(The outdoor Lake-Town wet set with extras and crew assembled for a night shoot on “The Hobbit.”)
WELLINGTON — The great cities of history have risen up around rivers, lakes and on coasts. Water holds vast and replenishing stores of food, improves transportation of people and goods, encourages trade, and of course keeps a population hydrated. Paris. London. Hong Kong. New York. Tokyo. Moscow. Boston. On and on.
Lake-town benefitted from excellent transportation and presumably a wealth of fish and food and clean, fresh water but it was built on water for a different reason.
Dragons.
One dragon in particular: Smaug The Terrible.
Tolkien’s Lake-town, like real-world Venice, was built on wooden pillars sunk into water. The lake men — with the destruction of Dale seared forever into their memory — built on water for safety. We watched it in the prolog of “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” while they had to live with the fear of dragon every day. Water-based living provided at least a chance against the great and terrible worm if he ever attacked again.
Ringer Mr Spielbrick lets us know that we can now check out high-resolution artwork for the four movie tie-in LEGO sets for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug courtesy of user “HothBricks” over on Flickr. (Low-res versions have been floating round the internet for a couple of days but weren’t much more than a pixelated blur). Continue reading “See new, high-res artwork for The Desolation of Smaug LEGO sets!”
TORn Tuesday will be chatting with Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee) later today at 5pm PT.
So join us on theonering.net/live then! Additionally, Sean and TORn Staffers Cliff “Quickbeam” Broadway and Justin Sewell will be at Cross Campus in Santa Monica for another public discussion with FilmBreak at 7pm. So if you happen to be in the area, come along! Continue reading “Sean Astin appearing today on TORn Tuesday!”
Director Peter Jackson in the gallery of the Wellington Town Hall during the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s recording sessions for ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’. Photo / Hagen Hopkins. Russell Baille from The New Zealand Herald gets the low-down on the recording process at Wellington Town Hall last month. He was present last month as the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra laboured mightily with orchestrator Conrad Pope, Peter Jackson and senior audio engineer Peter Cobbin to bring composer Howard Shore’s musical vision to life.
My favourite quote from Conrad Pope:
“It always pays to have great performers. Whenever you are in front of an orchestra you are in front of almost 2000 years of musical experience if you think about it. So you are taking that expressiveness and you are unleashing that. If you have a digital thing it is only one person. That is why it’s so remarkable to have that kind of power in this orchestra here.”
Dragons.
TORn Tuesday will be chatting with Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee) later today at 5pm PT.
Over the last few weeks I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with the wonderful Conan Stevens (Bolg) about his life and career.
