Good Evening Rings Fans,
Well, it’s late and I’m beat, but I just got back from the Barrie Osborne and Christian Rivers presentation at Lincoln Center.
I’ll do my best to give you all the details from the event which was a mix of discussion and Q&A, plus a viewing of some great footage.
Let’s begin, Barrie Osborne (the producer) and Christian Rivers (story board artist and production design) took the stage in front of a crowd of anxious LOTR fans around 7:30. The line was around out the door and stretched to the end of the block (which at Lincoln Center is pretty far). The funny thing was there were actually fans outside holding signs asking for tickets.
The two guests were extremely polite starting with an introduction of their past work obviously we know Barrie Osborne’s, but Christian has been with Peter Jackson for about 10 years now, since “Brain Dead.” The intros were typical everything we have heard before from the Australian presentation Barrie gave not long ago. Then they began the LOTR chat by showing the trailer. Some of the crowd were quite in shock being that they hadn’t seen it, it was cool to hear the reactions.
Then they began discussing the day to day work on LOTR, the list was run off of the amount of props, actors, crew etc. that was used on the films. We’ve all heard it before. Christian gave some amazing insight into the beginnings of production design and the crowd really perked up when they showed a video of the story board, while he narrated. The pictures shown were of the Moria sequence which were first posted on the Internet long ago. After these shots were shown they showed us how an actual basic computer graphic storyboard was put together. This was amazing, with shots of the fellowship entering Moria, walking through the mountains…all completely computer generated!! They only showed two small parts of this sequence.
Next, Barrie and Christian told the story on how Peter Jackson was able to make all three LOTR films. Apparently, they had three options: “King Kong”, “Planet of the Apes”, and “LOTR”…so we won out in the end!! The three films were agreed upon and here we are, four years later.
The crowd was next shown the film which Peter gave to the studios as a selling piece for the movies. We have all seen clips of this short film in the original Internet trailer. Peter giving a short talk about launching the movies followed by the statement, “This is the Time.” The film is filled with a lot of artwork from John Howe and Alan Lee who also speak about the films and taking an active role in the production design.
Next came the good stuff….the “Making of” footage! Ok, please bear with me, there was a lot. The first thing that caught my eye was the stunt shots of the four hobbits falling down a small cliff (photo was posted on the net a while back). Then they showed Frodo and Gandalf riding in the cart into Hobbiton. More detail was taken to show the special effects used to make Ian Mckellen look bigger than Elijah Wood. This shot was done on an angle and without computer effect. In this scene we heard a bit of dialogue with Gandalf teaching Frodo how to pronounce something in elvish.
Next came stunt work, computer effects of the giant battle and a long talk on Massive Software. The initial shots we see are of Aragorn taking on about 100 orcs. These were all actors, whom Viggo was fighting all at once, the sequence was amazing! He was leading them up a bunch of stairs to make his stand at the top and keep on swinging! Next they went into the HUGE battle for “Towers and “Return”. The first shots were of how Massive worked. Thousands of simple computer soldiers walking and then running and then fighting each other!! Unreal!!! Then this was added in to the actual fight sequences where Gondorians were hacking apart orcs on the field!! The battle looked enormous!! On shot of CG was so vast it seemed to be eternal, all of just one giant battle! But here is the catch, each CG warrior fought in a different sequence, using moves and tactics to beat their opponents!!! Next they went into a special effects shot of Saruman and Gandalf. This scene is clearly when the two meet and Saruman traps Gandalf, but not until he magicly throws him about the room!! The stunts were wild, with wires and spring boards flipping poor Gandalf about as Saruman cast his spell. These shots were connected with breaks so Barrie and Christian could tell production stories. One that bears telling is during the filming Viggo was taking on three orcs. During the fight Viggo was hit in the mouth and lost a tooth…he looks on the ground, looks up and says “Anyone got some super glue.” Barrie said he wanted keep going!!! You have to dig that!
Next the making of footage went into strict detail about the set and costume design. Okay, here is my best to give you the list: orc armor, elf armor, costumes, Gondorians, Rohan, the cave troll. We saw shots of the wild men and orcs burning down a village. The armor is sooo detailed. Barrie took time to explain the importance to maintain the difference between the races. A special note, the Urak-hai are designed with differences from the Mordor orcs,a cool concept. Weapons, elf swords, human swords, dwarven axes…Christian and Barrie explained them all as they came onto screen. On a note, the elven armor was amazing!! We saw a shot of Elrond leading a charge of elves…he wore gold, while the others were wearing silver. The difference was shown between the CG armor and the real armor…no one could tell the difference. Next the shots of Lothlorien were shown…the entire city is set in the trees. It is filled with amazing detail. Next we saw filming shots of the crew on location all over New Zealand as Barrie and Christian spoke about each location. The one shot which was really cool was Peter walking into Bilbo’s birthday party after leaving the set of Moria…all within about 10 feet of each other! It was too much all at once.
