3-16-01

Sauron - Yep, he appears TWICE
Tehanu @ 8:12 pm EST
Lots of great news came in. Or news, whether great or not is up to your point of view.

Firstly, I can't thank Hunter enough for telling us about his recent interview with LOTR scriptwriter Philippa Boyens. He wrote to say:

"Just thought you'd like to know regarding these Sauron speculations that there is an interview in my latest editiuon of Creative Screenwiting (Vol.8 No.2) with Philoppa Boyens who states therein that she has written two scenes in which Sauron appears.

I quote from page 6 "Speaking of Sauron, Boyens says the Dark Wizard manifests in three ways only: the Eye, the Dark Tower, and the ring which he created. "He never assumes phsical appearance in the books except when the ring is cut from his finger. As screenwriters, we totally agree Sauron is far more fascinating as a force of evil than as an actual presence. What they can do now with digital imagery is amazing. The couple of moments when Sauron presents himself are incredible.""

The rest of the interview, albeit aimed at fellow screenwriters, is also extremely interesting."

Meanwhile, back to the question of Sauron or Morgoth either wearing spikes or carrying a hammer, Micahael Martinez over at Xenite was able to give us a link to the only known picture of Sauron by Tolkien. It's very impressionistic, and though it definitely seems to have a kind of spiked crown, there's no indication of armour. You can see the picture here Compare it to John Howe's picture of Morgoth that we featured yesterday and you can see that the spiked crown/helm was a theme that both artists felt comfortable with.

Now, as to our spy report from the set, there's been an update to that. There may have been only eight Ringwraiths present. Sylvesterpasemester continued his story today:

"First of all I must say that I‚m not sure whether there was nine or eight wraiths around this Sauron guy. My friend that was with me on the set says that there were eight of them and not nine as I told you in the previous report.

When me and my friend arrived to the set five minutes late a friendly guy leads us to some sort of a dressing area. It‚s us and about 75 guys getting our armour done. You could really feel strange vibes around us. The armour and weapons(wantttsssssssssss it)was really beautiful. There was three types of outfits. One group with armour looking like a mixture between a Roman legionaries and a good old fashion knight, just like I have pictured a gondorian warrior. Another group got armour that made them look like samurais, they also got some strange swords. The third group looked very much like the Rohan warriors we‚ve seen pictures of. Some of the soldiers got makeup to make them look injured. I was not one of them.

Something very interesting regarding the "samurais" was that they had prosthetic pointy ears. Whether those were elves or knights from Dol Amroth I don't know.

The set was very nice! A pretty big field and this mega bluescreen. The field was covered with dead people and orcs. We were lined up and then a giant steps in. He's huge and has spiky armour and dark helmet, he looks very scary After him follows 8 or 9 mystic figures in a strange armour. Our assignment was to run in terror from this guy.

We did two times while two cameras was filming us. Then they did some closeup shoting with "Sauron" and 20 of the extras. Unfortunely I was not one of the lucky 20 extras. Then it started raining and we went home, I´m not sure if Sauron was an actor but he did not get the armour done in the same place as us"

Hmm, that gives us all something to think about. Thanks, Sylvesterpasemester!