This film-savvy man made it his mission to visit a host of famous trees across the UK.
Matt Underwood spent hours researching and finding some of the biggest ‘cinema trees’ in the UK and made it his mission to visit every single one of them.
From Game of Thrones to Harry Potter, the tree enthusiast visited 16 of the most famous UK trees that have graced the camera, and loved the journey.
Matt, from Worcester, UK, said: “I am focussing on documenting famous or iconic trees, mostly from films but also from trees such as The Royal Oak which is responsible for over 400+ UK pub names.
“I’ve visited many famous trees, from the likes of Game of Thrones to Harry Potter.
“I wouldn’t describe myself as a typical ’tree-hugger’, but I just want to share these cool trees with the hopes in the future to get more people appreciating nature and planting trees.”
After visiting Hobbiton, a film set in New Zealand, where The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were filmed, when he was 18, Matt became fascinated with the trees that he saw, which would have featured on screen.
From there, he came up with the idea of trying to visit and document as many famous trees as he could, which have featured on some of the biggest-ever TV shows and films.
However, Matt soon realised that his ambition would be no easy task and now, most trees could take hours to find with in-depth research and a lot of hope.
He also said that he was very fortunate to be granted permission to film some of these trees with his drone.
The full-time woodturner spent over eight years relentlessly screenshotting and finding famous trees from films or TV shows that he may have watched, and says that some of them are so hidden that the everyday film fan may miss them.
His adventures have taken him all around the UK, from Cornwall, to Scotland and even Northern Ireland and even had ambitions to visit the United States to find some more famous trees.
Matt said: “I wouldn’t describe myself as a typical ’tree-hugger’, but I just want to share these cool trees with the hopes in the future to get more people appreciating nature and planting trees.
“So I’ve actually been a full-time woodturner the past 3 years doing various exploits including a YouTube channel where I’m recreating all the Harry Potter wands from the real woods but I’ve had this idea of making a ‘famous trees’ channel for 8 years since visiting Hobbiton in New Zealand.
“Over the last eight years, I’ve been screenshotting every film or tv series which might feature a famous tree!
“Some are individual trees such as The 1917 tree or the Harry Potter tree at New College Oxford, whereas others might be a background shot but from a super important scene.”
For the more obscure tree, Matt searches Youtube and Reddit in the hopes of someone recognising the location.
He added: “I’ve got a map and document of all these famous trees and I’m trying to tick off as many as possible in the UK this year.
“I’ve got experience with other content creation but this has been a good experiment and learning curve starting from the ground up again.
“TikTok has been the best for reach/exposure as expected whereas Instagram has been quite poor so far, but it only takes the algorithm one video, and your account can take off.
“I want to grow organically and try and get a reputation as ’The Tree Guy’.”
Matt explained: “Most of the trips I’m trying to tie in as a holiday or make sure they’re en route to save fuel as I’m currently funding this venture out of my savings.
“I’ve invested in a drone and recently a microphone mainly for this project and it’s one of those things where you just have to bite the bullet.
“The film location trees are more exciting because it’s bridging the gap between fiction and reality and it’s fun matching up the screenshots or recreating scenes to film.
“It might not be a super iconic tree but the scene might be really important.
“So I won’t film any gnarly old oak, it’s got to have been in a film or had some other key significance about it so I can make an interesting story.”