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LOTR Movie Site
Conceptual Image

Observing Battles in Southern Rohan
Johnny Grindlay

This morning at about 1:00am I went to the Helm's Deep Set in Wellington  hoping to catch a glimpse of filming. When I arrived at the carpark at the bottom of Haywards Hill I got out my binoculars and trained them on where  the main big spotlights where aiming. I saw about probably 40-50 guys that
were standing just back from the main gate of the castle in a military
formation. They were standing there occasionally swinging their swords and
then freezing in the middle of a swing. It was quite cool to watch.

There were people in black clothing running around checking makeup after every little take of filming. The guys that were in the military formation were  wearing black clothing with chain mail down their legs and had metal plates   on their chests and were wearing metal helmets and each had a large sword.
There was one guy at the front of them all that wasn't wearing a helmet and
had long blackish hair. The filming going on at that stage showed a couple
of soldiers running out of the castle and attacking the lead guys and
getting killed. Then the people that had been just standing in a big formation suddenly charged at the castle and about 8 rockets that were white in colour fired down from atop the castle wall and some of the men fell dead.

To the right is one of the concept pictures. The armour and helmets that you can see are a lot like the ones that I saw at Helm's Deep.