Still with me…good, the last part of the presentation went into the development and design of the cave troll. From basic drawings, to CGI animation. We saw pictures of its skeleton from the Internet trailer, adding on muscle, then skin. Next came the choice of weapons. Finally settling on a giant war hammer and chain. A short film was shown of the cave trill trying to smash a bouncing ball which was pretty funny. This led up to Barrie and Christian allowing us to see the Balin’s Tomb sequence from the movie!!! Ok, we have all read the reviews of this footage, so I will not bore you with my interpretation, which is the same as everyone else…It’s perfect…just too good for words. Small notes I have to mention are: size detail is perfect. Aragorn and Legolas shooting orcs through the holes in the door while they are breaking in…and then the fight in general. All looks great, Gandalf and Gimli fighting off orcs, Sting glowing, it’s all there in full Fellowship goodness. A few questions were asked that were quite good, here are some things Barrie said which may clear up any rumors. He mentioned softly that the group does face the Watcher in the Water, the movies will be 2 hours and 45 minutes long. The DVDs are being worked on right now and will contain a LOT of extra footage. The score is also being worked on right now.
So on that note, thank you all so much for reading this far…I have to say a quick thank you to Xoanon and the gang who have given us the best coverage over almost three years! To Sir Manfred and all the Von Halsterns for being good sports, to Jer, Has and Vin, to Shawnda (the coolest Tolkein fan I know), and most of all to my dearest Padma for dealing with my excitement all day…week…months. We only have a few more months to wait, so relax and enjoy the build-up! Thanks again, see you all on December 19!!!!!
Garrett Fuller
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Ringer Spy Riskbreaker sends along this great report from the Lincoln Center LOTr footage screening! More coming in!!! Take a read!
I can’t even bring words to this experience. It was religious. ! MAJOR SPOILERS [More]
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Ringer Spy Riskbreaker sends along this great report from the Lincoln Center LOTr footage screening! More coming in!!! Take a read!
OH… MY… GAWD!
I can’t even bring words to this experience. It was religious.
I purchased tickets two weeks ago to this “Behind the Scenes of Middle Earth” at Lincoln Center. I figured “what the hell, we’ll see some footage of the filming process and ask the producers a bunch of questions.”
They started the night by showing the 2.5 minute trailer. The one that ends with Gollum. There was crazy applause afterward.
Barrie Osborne and the damned-if-I-can-remember-his-name Art Director also attended. They went for an hour and a half discussing the different locations and methods of filming they went through. We received an in-depth explanation of the “forced perspective” technique and how they made the Hobbits look smaller than humans. It was simple — yet ingenious. The simple act of sticking the Hobbit a few steps back from the human and locking a single camera on him works SO much better than using CGI or some other overly-technical method. This one works because it’s tricking the eyes.
In between a load of the behind-the-scenes footage, we got to see some actual film footage. We see Gandalf and Frodo riding on the cart in the Shire. We got to see the Hobbits running from farmer Maggot while arguing amongst themselves in very “Hobbit-like” simplicity. This scene was great. The corn stalks are up over their heads. Then, they roll down the hill. They showed this in about 6 different takes, showing the difficulties of the life of stunt-men and stunt-women (and stunt-Hobbits).
We saw a lot of footage regarding the massive army shots, including the Orcs and Elves. The Elves have very beautiful “hand-made” designs to all their armor, but no two look alike. Legolas uses a sword that has the flare of a scimitar at the tip, but doesn’t have the huge curve in the blade. It’s quite attractive.
We got to see the digital renderings that were made of all the “hero” (main) characters. We saw Gandalf and Boromir. Oh, man! These were so beautiful! They looked *almost* Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within quality, and these things will never be seen (at least in close-up) in the final film. I was amazed by this on it’s own!
We got to see the Helm’s Deep set. It looks great. It looks like 30 wars over 4000 years have been waged there. All cracked and broken bridges, but yet the castle still stands, and you know what it is.
They also showed the sales-reel that PJ used to sell the project to New Line after he began work with Miramax. It was pretty uneventful in terms of new information, but one got a great feel for the amount of work that was already put into the film before they even had a production company carrying it!
We saw some stunt work detailing the different races vs. their different fighting styles. There wasn’t much detail on this, but they did say how they spent a lot of time making sure the Elves looked like immortals who had 1000 years each to practice their own fighting styles. Included with this were unfinished shots of Aragon fighting Orcs at what I think was Weathertop. I’m not really sure on this one. Viggo is amazing! He was killing three at a time. Throwing punches, kicks and wielding Anduril with absolute genius.
