A vlog-style YouTube video by Nate and Kara Buchanan documenting their visit to the Hobbiton movie set (Alexander Farm) in New Zealand. The video mixes on-site tour narration—covering set history, scaled hobbit holes, fake props (moss, trees, plums), and the Green Dragon pub—with personal reactions that the tour exceeded expectations. It closes with travel logistics: driving to Auckland, unsuccessful searches for Canon G7X batteries, debating a camera upgrade to a Canon G1X, and preparing to fly to Nepal (Everest trip).
Questions this video answers
Alexander Farm (run by Craig Alexander)
September 1998
March 1999
Leaves are replaced every two years; leaves are brought in from Taiwan.
Canon G7X
Chapters
Foreign.
Today's the day. If you haven't figured out what we're doing today, it will be obvious that very quickly.
I feel like we should explain. Neither one of us would consider ourselves like big movie buffs, but there's a special place in our hearts for the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit back up.
Like my whole life I thought the movies were stupid. I didn't read the books pre watching, I just. I thought they were dumb. I had no interest in watching. And then one night I. Nate and I, we were married. It was a movie night and he talked me into watching the Hobbit cuz it just came out. I thought it was really stupid. I wasn't even planning on paying attention.
And then we watched all the other movies in the next couple weeks. And now I'm obsessed. And I can't believe we're at Hobb.
We're at the bus. While we're waiting, I'm going to read some fun facts. In September 1998, sweetheart Jackson and new Line Cinema discovered the Alexander Farm during an era for suitable film fights. Site construction started in March 1999.
You said so fast. Not the entire brochure initially.
This building for the Hobbit trilogy began in October 2011 and only took 12. If you're not a Lord of the R, you might as well just give this vlog rewatch yesterday's or wait until tomorrow.
Because it's only for the nerdy Lord of the Rings fan. People put us in that category.
Welcome to the Alexander Farm. Craig Alexander runs a farming operation here. This is where Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf rode in on their horse.
All this moss is fake. They built it out of cement and paint.
They did a good job.
They scaled all the different Hobbit holes different sizes so that the hobbits could look really small and fit in the doors. So this is one of the big doors. Do I look like a hobbit?
No, you're too far, Brian.
This is one of the smaller ones.
This is a apple tree.
But Peter Jackson wanted it to be a plum tree. So he plucked up all the leaves, put fake leaves on them and fake plums. And then it was only in the movie for four seconds and the extended version.
This wood may look like real pieces, but really they're about the size of my hand.
Peter Jackson hired a lady to walk back and forth every morning and evening to hang up clothes. Not because he wanted the clothes, but because he wanted the natural pathways made.
In the grass and quite that for detail.
This is what it looks like inside of a hot pole. There's no house.
So here we are outside back in tonight.
This is the Baggins resident.
This tree is completely fake. All of the leaves are wired on and the leaves are brought in from Taiwan and they replace them every two years.
They made a pond for the movie set, and then some frogs made their home in the pond, which was fine. And then the frogs were way too loud, and so they had to go catch all the frogs and put them in another pond so that they could record the scene next to the pond.
I'm going on an adventure.
We just finished our tour of Hobbiton and now we're enjoying some Hobbit drinks at the Green Dragon.
Chance that.
We've never done anything like a movie set tour before, so we didn't really know what to expect. But that seriously exceeded my expectations so much. I can't wait to go back and watch all the movies and watch for all the little secrets that we learned that happen in the filming.
It was super cool. I surprisingly, like, I don't picture myself normally enjoying, like, tours where people just stand there and talk about stuff. But I love, like, learning all the little details that went into, like, making the movies and how some of them took, like, days and days to plan out and then made it in the movie for, like, four seconds. It was all pretty crazy.
This was a great, like, last finale to our campervan trip around New Zealand because now we're going back to Auckland.
We have a two and a half hour drive. And once we get to Auckland, unfortunately, I don't think we're gonna have time to see anything because we have a big mission to accomplish. Find two new batteries before Everest. Because as crazy as it sounds, tomorrow morning we fly out to Nepal. Everest was one of those things that seemed like it was gonna be, like, forever and ever away. And now we leave tomorrow.
We made it to Auckland and we did some research and we're hoping that this place has some batteries.
Crossing our fingers.
Womp, womp.
Does it look darker outside? Since we last went into the store, we literally just spent like two hours in the camera shop after they didn't have batteries. We called around, like five different places. Nobody in Auckland has batteries for the Canon G7X.
They were so nice.
We almost ended up buying a new camera. That's why we were in there for so long.
Went in for batteries, almost left with the camera.
We made the right decision. We almost upgraded to the Canon G1X.
But it just wasn't really worth it. The upgrade, unfortunately, as much as we wanted it. So we're going to make do with the G7X on Everest if we don't find any more batteries in Kathmandu. And whenever that dies, we're going to lug this thing up the mountain.
Time to find our last campsite of the entire trip.
