Gandalf.
If what you say is true...
...the world is in grave danger.
MAN: Action!
Our new blog is sweeping in from the north! Aah!
Fall in!
JACKSON: And cut!
Hello. Welcome to the first blog of 2013.
And this is a block of a few weeks of shooting we're doing.
It's what we call pickup shooting.
Yo! We're back. Look out.
We rebuilt the unit base, the trailer park here at Stone Street.
Putting the digs all back together for us, literally. Um...
Brought in all the makeup, costume, prosthetics vehicles.
Crew's arriving. Everybody's happy about being back again.
- Hello. - Hi!
Boys are amped, pumped, looking forward to it.
Fire it up. Get amongst it.
Shoot it. We're just gonna shoot it.
JACKSON: When we finished principal photography last year...
...we stored all the sets in huge, big warehouses, all the costumes.
The cast are all flying back into New Zealand.
It's a reunion of people, props and sets.
We are very much in full swing.
We're bringing Lake-town back. We're bringing Mirkwood Forest back.
We'll be revisiting Dale.
It's been covered up for a year.
We're just pulling off all the coverings right now.
We knew it was gonna be pretty hectic pretty fast...
...and true to form, it is.
I can't actually see the plans because I left my spectacles at home.
So I've got Dave the punk here...
- ...who is going to be my eyes. - Ahoy.
I actually don't know how to use a scale ruler, so this should be interesting.
For our props and set dec, it's finding all the props.
We have warehouses full of props.
VINCENT: This is an off-site prop store...
...that we've put together for Film Two.
Over here we've got the contents of the Dale armory.
There are over 2000 items made specific for that one scene.
This, of course, is the kitchen. And the kitchen is shared with some corpses.
Every space is valuable when you're talking about prop storage.
[BOTH GRUNTING]
Okay, here we are again.
We're waiting for the actors to come in all together for the first time...
...so it's really gonna be good to see them all together after about six, seven months.
Hugs and kisses, and then we can do some fighting.
BOSWELL: Here we go again. - Good to see you.
- Everyone give a lift. - Rock on!
Good to be back, apart from with these two.
- Marvelous. - Thanks.
I mean, it is good to be back...
...but I would rather be back with somebody other than these two.
Son of a bitch.
HUNTER: It's Groundhog Day.
Aah!
And it's all good. I mean, that was fun.
Let's slay some Uruk-hai.
BOSWELL: Three, two, one, action!
[ALL GRUNTING]
That was really adequate, man. Lovely move.
Golf clap.
I mean, no, big clap. Big clap.
- They all hate my guts. Hate my guts. - Really, really hate him.
[COUGHS AND GAGS]
Of course, we've also got the Battle of the Five Armies, for the third Hobbit movie.
In fact, while we're talking about the Battle of the Five Armies--
We obviously can't show you any of that.
However, we are putting our Dwarves through a very extensive training regime.
They have to be fighting-fit for that battle...
...and so they're, um, working very hard at the moment.
Okay, so in preparation for the Battle of Five Armies...
...all of us Dwarves have been doing some rigorous training...
...and, uh, you've caught us just as we're about to start one.
[DISCO MUSIC PLAYING OVER SPEAKERS]
And up, down, up, down, up.
Pump! Come on, pump them thighs!
'I am pumping! - Pump it!
MAN: A little bit of running now.
All right, that's great. Shake it out.
Forward!
[GRUNTING]
Open it up! Open up the cupboards.
- Well done. - Nice work.
We're fit fighting machines.
[MAN GRUNTING]
And to give you a sense of what pickups are...
...we shot about 18 months ago at the Pelorus River in the South Island.
Now, that would get you killed.
JACKSON: We were filming, and then we got flooded out by a flash storm.
So here we are 18 months later...
...in the relative safety, hopefully, of the backlot.
The weather is not looking too bad. Hopefully we won't get a flood here.
And we're just doing a little bit more shooting for the scene on the riverbank.
You're from Lake-town, if I'm not mistaken.
It will look exactly the same, I promise you, when you see it in the movie. Exactly the same.
Pickups. What does it mean?
It means getting your poo exactly the same.
We are having to do pickups with Radagast...
...and we have to make sure that his poo looks like it did a year ago.
And that's sometimes difficult because we all know poo changes.
It dries out and it cracks.
And so now we've got to replace the poo and make it look exactly the same.
These people actually do collect my poo.
It's on sale at a shop near you.
No. The number's not working.
Oh, man. That's, like, the third one this morning.
For the pickups, we need lots of people.
And, heh, I've been ringing, trying to get people.
They've changed their numbers, they've moved. What is that?
I'm trying to find Elves.
And of the 30 Elves that we've had, I have about two that could confirm so far.
One of them's in the London Ballet now and the other one has put on 40 pounds.
WOMAN: That's selfish. - You know, I'm over it.
[FIRE ALARM BLARING]
No! Oh, my God.
I've got a whole lot of people to ring, and now there's a fire alarm.
Little yearly drill. Look at their happy, smiley faces.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
There are some great faces in the crew.
- Good Lake-towners. - Yeah, really good Lake-towners.
Not very many Elves.
Still making bird poo.
Because the pickup scenes...
...are really spanning the width of the second and third Hobbit movie...
...we're really traveling to most of the destinations that those films do.
Thank you for being here again in the webs.
- It's like you never left. - Well, it is a bit like that.
The same smells, the same funguses growing inside your bloody costumes.
BROPHY: It's weird how comfortable it all just feels.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
That's the last date we have, okay?
"Go to a movie," he said. "Go down to the beachfront."
But, no, I wake up, I'm covered in this stuff.
[ALL LAUGHING]
Not only that, there's all of his exes over there.
[CLUCKING TONGUE]
JACKSON: And action.
GANDALF: Legolas Greenleaf.
And you...
- Hi. - Hello.
- Tauriel. Very nice to meet you. - Welcome to the film.
[ALL LAUGHING]
We're shooting right now in the Smaug-desolated Dale.
Therefore the title of the film, The Desolation of Smaug. I was here last year...
...when this set was in its full glory and looked incredible.
It looked like a beautiful European plaza.
Now it's winter and there's snow everywhere...
...and it's really dramatic.
Aah!
I popped my cherry on the fake horse today.
Having Evie on the back, and then the first time they had the setup.
So she's behind me...
...and we were both moving in rhythm.
And she's behind me and it's like...
[LAUGHING]
We've been shooting for a week. We've got a little footage from the first week...
...which we'll put into this blog.
And the plan is to do another blog at the end of the pickup shooting...
...so we can bring you up to speed...
...with whatever's gonna happen over the next few weeks.
Bard Marley of Lake-town.
We're back in Lake-town. This is the fifth version...
...of this town that's been built for the movie.
- And we're here to do pickups, right? BELL: Pickups for 10 weeks.
I played this character for a year in this environment...
...and not once did I fall in the water.
And what happened on my first day back?
Whoops! Oh!
[LAUGHING]
As you can see, this man has grown, because this is his normal size.
- But in the film he will be this size. - Everyone keeps telling me I've grown.
Which is appropriate because he's my son.
We hope that you come and check in with us in the next few months...
...when we'll be showing you a little bit more of The Hobbit...
...and the amazing sets and the locations we're working on.
- I can't wait to get started. - Just don't grow anymore, please.
- I can't promise that. - This is ridiculous now. It's ridiculous!
Thanks for watching.