Cliff Broadway ‘Quickbeam’ writes: The time has come to celebrate, for we have completed the first rough cut of RINGERS: LORD OF THE FANS. The camera crew has put away the equipment and bright lights. We worked through an intense period of post-production to bring the film together in the best possible way, with music cues, motion graphics, animated segments, and a ton of extra visuals. [More] [Ringers Official Website]
Month: October 2004
EXCLUSIVE UPDATE RINGERS is Ready for the World (Almost)!
Greetings — Cliff Broadway ‘Quickbeam’ here. The time has come to celebrate, for we have completed the first rough cut of RINGERS: LORD OF THE FANS.
The camera crew has put away the equipment and bright lights. We worked through an intense period of post-production to bring the film together in the best possible way, with music cues, motion graphics, animated segments, and a ton of extra visuals.
Thanks to the hard work of director Carlene Cordova and editor Arnaud Gerardy, RINGERS is a complete feature film that now runs just over an hour and half. However, we have not locked down the “final cut” just yet! It is still subject to changes (as we have learned something watching Peter Jackson assemble and re-edit his films right up the last possible minute — Carlene & Arnaud understand how THAT feels). Our film was cultivated from over 150 total hours of footage — from our extended trips to 16 major cities on 3 continents. Great numbers!
We are very proud of our work — it is a “feel good” movie that really feels good. It will stands as a celebration of over five decades of people being in love with one piece of literature (and subsequent movies). We anticipate a world premiere for RINGERS in January 2005 at an upcoming film festival. Please check out website and sign up for our newsletter for the latest announcements.
Stay tuned for more details!
Much too hasty,
Cliff Broadway ‘Quickbeam’
RINGERS Producer, Writer, Interviewer
Ringers: Lord of the Fans
Visit our website!
http://www.lordofthefans.net
Olog-Hai writes: They were about three foot six tall, kept well out of the way of the Big People, lived in holes in the ground, had a simple technology fashioned with long, clever fingers … and, it can now be revealed, hung on in the real world until almost historical times. In an astonishing case of life imitating art, the remains of hobbits just like these have actually been unearthed in a cave in a hillside overlooking a river valley, in a remote and unspoiled part of Middle-earth. All that seems to be missing is the brass doorknob and (so far) confirmation of hairy feet. [More]
Olog-Hai writes:
They were about three foot six tall, kept well out of the way of the Big People, lived in holes in the ground, had a simple technology fashioned with long, clever fingers … and, it can now be revealed, hung on in the real world until almost historical times. In an astonishing case of life imitating art, the remains of hobbits just like these have actually been unearthed in a cave in a hillside overlooking a river valley, in a remote and unspoiled part of Middle-earth. All that seems to be missing is the brass doorknob and (so far) confirmation of hairy feet.
In the 28th October issue of the science magazine Nature (www.nature.com/nature) an international team of researchers describe remains of an entirely unexpected party – a skeleton of a tiny, human-like creature that lived on the island of Flores in eastern Indonesia, discovered there in September 2003 by researchers from the Indonesian Centre for Archaeology in Jakarta.
Founded by seafaring individuals of the ancient prehuman species Homo erectus that settled there almost a million years ago, these ancient colonists – marooned and isolated — evolved their own way, shrinking, until by 18,000 years ago, they had reached the size of hobbits. “I would have been less surprised if someone had uncovered an alien,” says Dr Peter Brown, from the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales, an anthropologist involved in the research.
As Charles Darwin discovered in the Galapagos Islands during the voyage of HMS Beagle, creatures confined to islands for long periods evolve away from their mainland forebears, becoming very distinctive. Sometimes they become much larger or smaller than those on the mainland. The island of Malta in the Mediterranean once had tiny elephants that could look eye to eye with giant swans. In a similar way, Flores was a looking-glass world of dwarf elephants, giant Komodo dragons, rats the size of retrievers … and little people, no more than a metre tall and with heads the size of grapefruits. These people made sophisticated stone tools which the researchers think they used to hunt the elephants, if not to fend off the dragons – until a volcanic eruption 12,000 years ago seems to have snuffed out this Lost World.
One of the remarkable things about the discovery is how recently the creatures lived. We are usually accustomed to thinking that extinct relatives of humanity all lived many thousands, or even millions of years ago, but to have a distinct species of the human family alive 18,000 years ago is unprecedented. At that time, modern humans (Homo sapiens) had been present in Indonesia for 20,000 years or so, yet they do not seem to have mixed with the strange indigenes of Flores.
Or did they? Persistent and extremely detailed folk-tales from Flores speak of encounters with a tribe of little people called ebu gogo that lived on the island until as recently as a century ago. Says team geochronologist Dr Bert Roberts of the University of Wollongong, in Australia, the researchers thought these stories “no better than leprechaun stories — until we unearthed the Hobbit.” Who knows what a search of the remaining rainforest on Flores or elsewhere might turn up? Explorers have been searching Sumatra for the orang pendek, a mythical hairy biped. Dr Michael Morwood of the University of New England, is co-director of the Flores excavation, working closely with his Indonesian counterpart R. P. Soejono of the Indonesian Centre for Archaeology. Next year they plan to explore caves on the island of Sulawesi, known, like Flores, for its unusual, endemic fauna. What next? Elves? Dwarves? ….. Balrogs?
In celebration of the Lord of the Rings 50th anniversary, Ted Nasmith presents slides of his paintings from the new edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s prequel to the trilogy. Nasmith was commissioned for twenty-six new paintings. He will be at ‘Borders Book Store’ in Salt Lake City, UT today (Oct 27th). Follow this link to see his next stop! [More]
Erica writes: I’m involved with a Los Angeles-based non-profit organization called CoachArt that provides free lessons in the arts and athletics for underpriviliged children with life-threatening illnesses. Sean Astin has donated a unique heart-shaped ceramic plate that he decorated with his own design, as an autographed Lord of the Rings photo. [More]