Even within Tolkien’s own books, anniversaries are treated as special occasions. A chance for the characters to reflect upon the past that shaped them as they continue moving forward into the future. But for us Lord of the Rings fans, this October 11 (or October 10, if you’re in the Western world) is an anniversary of special magnificence. It was October 11, 1999 in New Zealand when principal photography commenced on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, with the main shoot encompassing The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. Back at a time when the internet had no Facebook, Twitter, or Wikipedia, back when VHS tapes were the preferred way to watch home movies, and when Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin were world leaders, an 18-year-old Elijah Wood and his castmates gathered together to begin shooting three films that most of the non-Tolkien fans of the time gave little regard to.
Filmed on October 11, 1999
It’s interesting to look back at the schedule from those days because it wasn’t dictated by story or film order but by what locations were ready, who was available, and what the weather was likely to be like. In fact, while filming began with the four hobbit actors hiding from a black rider on the Wooded Road and ended 437 days later on the set of Minas Tirith, the order of what was filmed in between was more of a hodgepodge. (I’m always amused when people claim that the Grey Havens’s farewell sequence carries its emotional weight because of how much the actors bonded over the course of the project. In fact, it was shot rather early in the go, and when Ian McKellen was later asked how he kept from weeping in the scene, he replied, “This was only the second scene I filmed for the trilogy. I scarcely knew Frodo from Merry and adopted the safest course of expressing very little as I said goodbye to them.”)
“You with the dark hair, it is time to go.”
Of course, the end of principal photography itself wasn’t really the end. Pickup shots would continue for The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, with the latter even having some pickup shots filmed after its theatrical release to help fill out the extended edition. Peter Jackson, after shooting the final final footage for the trilogy, a shot of a couple of skulls rolling at the Paths of the Dead, commented that it was especially bizarre to still be shooting The Return of the King in 2004 after the film had won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
By setting aside the pickup shots, weather cover days, and various bits and pieces shot by some hard-working unit while most of the actors were busy elsewhere, here’s the general schedule The Lord of the Rings followed:
1999
October
(Filming begins with Hobbit leads) The Wooded Road Farmer Maggot’s Field Buckleberry Ferry Bree Exterior (Viggo Mortensen arrives) Weathertop Isengard Deforestation
November
(Sean Bean Arrives) Anduin River Amon Hen Battle
December
Boromir’s Death Frodo’s escape from Boromir Ford of Bruinen Prancing Pony Interior Exiting Moria Approach to Lothlorien
2000
January
(Ian McKellen arrives) Hobbiton Exteriors The Grey Havens Edoras Exteriors
February
(Ian Holm arrives) Bag End Interior Orthanc Interior Helm’s Deep
March
Helm’s Deep Continues Gandalf at Isengard Rivendell Exteriors
April
Helm’s Deep Continues Last Alliance (Prologue) Aragorn and Company at the Black Gate Caves of Orthanc Frodo and Sam in Mordor
May
Helm’s Deep Concludes Frodo and Sam in Mordor Concludes Frodo and Sam at the Black Gate Moria Interior Rivendell Interior
June
Paths of the Dead Interior (Cate Blanchett arrives) Lothlorien
July
Orthanc Exteriors Cirith Ungol
August
Anduin River Flooded Isengard
September
Breaking of the Fellowship Caradhas Voice of Saruman
October
Edoras Interior Battle of the Pelennor Fields
November
Fangorn Forest
December
Fangorn Forest Concludes Moria Gate Minas Tirith
Special thanks to J.W. Braun, the author of The Lord of the Films. You can visit his website at www.jwbraun.com.
If you haven’t already, make sure to mark your calendars for this Thursday, October 10th. That’s the day we can finally order the beautiful Minas Morgul environment we saw at Comic-Con this past July. Unlike previous items, this will have a unique way to determine the edition size. When orders open on Thursday they will begin calculating the edition size, and when orders close on the 23rd of this month they will finalize the number. So we, the fans, will determine just where this ends up; and it also allows us to show bad we want this piece. So mark your calendar now.
Here is what time Minas Morgul will go up based on your location:
· 12.30 p.m, October 10 – 12.30 p.m, October 23 (PDT)
· 9.30 p.m, October 10 – 9.30 p.m, October 23 (CET)
· 8.30 a.m, October 11 – 8.30 a.m, October 24 (NZT)
Chance Thomas is a composer who has worked in film, television and video games, including when he transported readers to Middle-earth in the game Lord of the Rings Online. He is a Tolkien enthusiast and was happy to do an interview with TheOneRing. We sat down, broke bread and talked Tolkien.
Thomas was involved in several editions of LOTRO including, “Riders of Rohan,” “Mines of Moria,” Shadows of Angmar,” and “Mordor.” I watched recently as fans geeked out at the chance to meet the man who provided the music for the game they loved so dearly.
He has a long list of credits including other Peter Jackson games and an Academy Award winning short film “The ChubbChubbs!”
Chance Thomas: When I was a child, my mother was always singing in our home. She took me to the symphony, we listened to records and sang along with the radio. Great music was always around and it always lit me up.
As I grew older, good friends would often introduce me to cool new bands and recording artists. We would get together just to share new songs we liked with each other. I also started playing in orchestras and rock bands and wrote songs and made recordings. After college, my wife and I entertained together on cruise ships and wrote pop songs.
Really, I have loved music for as long as I can remember.
TORn: Where did your involvement with Tolkien come from?
CT: I read the Hobbit as a tween, but didn’t tackle The Lord of the Rings until I was in my 30s. When I did finally read the trilogy, it was like an eruption of joy and discovery inside of me.
