The Making of…

Chapter 12

Snow, Snow, Snow!

I blinked awake and yawned, rolling over in my half-asleep daze. My eyes flew open as I toppled onto the floor.

“Ouch…” I mumbled, sitting up and realising that I’d just tumbled off a sofa and was sitting tangled in a blanket, wearing the clothes I’d been wearing the night before. I looked around at the slightly unfamiliar room before remembering where I was.

“You ok Ki?” I heard Viggo say as I stood up and yawned.

“Yep… ‘Morning Vig.” I murmured, tousling my hair sleepily.

“You fell asleep during the movie last night.” He explained. Sounded like typical me. He walked over and set a mug of coffee on the table in front of me before sitting down on the sofa. He’d obviously been awake for a while, as he had changed into fresh clothes.

“I assume we don’t have to be on set today.” I sighed, sitting down beside him and sipping my coffee.

“Nope.” He smiled, “I think Billy would have died if he’d had to get up this morning!” He laughed as I looked at him questioningly. “He’s in the room next door, I heard him stumble in at about three this morning!”

I laughed a little and heard a phone ring.

“Oh that’s mine…” Viggo muttered, hauling himself off the sofa and going to find his phone. “Hey Pete.” He said after answering, I listened in to the one-sided conversation. “Yeah it was great thanks… No… Alright, sure that’s fine… Yeah, sure I’ll tell her… Ok, see you tomorrow! Bye Pete!” He smiled before hanging up.

“Was that about where we’re filming next?” I asked as he sat back down beside me.

“Yeah, we’re all meeting at the studios tomorrow morning, getting our costumes on and then we’re getting in helicopter to go up to the top of a mountain!”

“Seriously?” I laughed, “That’s epic!”

“Yeah he said it was for the road to Caradhras scenes.”

“Brilliant!” I smiled, nestling down on the sofa to stop myself bouncing up and down. I was going in a helicopter tomorrow! The only other time I’d been in a helicopter was when I was thirteen; I’d fallen off a horse and was knocked unconscious, I had to be taken away by air-ambulance. I never really counted it as an experience, as I’d been unconscious the whole time, so tomorrow was going to be fun!

***

The next day I was standing in full costume and makeup, beside Viggo, Sean, and Orlando, waiting for our helicopter to arrive. The ‘Hobbits’ had already left in theirs, and John, Ian and Peter had gone off in another. I glanced over at Sean, who was looking pretty uncomfortable.

“You ok Bean?” I asked.

“Uh… I’m not the best with… Flying.” He mumbled awkwardly.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine.” I smiled as a helicopter landed in the car park not far from us. “Wow, it’s loud!” I laughed as we ran to it and clambered in. As we found our seats, I saw Sean give his seatbelt an experimental tug. “It’s fine.” I assured him, “It’s all perfectly safe.” He nodded uneasily as I took the seat beside him. He was tense for the whole flight, and I could see the terror in his eyes when we hit some turbulence. Everyone’s afraid of something I suppose. I guess Sean was afraid of flying. As we got out he shook himself vigorously.

“I am not getting back on that thing…” He muttered.

“You have to get back somehow mate.” Orlando reminded him, “And we have about a week of filming to do up here.”

Sean went horrifically pale and I cast Orlando a ‘shut up’ glance.

“Just try not to think about it, we’ll get through filming first, ok?” I smiled cheerfully as we spotted Peter up ahead. He instructed us to follow a small dirt path up the side of the mountain for a couple of hundred metres, and then we should find the set. After a short hike, the dirt path suddenly wasn’t made of dirt anymore. It was made of snow. “Wow this is so cool!” I cried, kicking it as I walked. I smirked a little as I bent down and picked up a freezing handful of snow and turned to face the others, hiding the snow behind my back.

“Oh no you don’t!” Orlando cried, smashing me in the chest with a snowball before I could lob mine at him. I hit him square in the face and laughed as he chased me up the path to where we could see cameras being set up ahead. I spotted Elijah, Dom, Sean and Billy up ahead, all wearing huge puffy coats.

“Hey Ki, what’s the rush?” Elijah smiled as I dashed past.

“Help! Orlando’s attacking me!” I cried dramatically, hiding behind the four of them.

“You started it!” Orlando yelled.

“You threw the first snowball!” I replied, ducking as a handful of snow flew over my head.

“Come on guys, let’s get started!” I heard Peter say as I saw him walking up the path… In his shorts. That man must have wooden legs or something; it was the only logical explanation!

“Here Kira, you’ll need this.” One of the crew said, handing me one of the massive, puffy coats.

