Mark Atkin ‏@Mark_Atkin

So that's a wrap for me! Finally my "unexpected journey" ends... I've had a wonderful time and made some fantastic friends. Thank you all

7:36 PM - 11 Jul 13

Tonight Martin Freeman finished his last shot as Bilbo Baggins. The end of an incredible two and a half years. I cannot imagine anyone else in this role - a character that Martin has nurtured and crafted with love and great skill.

We have said goodbye to our elves, humans, wizards and now the hobbit. We now enter our final 2 weeks of pick-ups, and it's wall to wall dwarves. These pick-ups have been gruelling and intense, but I'm so happy with what we've been shooting. These next two movies are going to be pretty great!

Smaug admires Bilbo's feet ...

Weta Workshop ‏@wetaworkshop

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra to record soundtrack for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug in Wellington Town...

2:39 AM - 12 Jul 13

Our last day of shooting.

Ever since starting these blogs, there's been something I thought I'd like to try one day (as well as answering the other 19 questions I owe you!) - blogging throughout a shoot day in real time. Try to give you all a feeling for what we deal with on an average day.

Today is not exactly "average", given it's our last day of shooting, but if I don't do it today, I never will!

So here goes ... I'll try to update as much as I can during the day. At least with a quick photo. Text will depend a little on how busy it gets.

Right now, it's just gone 6.30am here in Wellington. I'm in bed, about to get up! I didn't get much sleep - too stressed about how we're going to get through everything we need to shoot. I kept running it over in my mind.

We're shooting scenes for Film 3 today. Stuff you will see in Dec 2014, so I'm going to try and make this honest, but spoiler free.

I've been lying here in pitch darkness, watching fight rehearsals over and over again. Our stunt co-ordinatior, Glen Boswell, worked with the actors last weekend, designing some climatic battle moments. He filmed them, and I have them on my iPad, in an application we wrote called "WingNut TV". It's a program that allows a huge amount of material to be catalog used and updated each day over the Internet. It contains all our dailies, edited films, previs, music, and much more. I'm looking at the fights, figuring out the angles I'll need to film them today. A huge amount to do, and it needs to get done.

Our shoot day starts at 8.30am, and is supposed to finish at 7.30pm. I suspect we'll be working late. Whenever we work a long day, I joke with the crew that I'm just softening them up for when Jim Cameron shows up in Wellington to shoot Avatar 2 and 3. Well ... It's not really a joke.

I'll try and update often today.

Big Richard, Medium Richard and Little Richard.

2.00pm. Just breaking for lunch, with the first shot on F Stage complete. A daunting number to go. I don't want to think about it, but it's probably 7 or 8 set-ups. Splinter Unit have made the move to K Stage and will start shooting after lunch.

I asked the various Thorins to pose just before they headed off to lunch. One of these is Richard Armitage, and two of them are not. It's your guess ... The one in the middle is a little psycho.

I am looking forward to making movies with everyone the same height in the future.

The pressure now goes on. We're going to have to move like the clappers!

Music spotting with Howard Shore

Midday. We're shifting from K Stage to F Stage right now, and I took the chance to spot music with Howard Shore. He's in New York, and busy writing the score for Film 2.

"Spotting" involves talking through edited scenes with Howard, and figuring out everything he needs to do a first pass at the music composition - where music should start and stop, what mood it should have, themes to use, moments to punctuate. That type of thing. To stay on schedule, Howard needs 10 mins of cut footage every week. This week we only have 3 & a half mins for him. Fortunately, he's very good natured about it. It's happened once or twice before!

Next week, when I'm back in the cutting room full time, Howard will be getting a deluge!

The score for Film 2 is going to be terrific. Last year, we were a little frustrated because we had to revisit so many of the LotR themes - The Shire, Rivendell, Galadriel, Gollum, and the Ring - we did this because I'm wanting these 3 Hobbit movies to have great unity with the Rings films in design, wardrobe, story and music, so it meant "An Unexpected Journey" had to acknowledge what had gone before.

But this time around, apart from a couple of Ring moments, it's all new: Beorn, Mirkwood, The Woodland Realm, Laketown, Bard and Smaug all give Howard the chance to write brand new themes, and he's knocking it out of the park!

We've now finished yesterday's work, and can start on today's scenes!

Better race back to set before Caro tells me off! More than she already has ....

...We're battling on, shooting Thorin in a climatic duel for the third movie. Finishing the entire shoot with the end of his story. Fitting I guess. It's obviously not the very end of the movie itself. That scene was actually shot about 2 years ago. But it's tough emotional stuff to punch on with into the night. Keeps us on our toes until the bitter end!

4.30pm ... the day is still young.

Just shot this close up of Richard. Look for it in Dec 2014!

2 more shots to go. Main Unit shooting Thorin, Splinter Unit shooting Fili and Kili.

9.21pm. Getting very near the end ...

The last shot.

Big monitors, main unit. Small screens bottom right, splinter.

We're neck and neck ... Shooting our final shots at the same time.

10.32 pm. 4 or 5 takes so far.

No, wait ... Done! While I was typing this, we shot more takes and finished! Richard was fantastic. Splinter almost done. Minutes away.

Smiles and happiness... And sadness. Yikes, very sad.