A First Look at Famous “Barrels out of Bond”

Express reporter Ian Allen gives the barrels a test run before 10 days of filming starts today.

It’s an iconic scene from The Hobbit when Bilbo and the dwarves escape their elven captors by riding on or in barrels down the stream. Earlier this year, it was announced that this scene would be shot in December near Pelorus Bridge in Marlborough, and this common knowledge served journalist Ian Allen well as he tried to get close to the set.

After receiving a “tipoff from a source that hobbit activity has escalated in recent days,” Allen and photographer Ben Curran went on the hunt for the Hobbit set. Outside of a cafe at the Pelorus Bridge campsite they “spied some of the company’s technical crew.” Allen said that they did their best “to look like passing tourists,” but failed miserably, and the cafe staff kept silent about the location of the set due to “contractual agreements.”

Heading out on foot (and in completely inappropriate footwear), Allen and Curran eventually found “a huge scaffolding structure [that] led to the river’s edge.” And sitting there, completely unsupervised, were the barrels that will be used in the film!

Since the crew were back at the cafe, Allen quickly leaped over the scaffolding for a photo op. He hopped into one of the rubber-lined barrels, and posed for pictures as Curran “started snapping furiously, desperately swapping lenses hoping to get that perfect shot.” Who knows which of the dwarves will later share that seat on screen!

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