There was also footage shown of Arwen at the ford running from the Ringwraiths. This was brief. It looked great, though.
There is more, but this is all I can think of at the moment. I’m sure some of the other 535 people that saw this tonight will correct the blanks here.
The reason is that the following footage made me forget my name, where I lived and where I work. I don’t think I’ll go in tomorrow. I’ll just stay home and work on screenplay #5.
The end of the presentation rolled around, and while it was great, fantastic (these people have a true and genuine love for the work they do. You can see it in their eyes) — I was a bit disappointed because other than the theatrical trailer, we didn’t see anything of the final film cut.
Well, right at the end, they said “We have the cave troll scene to show you guys. It’s not finished, but it’s close.”
OH… MY… GAWD!
The Fellowship of Nine… in the Dwarven Mines of Moria. Gimli finds the remains of Balin, the fallen king. He cries like no dwarf should be seen crying. Pippin (a FOOL of a Took) knocks a skeleton into a well, stirring the Orcish Horde. Frodo draws Sting, the Elven blade. It glows a bright blue. The Orcs are near.
They come like a plague. Legolas and Aragorn hold them at bay with bow and arrow, but they come too fast. Gandalf draws his sword, valiantly standing in front of the Hobbits, Frodo and his precious cargo. Boromir draws his sword and slays four without blinking.
Aragorn flies into a fury with Anduril, the Flame of the West. Orc pieces fly left and right. Frodo’s Hobbit comrades stab and hack at the Orcish horde as well. There is a bloodlust here not from desire, but from a need to survive. Peter Jackson captures it in the eyes of each of the nine in the space of four minutes. He’s *that* good.
But then comes the Cave Troll. A nine foot hulking attrocity storms into the room, held at the neck by the iron-wrought chain the Orcs use to keep him at bay. Words can’t do this justice, but as “Moriarity” from Ain’t It Cool News said: “It’s everything I hoped the Rancor would be. It’s fast, it’s agile. It doesn’t hesitate.”
It’s true. The Cave Troll stomps with a single-minded desire to squish the annoying gnats at it’s feet. Poor Sam has to do all he can to avoid the giant hooves and the six-foot stone hammer it wields.
And then it corners Frodo. Frodo backs himself against a support pillar. The Cave Troll sniffs to the right and Frodo slips to the left. The Troll sniffs to the left and Frodo slips to the right. Moments pass in uncomfortable silence. Frodo steps away with a false sense of safety and —
The cave troll ROARS a blood-curdling Jurassic-Park-on-steroids from-the-toes cry.
And the screen goes black.
I look down to make sure I haven’t ruined another perfectly good pair of pants and I realize that my girlfriend has her nails dug into my arm. Not from fear, but from the sense of desperation and intensity that Peter Jackson created in a six minute unfinished two-tracks of sound clip.
Ho-lee shee-it.
This film will be like a hurricane. It will sweep away everything in it’s path and climb to the top of every record that has ever been set. People will flow in droves to the theaters. Not just geeks like you and me, but every self-respecting fan of fiction that adores the importance of a fantastic story at the heart of every special effects orgasm. This film is that.
Episode II will come and go. George has lost sight of his fans and the taste of his original trilogy. Lord of the Rings will still stand. Twenty five years from now, producers and directors will be looking for that sci-fi/action/fantasy trilogy to top Lord of the Rings just as Lord of the Rings will soon do to Star Wars.
Buy your tickets now, my friends.
-Riskbreaker
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From: Anthony
I work at a local Blockbuster and get to screen movies before the general public. Just to let you know, the 2nd FoTR trailer appears as the very first trailer on the movie Blow, due out 9/11.
Much like the other stories about the 1st LOTR trailer with ’15 Minutes’, this may NOT be the case will ALL copies of ‘Blow’, ’nuff said.
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An extra trying to get into the Matrix sequels tells his tale on what happened during the try outs on Corona Coming Attractions.
“They lined us up against a shadow of someone, then if you made it past the shadow the size of your neck was measured by this nice blonde. Next, they filed you upstairs and you had your mugshot taken standing next to Hugo Weaving in his Matrix gear.”
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David versus Goliath, or should that be Frodo versus Sauron? Just when almost 40 years of residents’ battles over excessive noise at Wellington airport seemed dead and buried, a new row has surfaced. The issue is whether Lord of the Rings’ American financer, New Line Cinema, should be allowed to fly its executives into the airport in its slightly-too-noisy Gulfstream III jet up to four times a year. [More]
(Hrm…4 times a year? Try living up here in Pointe-Claire, on the Island of Montreal. I’m in an airplane corridor, we have planes passing over every 5 seconds…what?! I can’t hear you! – Xo)
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