Moot Report - Welly-moot #3.1 (Feb 23, 2014), short but sweet

Just came home from the Welly-moot this afternoon and, as we expected, it wasn't a huge meeting, but very productive. In the end, only six people attended - Alex & myself, regulars Martyn as well as Kumi, and two new members Sinead and Luke. A warm welcome to the new members; Sinead and Luke are young passionate filmmakers, who have recently come (back) from Australia, and are now living in Miramar itself.

[pic]: Jack, Luke & Sinead, and Kumi. Jack is wearing the new Welly-moot longsleeved t-shirt. Let me know if you're interested in getting one.

For today's meeting we didn't have a specific Tolkien theme, but I wanted to run a few administrative issues past the group to see what the general feeling was about the direction of the Welly-moot.


Don't worry - the low attendance this meeting was more likely due to the holiday season than lack of interest, so the actual future of the group is not in question.

Embassy or Roxy?

We discussed the meeting location - for the past few years we've been meeting at the Embassy. For various reasons I've been mulling over the Roxy as an alternative venue. We decided today that the next meeting could be held there as a trial run, to see if it suits our needs better. There will be a bigger announcement coming if we decide to go through with that decision.

[pic]: Kumi and Martyn

Riventroll

There is some tentative news about the Riventroll project. We have been working to get this project running for almost one and half years. We think we have found a potential local sponsor, and the project might be about to get started properly soon. We will keep you informed, especially any willing volunteers who want to support Kim & Warren in creating our Troll. More updates as they come to hand, but watch this space!

Another related project might be launched soon afterwards. If you've been to the Rivendell location in the Kaitoke Regional Park lately, you may have noticed a new structure there.

[pic]: "Which way is it, Gandalf? Mordor, is it left or right?" -Frodo

Over a year ago, when the RivenTroll project was being decided, we also looked into making other structures within the Rivendell area (the Troll will be just outside it, at the entrance). The meeting, which was held in the park itself,  was attended by representatives of the Wellington Greater Regional Council, the Welly-moot group (ie, me), and people from all the Wellington LOTR touring companies. It was agreed at the time that we could add appropriate structures into the area, and the first one is almost complete - the Entrance Gateway into Rivendell. A lot of the work on the structure was put in by Ted Guise from Movie Safari Tours, and the project was headed up by Nathan from the GWRC. It's not quite complete - it will still get a full elven look - but the structure itself is there, and it's in a photographable state.

Eventually, we hope to put other structures into place as well - Frodo's Bedroom, or Elrond's Study, or even just certain garden features. Since the area is in a publicly accessible corner of the open park, it was decided by all that there would be no company names logos on any of the structures, but would be gifted to the park. It's a very exciting project, and I'm proud to say I'm part of it all!

Extended Ultra Marathons

Welly-moot wants to be the first group in the world to watch the Hobbit Marathon, later this year. Hopefully we can convince the Roxy to show Hobbit 1 and Hobbit 2 before the premiere of Hobbit 3, so we can watch them all in a row. As an extra goal, we'd be keen to wath all SIX movies in a row, and if we achieve this, we can be the first people in the world to do so (nice being this close to the dateline, eh?).

With that in mind, there's another potential "first" coming up late in 2015 - the Extended Ultra-Marathon. This would be at the release of the last Extended Edition of the 3rd Hobbit movie, so we would be watching a VERY long Middle-earth saga. LOTR is now 11 and a half hours long, and the first Hobbit movie is alread 3 and a quarter hours, so extrapolating that would make it some 21 hours long, hopefully all in a single sitting. It will be a one-off event, and we still have to convince a cinema to screen them all in a row, but it's the only chance we'll have to do it first. Wellington SHOULD be first, I think. :)

We had some discussion about this, potentially at the Roxy, since the Embassy seemed unwilling to do anything for us last year. We could potentially organise a Welly-moot event gaining support by collaborating with the Roxy and/or the Red Carpet Tours, who hosted a very succesful Hobbit 2 party at the Roxy last year. This year will be the last movie, so we don’t want miss any opportunities.

Leave a comment, here or on Facebook, with your thoughts about this, and let’s talk about it more at the next Welly-moot!

Welly-moot Mailing List

I'm in the process of setting up a Welly-moot Mailing list so you can receive any update from Welly-moot directly into your email address. That will be handy, and has been requested by a few people. I will update here as it happens.

Weta Digital Presentation

While not related to Welly-moot, I was reminded that for the Wellington Writer's Week festival coming up next week there will be a talk on The Hobbit's Smaug by members of Weta Digital, entitled  “WETA Digital Presents the Desolation of Smaug". The talk will be an hour long, will cost $18 to attend, and will be held at the Embassy on Saturday the 8th of March. Sounds exciting! Details on their website. Let us know if you go/how it went.

