Weta Ltd

Weta Ltd, the company responsible for all of the make-up, prosthetics and armour on all of the Lord of the Rings films is a New Zealand based company that began from very humble beginnings.

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Weta Ltd started life as a small prosthetics and effects company called RT Effects that was formed in the back of a small flat in Wellington, NZ. The founders were life partners, Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger to create effects for local, low budget TV commercials.

One of the first big jobs taken on my RT Effects was creating puppets for a show called 'Public Eye' which required a new sculpt to be made approximately every 10 hours (200 commercial sculptures in all). As materials were very difficult to obtain, Richard and Tania made the most of the materials available to them; beginning sculpting in mud that they dug up themselves and eventually moving on to industrial grade margarine to create their puppet sculptures! Although these basic materials worked adequately for them, they began to develop their own type of plastercine until a supplier in Australia was eventually found.

The company really took off when a friendship was formed with Jamie Selkirk and Lord of the Rings director, Peter Jackson. Jackson had always remained frustrated with the lack of effects companies in NZ and the need to create new effects facilities from scratch for each new film. Henceforth, the four collaborated to create what is now known as Weta Ltd. Richard and Tania worked with Jackson on projects like 'Meet The Feebles' and 'Heavenly Creatures' before the Lord of the Rings trilogy was eventually brought to the table.

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Due to the amount of work undertaken for the trilogy, Weta needed to expand their workshops to a much larger scale. It is now the biggest facility in the world of its kind and covers over 65,000 square feet.

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Over the course of the trilogy, Weta made over 48,000 individual items, these included:
- 10,000 prosthetic facial appliances
- 3,500 pairs of Hobbit feet
- 2,500 foam body suits
- 1,200 suits of armour
- 2,000 weapons
- 10,000 arrows
- 72 miniatures for middle earth visuals.

From small beginnings Weta has grown into a world renowned effects company, working on productions such as King Kong, District 9, The Legend of Zorro, The Lovely Bones and now in pre-production for The Hobbit. Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger have also picked up five Oscar's along the way for their work on Lord of the Rings and King Kong.