Sir Peter Jackson says the sunshine, mountains and fresh air of Arcadia Station, near Queenstown, have raised both his spirits and those of his 450 cast and crew.
They are at the station this week filming part of The Hobbit - after 120 days of feeling entombed in studios.
The Wellington film-maker was speaking on the third and final day of shooting, between takes of a scene where Sir Ian McKellan as Gandalf the Grey, Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins and Dwarves arrive outside the house of Beorn (Mikael Persbrandt).
Welcoming, cheerful, "match fit", and with a mug of tea in hand, Sir Peter said Beorn was "a very iconic character in the book and he doesn't really like Dwarves; he mistrusts Dwarves so Gandalf introducing 13 Dwarves is a slightly socially awkward moment, you could say".
The giant set took eight weeks to build and was based on more than eight months of design.
Sir Peter's team visited twice to find just the right spot to build it.
All this was for one scene, about three minutes of screen time.
"This is such a beautiful area, 360 degrees, everywhere you look, incredible scenery," Sir Peter said.
"In fact, the scene where Boromir dies in The Fellowship of the Ring was about 100 yards into that forest there."
Sir Peter said The Hobbit had been "a strange journey for me" as he originally thought he would produce and not direct the prequels.
"Then, for a while, it looked like we were going to have to make it in the UK because of the whole thing with the actors' union; then there was a delay when I got sick.
"At the end of the day, I think fate tends to steer things in the direction it wants to go and we're all along for the ride, really.
"Even though it was frustrating at the times and a little bit stressful from time to time, we're here and making the movies and it seems like it was meant to be."
Sir Peter said shooting the two Hobbit films felt like a reunion and "feels like we're doing it for the right reasons".
The audience knew what to expect, but he still wanted to surprise them, he said.
Filming in 3D for the first time had not changed the way he shot scenes, and the 3D cameras were not as cumbersome to move around as he initially feared.
The format provided a depth to the world and he loved the way Middle-earth was coming to life in a more vibrant way than before, he said.
"You'll literally feel like you've stepped into the story," he said.
The company shot in Hamilton, Ohakune, bluffs near Te Kuiti, Strath Taieri, near Middlemarch, and near Paradise over the past three weeks.
All cast and crew and gear were loaded on to 200 trucks and moved to Te Anau yesterday for an undisclosed number of days of filming.
Asked if he felt the weight of expectation on his shoulders, Sir Peter said: "All I can do is make the best movie I can and hope people enjoy it. It's going to have a different tone to The Lord of the Rings because the characters are quite a lot different.
"Thirteen Dwarves have a different energy than the nine members of the Fellowship, for instance. These Dwarves are a mixture that range from the heroic and the sombre to the colourful. The characters I'm following around on this story are much more irreverent, I guess you would say, than The Lord of the Rings characters were.
"The book was very much written for a much younger reader than Lord of the Rings was, but I didn't want to make a children's movie. I still wanted to have some of the main themes we had in the Rings.