Next Meeting

We also agreed on the topic for next meeting; "When and why does Saruman go to the dark side?". Speaking of the Dark Side, the meeting will appropriately be held on International Star Wars day, May the 4th ("be with you").

As a secondary topic, both Tauriel and Radagast were picked as interesting characters that we might want to discuss also, so get watching the movies for Tauriel and Radagast, and start reading the Unfinished Tales for Saruman's Untergang!

Full details will be posted on this blog later, but expect the next moot at the Roxy, on May 4th, 2014.

See you there!

We have tickets (but it was a difficult road)!

It's been an interesting 24 hours.

This time yesterday we were getting ready to go to the Embassy Theatre to wait in line for the Hobbit Premiere tickets for the 12:01am 12/12/12 session. It seems Fate had different ideas.

We were pretty stoked - the brand new Welly-moot banner had been delivered early that day, and also the Welly-moot T-shirts had come in, and so we handed them out to those members who had made it to the Line-party.

 

It was also nice to meet up with some other familiar faces - Barry from Stansborough Clothing was there, and a few people I have hosted on a LOTR tour - Erin & Erica for instance.

We had originally agreed to meet at 11:30pm, but apparently the first people were already queueing by 5:30pm or so. Alex and I came in about 9:00 or so, and by 11:00 most people had arrived.

There were a lot of very excited people there. I guess all up there would have been around 50-60 people or so. One estimate had it at 200 but I actually took a rough count at one stage, just before midnight. Still a good turnout, I though - especially considering that the Embassy staff had only just announced one day before that the line-party was "on". We had less than 48 hours to announce and prepare. Quite a number of people were wearing cloaks of various descriptions, and a few people were in full Middle-earth costumes. Around 11:30pm, the atmosphere was buzzing.

That all started to change, around 11:45pm. Two guys behind us in line had been online and on the Embassy's website, hitting the "refresh" button to see if tickets were on sale yet. About 11:45pm, one of them noticed that tickets were available to some of the sessions. Odd, we thought - tickets weren't supposed to be on sale until midnight. But, you know, the main Auditorium seats 800 people, so plenty of time.

By 11:52pm, the call went up from the laptop guys that the tickets had sold out.

We still weren't called up to the ticket lines though. Around 11:58pm ((gotta love Facebook and the digital age - all this stuff is so accurate now)), we went to the line. Alex and I were the 4th group in line, and we were asked "which session would you like?". Um, the first one? Obviously? Isn't that why we came? No, they weren't available anymore.

That's roughly where the party ended.

We ended up having to settle for midnight tickets but in the (much) smaller auditorium, which does not have 48fps or the new Atmos sound system currently being installed in the building's main screening room. The prices were the same though. I bought six tickets, also some for a few absent Welly-moot members. The people behind us were told that session had also been sold out now. Some people bought tickets for other sessions, at later times or even dates. In other words, we weren't going to see it together as a group, or as the first country in the world.


There was a newspaper reporter there, interviewing a few people about how they felt, and what we thought may have gone wrong. I answered a few questions fairly bluntly, I think. On the way out we were photographed on his iPhone camera since the DomPost didn't think it would be a big event so hadn't sent a photographer along. Still, at least they showed up, unlike TVNZ or TV3, who I'd also called ahead of time.

Credit: Michael Forbes, Dominion Post

I thought the picture captured our mood pretty perfectly.


So what went wrong?

I've been on the phone most of the day today. I've lost track of the number of radio interviews I gave today. Radio NZ, RadioLive, Newstalk ZB. Other reporters as well. The Dominion Post suddenly decided they did need a better photo after all. One of the first messages this morning though, was a text message from Sir Peter Jackson's spokesperson, Matt Draviztki, to get in contact with him as soon as possible.

Apparently Sir Peter Jackson had heard about the fiasco, and wanted to get involved. Matt extended an astounding offer to the group - if I could get the whole queue back together, Sir Peter would ensure that we would see the movie in its full 48fps glory, come hell or highwater. I spent the better part of the morning trying to get in contact with 60 people who's names I did not take down last night. Luckily everyone seemed to be on Facebook, and there were a lot of photos taken.

NB - if you were there last night, and I haven't yet contacted you - please drop me an email on "jack@pobox.com", giving me your name, your email, and your approximate place in the queue, and a photo of yourself there if possible.

I also got a call from Sarah Meikle, who works for our city council-sponsored organisation, Positively Wellington Tourism (PWT). She told me what had happened. Apparently, about eight weeks ago the PWT had booked the entire first "public" session. They had asked for permission to do so, and had received it (so, the fault of this is NOT with PWT, or the Wellington Council).

The reason they booked the session was so they could arrange for a huge party, and they intended to give away tickets via competitions etc.

