Category: Production
Musical types will be interested to learn that Howard Shore’s Dreaming of Bag End and Neil Finn’s Song of the Lonely Mountain are both now available as sheet music.
TORn Staffer Magpie reports that for the LoTR sheet music, which is available on the same site, “you could print the sheet music once and it has your name on it. But then you got this digital download that let you play the sheet music (with their player). It displayed the sheet music on your computer screen and played a midi file — highlighting the notes being played.”
You can also can preview most songs for one page to get a sense of how it works.
It’s no small feat to make the wizard Gandalf appear larger than his dwarf and hobbit friends. Over at Popular Mechanics, Eric Vespe explains how the filmmakers pulled off the illusion in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
In the past, director Peter Jackson had to shoot characters of different sizes at different times and piece the scenes together in postproduction. “There was no way to direct the whole scene at once, no opportunity to finesse performances,” says motion-control supervisor Alex Funke. With the new system, Jackson watched scenes from The Hobbit unfold in real time.
On 12th December staffer greendragon was lucky enough to attend the red (well, actually it was green!) carpet in Leicester Square, London, for the Royal Film Performance of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Many of the film’s stars – and other celebs who were there to see the movie – stopped by to say hi, and were delighted to see TheOneRing.net (‘our special friends,’ as Peter Hambleton said) represented there. This is because YOU, our readers, are all so fabulous – everyone involved with the films knows that the best fans are the ones who visit TORn. 😉 So here, as a little festive mathom offered to you all from us, the staffers at TORn, is a video of some greetings (and some ‘woohoos’!) to you all, from the folks who work in Middle-earth.
After a little footage of the set up in Leicester Square to set the scene, you’ll see John Bell (Bain) and his parents, Graham McTavish (Dwalin), James Nesbitt (Bofur), William Kircher (Bifur) and his beautiful wife Nicole, artist Alan Lee, Stephen Hunter (Bombur), Peter Hambleton (Gloin), Jed Brophy (Nori), Adam Brown (Ori), and of course Dominic Monaghan (Merry) and Billy Boyd (Pippin)- who were there to see the movie and revisit old haunts! Enjoy! Wishing you all happy holidays!
Talking to Shawn Adler
from movieline.com, Weta Digital visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri talks about the use of 3D HFR in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. He explains why it takes some getting used to, and why he feels it’s a big step forward for films, like the transition from black and white to color.
“If you grew up seeing films in black and white and suddenly start seeing films in color, some people are going to have the reaction ‘Wow, that’s great!’ and other people are going to have the reaction, ‘That’s not moviemaking! Films should be made in black and white! You’re losing the mystery of how to deal with tonality, you’re sacrificing that to deal with color!'” [Read more]