When The Wizard Gets It
The following is an image taken secretly from the Lord of the Rings site while filming takes place.
It appears to show a Wizard, possibly Saruman, the White, coming to a rather nasty end - however Scoop thinks it could also be also of Gandalf in a dream sequence, and site the sent out the photos, http://www.theonering.net, agrees!
This would make the man in the shot actor Sir Ian McKellen. The INL website stuff speculates the filming takes place at “...first death of Gandalf after battling a creature called the Balrog on the bridge of Khazad-Dum.”
The blue screen in the background is used to superimpose digital special effects over, which are added by computer artists later. The crew were apparently moving the wheel in an anti-clockwise direction while filming.
Filming began for the
Peter Jackson extravaganza, on Mt Victoria in Wellington
last October. It has also taken place in other Wellington
areas, the Dry Creek Quarry on Haywards Hill, the former
Fort Dorset site in Seatoun, and Harcourt Park in Upper
Hutt, as well as in locations in the South
Island