful farm, and the farmer was kind enough to let us build Hobbiton on his property. Peter felt strongly that Hobbiton had to have a feeling of having been there forever, so he actually built the set a year ahead of time and let it grow into the landscape. We planted the gardens and vegetables and they were tended for over a year, as though it was a growing community. Did the New Zealand locations used in The Fellowship of the Ring live up to your expectations? I think almost all of the locations we filmed in seemed so natural and so integral to the film and to the story. I remember, for example, Paradise, which is near the town of Glenorchy, outside Queenstown. Paradise is this wonderful Beech forest covered in