“Thanks.” I grinned, cuddling into it. It was so warm! I spotted Viggo, Sean and Orlando dressing in similar clothing. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and jogged over to where Peter was doing a quick read-through of the script. Along with the Fellowship and Peter, there were five more people standing around. They were the size doubles for the Hobbits and Gimli. I’d already met most of them before, Brett was John’s double, Kieran was Elijah’s, Billy had a girl from Thailand called Faun, Sean’s was a guy called B.K, and Dom’s was a kid called Matt. The surreal thing was, when they were being filmed head on, they had to wear masks of the Hobbit’s faces, so it was like seeing the guys with mini versions of themselves following them around! Viggo and I would be working with Kieran for a bit whilst we were doing the scene where Frodo rolls down the mountainside and drops the ring. I looked over at Sean and saw him rubbing his temples. Obviously he was still worried about the ride home; I hoped it wouldn’t affect his acting.

“Oh, I just remembered!” Peter suddenly cried out, slapping his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Your chairs have arrived!”

“Chairs?” I asked as Pete gestured to where a few members of the crew were setting out black fold-up chairs, each with a character name emblazoned across the back.

“Pete those are so cool!” Elijah cried, running over to the one that said ‘Frodo’. We all followed him and I found the chair that had ‘Rana’ printed on it.

“This is awesome!” I grinned, sitting down in it.

“Come on guys,” Peter yelled, “We have a scene to do, remember?”

We had to take our jackets off before doing the scene- which I did very reluctantly. I shivered and jumped up and down on the spot as Peter talked us through what we should be doing. The Fellowship should be walking along, with Viggo and I trailing behind at the back. Then Kieran – who would look like Elijah from behind – would fall and roll through the snow. Then it would cut to Viggo and I picking up Elijah, and then it would cut back to Kieran as we did the wide shots with Sean and the Ring. For the shot of the Ring lying in the snow, the props department guys had brought along a massive prop-Ring. And when I say massive, I meanmassive! You could put that thing over your head and it would fall to your feet! I thought it was a little extravagant for one shot, but I supposed it would be used in some other scenes. As we worked our way through the scene, I was glad to see Sean slip into character, becoming Boromir, so that it seemed like he’d totally forgotten about the helicopter.

Once we’d finished for the day, I pulled on my thick coat and jogged over to everyone. For such a short scene, it had taken a while, but we’d all come to accept that Peter had his way of doing things.

“Hey.” I smiled, blowing on my hands to warm them up as I caught up with Viggo, Orlando and Sean. Everyone else was heading back to the helicopters – Billy, Dom and Elijah had taken to calling theirs ‘The Hobbit Mobile’… Original. I heard Viggo and Orlando talking to Sean so I listened in on their conversation.

“So did you forget about the helicopter long enough to do the scene?” Orlando asked him.

“No, it was on my mind the whole time!” He laughed half heartedly.

“You couldn’t tell,” Viggo smiled, “That was some great acting!”

“You honestly couldn’t.” I added.

“Thanks…” He mumbled, looking at the approaching helicopter with distaste.

We made it back to the hotel without any mishaps, and once we’d landed, Sean went to go talk to Peter, something about ‘alternate transport’.

***

The next day, we were heading back to the helicopters, but couldn’t find Sean anywhere.

“I wonder if he’s done a runner.” Orlando joked. We found Peter and asked him.

“He’s climbing up to the set.” He said.

“What really?” I asked in disbelief, “I’m full costume and everything?”

“Yep,” Pete smiled, “He arrived earlier this morning, got ready and just left.”

“Cripes…” I mumbled, climbing into the helicopter. “See you on set Pete!”

As we were flying to the set, we were just going over a small hill, when I spotted a familiar figure on the ground below.

“Look! It’s Sean!” I cried, waving out the window. He must have heard the helicopter because he turned and waved at us.

“I can’t believe he’s doing that on his own…” Orlando marvelled as we flew off, leaving Sean to his climbing.

We filmed a few extra shots for the scene we did yesterday, before moving on to one of the scenes that I had been dreading most, yet was most excited about doing. It was the scene where Rana dives into the frozen lake. It sounded like such an amazing scene in the script… But on the downside, I had to jump into a frozen lake. Peter had said that if I didn’t want to do it, my stunt double could. I didn’t even know I had a stunt double, but I still wanted to do it, it would look better on screen if you could really tell it was me. We filmed the shots that lead up to that scene at a location a little further down the mountain. It had a lake, which wasn’t frozen, but the guys from Weta were working on covering it with an ice-like structure, that would make it look like it was frozen. They’d also blasted fake snow everywhere, as this part of the mountain wasn’t at a high enough altitude for snow. Peter called it a day once we’d finished the ‘dry scenes’ and waved us off to the helicopters.

“Bye guys! See you tomorrow! Wrap up warm! Especially you Ki!” He called as I rolled my eyes. Tomorrow was going to be cold.