And so, it was decided to donate 120 seats to the Hobbit Line Queuers, and to the Welly-mooters.

So a MASSIVE "Thank You" goes out to Sir Peter and Matt Dravitzki for their initial offer of assistance, and to the PWT's Sarah Meikle for clearing up a mess that they did NOT create, and had no real reason to clean up.


Who's fault was it then? The Embassy Theatre? Not entirely, no. Certainly not the staff in the Wellington building. I've visited them this afternoon to disperse any "bad blood" and find out what went wrong. From what I can figure out, the staff in Wellington were expressly forbidden to talk about Hobbit screening times and sessions. They all knew, apparently, but were prevented by the Embassy's owners (Event Cinemas Ltd) from telling us about it. It's pretty messed up. It must have been pretty depressing for them to watch us for hours, knowing the party wouldn't last. Perhaps that's why they didn't approach us doing our stay? Nobody wants an angry horde of Hobbits on their back.

Elly, the manager from the Embassy and myself have sat down and talked briefly this afternoon. She knew nothing about this debacle until this morning, when all hell broke loose. I think she was telling the truth - certainly she looked pretty distressed while talking to me, and apologised for the whole situation many times.


So of the management of Event Cinemas I would ask this - please remember who pays your wages. It's the people who buy the tickets. And The Hobbit will be the three biggest movies in the next three years. Just sayin'. All we're asking for is some respect.


From here we move forward again. I'm waiting for the final arrangements from the PWT to come through, and I still need a number of names, and email address. So if you were there last night, again, please do tell me where you were sitting - I have a pretty good idea of how many people were there. Send me emails to "jack@pobox.com", with photos if possible. Once my team of experts is ready, we'll try to hand out the tickets as fairly as possible. This does mean we won't be able to cater for large numbers of extra tickets though, so expect one or two tickets per person, and I reserve the right to the final say over it.

If you know other people who were there, get them to mail me also if they haven't already.

One more thing - if you've already bought tickets, and don't need them anymore because of this - the Embassy has said they will happily refund tickets bought last night.

More information about the event will be posted here as it comes to hand. Stay tuned!


Some relevant articles on stuff today:

Hobbit fans disappointed at ticket debacle

Sir Peter saves Hobbit fans' day

And especially:

Hobbit fans pipped by tourism booking

[UPDATED 8/11/2012] And the next day, also on page 3 in the DomPost:

Hobbit tickets secretly sold months ago

YES! Embassy Theatre Box Office has agreed to open at Midnight!

Breaking news! The wait is over!!



We've just heard that the Embassy Theatre has agreed to open up their Box Office for ticket sales, tomorrow midnight - at 12:01am, EARLY Wednesday morning.

So let's make it worth their while; if you are able, turn up to the Embassy around 11:30pm on the evening of Tuesday the 6th of November, ready to purchase your HOBBIT Tickets for December 12th!

This information was posted on their Facebook page:

**Due to a lot of expressed interest we will be opening our onsite Box Office sales at midnight on the 7th Nov (Tues night/Wed morn). The Box Office will be open for a limited time on this night and we will re-open at 9am on Wed morning**

Online tickets will be available from midnight on Wednesday (Tues night/Wed morn).

Phone sales will be available from 9am on Wednesday morning.

Information about screening times will be avaliable on Wednesday at midnight.

384 7657 or deluxe.co.nz or 10 Kent Terrace

Some Ticket pricing information was given as well:

Main auditorium 3D is $18.50 (adult) $14.50 (child/senior) $17 (student) - doesn't include glasses, which are $1 each pair (brand new-you get to keep them or you can bring your own Real D pair)

Alex and I will be there with our brand new Welly-moot banner, and hopefully we'll have the finished Welly-moot T-shirts as well, so we should be easy to spot!

Perhaps we should draw a few Dwarves on it, or a Dragon maybe?

It's all coming together nicely! Spread the word, and see you at the Embassy tomorrow night! Come in costume if you can/want!


And I would like to extend a BIG "thank you" to Elly from the Embassy for making it happen!

First trial T-shirt has arrived for proofing.

After spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to get T-shirts arranged, I've finally managed to get the first shirt here. I picked up the proof-sample today, and it looks great!

This man is more handsome because of the T-shirt

The "Welly-moot" logo is in a lovely gold colour, and the whole deal looks very good. I'm very happy with the end result. I've given the go-ahead on the rest of the order, and hopefully the rest will be here by the middle of next week.

For the one or two amongst you who have arranged an alternative method of delivery, that will be starting shortly - for everyone else, I will certainly have the T-shirts with me on Red Carpet Day (Nov 28), at the extra-ordinary Welly-moot picnic, under the Tripod across the road from the Embassy Theatre.

If you want to get the shirt earlier than that, please get in touch! I'm sure we can work something out!

  - Jack