Oh, how I loved it! The world, the characters, the fantasy, the pacing, the descriptions … and the music! Everywhere across the world there was mention of music. Songs, instruments, voices; it was wonderful. As a result, I began to codify all of the references in the book and their inferences about music into a document, “The Tolkien Music Style Guide.” The intent was to keep me authoritatively focused as I composed, so that the music I wrote would resonate with the source material, as if drawn from some sub-dimensional embedding of music in the very literature itself.
TORn: As a composer, do you get a lot of emotional feedback on your work? Do you hear from people?
What a great question. (Thanks Chance!)
Media composers like me generally get very little feedback on the work we do. But that’s not uncommon in the professional world. For example, a plumber who lays pipes and fittings in a new home will likely never get feedback from the people who buy the home unless there’s a problem.
It’s hard for me to imagine a homeowner tracking down a plumber, calling him up, and saying, “Hey man! I just want you to know how much we’re enjoying the water pressure in our shower. It’s amazing!”
Likewise, most of the people who hear my music are busy playing the game or watching the TV show, or going through the VR experience. They’re gleefully consuming the entertainment, enjoying it as a total experience. It’s not often that people will go to the extra effort of tracking a composer down to give feedback on the music.
Having said all that, the one notable exception comes from “The Lord of the Rings Online.”
Players of this game have been unusually active in finding me online and sharing their enthusiasm for the music I’ve written for them. It has been incredibly gratifying, as you can imagine, to have people find me and share how much the music has meant to them over the years.
And actually, now that I think of it, “DOTA 2” players have been great that way too.
TORn: Who are some of your music heroes and also heroes in your more specific field of soundtracks?
CT: Kansas, Boston, Elton John, Billy Joel, Toto, James Newton Howard, John Williams, James Horner, Danny Elfman, Loreena McKennitt, Earth, Wind and Fire, Quincy Jones, many more.
TORn: For those of us who can’t compose music, how does it feel to complete a piece of music ?
It’s surprisingly dynamic, really. You can feel an incredible rush of adrenaline and satisfaction at times. You can also feel complete contempt, disgust, and self-loathing. And the pendulum can swing from one extreme to the other fast enough to make your head spin. I had that kind of reaction when I wrote the theme for Rohan. Still do. Sometimes I think it’s a really great tune. Other times I think… meh.
I’m not saying that composers are neurotic, but we can tend to have a bit of a love/hate relationship with our own creations. Sometimes that pendulum can even swing all the way across an entire score. I never was really sure how I felt about my first DOTA 2 score.
TORn: Are there certain pieces you find that you love more than others? You have compared them to children in previous conversations.
CT: I write a ton of action music. Creating action tracks can be super fun. It’s loud, it’s bombastic, its aggressive. It gets the adrenaline going. But more often than not, if I’m just in a listening mood, I prefer the more thematic pieces, the thoughtful tracks, the music with some emotional movement in it. Here are a couple of examples from that part of my composing style. First the thematic afterture I recently composed for Warhammer:
And here is an older one, the tragic hero theme I composed for King Kong:
TORn: Can you watch films or the like and not focus on the soundtrack?
Absolutely. I’ve always been drawn deeply into films. Sometimes my wife laughs when I’m watching a movie because I may physically duck and dodge during fight scenes. In the process of being entertained, I typically consume the music as part of the overall experience. But when the music is meant to stand out and be featured, I dial in to that too.
TORn: What types of projects do you hope to do down the road?
CT: As a fan and as an artist, I adore deeply developed fictional worlds. I love working in them, creating music so that people who love those worlds can be drawn in ever more deeply.
I’ve been privileged to compose music for many such worlds, including The Lord of the Rings, James Cameron’s Avatar, Warhammer, Dungeons and Dragons, Marvel, King Kong and many more.
Down the road, I hope to continue to contribute to these kinds of fantasy worlds, at higher and higher levels, with broader and broader reach. Composing for the Avatar film sequels or the LOTR television series would definitely be at the top of my list
Larry, thanks for the interview. It’s always a pleasure. May the road go ever on and on!
Talent, locations, infrastructure and a warm Kiwi welcome. According to Pam Ford from the Auckland Tourism Events and Economic Development agency in this piece from Radio NZ, those were the determining factors in Amazon Studios’ decision, confirmed on Tuesday, to film the upcoming Middle-earth-based TV series in New Zealand.
Quoted in stuff.co.nz, showrunners and executive producers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay described New Zeland as indeed offering all of the criteria they were looking for: “As we searched for the location in which we could bring to life the primordial beauty of the Second Age of Middle Earth, we knew we needed to find somewhere majestic, with pristine coasts, forests, and mountains, that also is a home to world-class sets, studios, and highly skilled and experienced craftspeople and other staff”.
“And we’re happy that we are now able to officially confirm New Zealand as our home for our series based on stories from J.R.R. Tolkien‘s The Lord of the Rings. The abundant measure of Kiwi hospitality with which they have welcomed us has already made us feel right at home, and we are looking forward to deepening our partnership in the years to come.”
No doubt the prospect of a 20% to 25% rebate for every dollar spent also contributed to the ‘welcome’ factor. The good news for New Zealand is that Amazon will be spending approximately $1.0 billion of those dollars ($1.3 NZD) and will likely provide jobs that will spill over from the film industry to affect the rest of the economy for up to a decade.
Read more about the Auckland studios where filming will take place in our article from June, and be sure to listen to the full radio story linked above as it features our own staffer Garfeimao (Cathy Udovch)!
Amazon Prime’s Twitter and Facebook accounts have just dropped a new video introducing fans to the team of creators behind their new “Lord of the Rings” Prequel Series!
This includes such faces as showrunners J.D. Payne & Patrick McKay, as well the vast team of accomplished writers, producers, director J.A. Bayona, our beloved Tolkien artist John Howe and renowned Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey (yours truly would be lying if he didn’t say these last two fill him particularly with joy!).
