Back From The Road In NZ

My Schedule Looked Like This
1 June: Fly out o Sydney, Arrive Auckland at 23:29.
2 June: Pickup Van, 3 people from Tokyo, meet Location Scout Clayton Taiko, check in the 3, hit the road running.
3-4 June: Scout Auckland locations. On night of 4th, fly to New Plymouth/Taranaki
5 June: Scout Taranaki locations with Peter Avery.
6 June: Fly out to Wellington and start scouting with the help of Delia Shanly from Film Wellington.
7-8 June: Wellington Location scouting. Fly back to Auckland on the 8th to meet Art Director/Production Designer Mark Robins.
9 June: Pick up Director Yoichi Sai( a.k.a Yang-Il Choi) at the airport, show him the shortlist for the Auckland region
10 June: Fly to New Plymouth/Taranaki, show the director the shortlisted sites from the area.
11-12 June: Fly to Wellington in the morning. Show the director the short-listed sites in the Wellington area. Meet Line Producer Nicola Olsen.
13 June: Return visit to Stone Street Studios to discuss how they built a 40mx40m water tank using containers on the backlot, with Jaime Selkirk and Dan Henna. Also repeat tours o Park Road Post, WETA Workshop and WETA Digital. Fly out to Auckland.
14 June: Japanese crew fly back to Narita, I fly back to Sydney.

That's 8 plane-rides in 14 days. So here we are back in Sydney and my head is still spinning this morning.

'Planes Trains and Automobiles'? Make That 'Bookings Check-Ins And Boardings'
I would start at 8am in the morning and not stop being the fixer until 11pm each day. I kept meaning to call Geoff Murphy and never had a moment to myself. It was nuts. And the schedule above is only the final version of what actually happened. You wouldn't believe the number of modifications that were made to the original outline sent to me in late May. All my time in the hotel rooms were dedicated to modifying or chasing up confirmations on the bookings.

New Zealand to me is a blur of: booking websites, particularly Air NZ & Hertz; Hotel front desks, rooms, corridors and lifts; Airports; Planes; Toyota Previa vans; maps; Green hills with sheep and cows grazing; wind-swept beaches; long and winding roads through spectaular mountainsides and bushland; intermittent rain punctuated by sunshine and rainbows that look like story-book illustrations; a stream of LOTR type locales; conversations about how to build a set on these beaches and what permits need to be secured; seals on the rocks off Wellington; paranoia from the director being present.