Indie-Lotr
I saw on Metafilter
He was in Mordor, wasn't he? | MetaFilter that there is a forty minute long internet movie called The Hunt For Gollum coming out next week. It is, as you might guess, a JRR Tolkien inspired LOTR thing. It premieres 03 May 09 during a London Science Fiction Festival, after which point it will be available from the project's web site. From the precis and trailers available the story they tell is drawn from the appendices of Lord of the Rings. Briefly Gandalf (a wizard) becomes suspicious of Bilbo's (a hobbit) ring (a magic ring). He enlists Aragorn (Mr. Strider, a dunedin) to find Gollum (hard to describe but not unlike Dick Cheney) and learn more about its origin. I have to admit that while I read the Hobbit as a kid, I did not read the trilogy until the movies came out. My sisters and niece said I would enjoy them more if I read the books.
This film the brainchild of Chris Bouchard. It is a fan organized non-profit film project. Independent Online Cinema, and Rickety Shack films, which are I imagine his production and rights companies, encompass the project. He composed the film's soundtrack too. The web site describes the affair as a Collaborative Online project. Rooting about on the site it is apparent that everything used for it was borrowed or donated, including people and their time. At that, the whole thing seems carefully, professionally, and systematically attended to. Yet they claim the film, shot direct to digital with mid-range pro-am Sony and JVC digicams, was completed for the expense of some 3000 pounds. Which is what 7 to 8000 dollars? That's hardly money at all. I truly wish I had the knack or talent to try something like this.
As I looked over this, I thought of another similar film I had heard about, also through Metafilter, as it happens, Iron Sky. Two words: Moon Nazi's. They escaped in their souped-up V2's, now their coming back to get us! From Finland, and the makers of something called Star Wreck: in the Pirkinning (!). Chris Bouchard even has another one of these internet movies coming out soon an epic horror called Human Residue (2009). There is a lot of weirdness, entire categories of weirdness, out there on the internets; I guess I just haven't been keeping up. I'm dedicated to my own project of destroying newspapers by reading all their content online for free. The "THfG" website (more to the point here) refers to a sister fan film project that it is sharing crew and equipment with: the movie "Born of Hope". This film follows the story of Arador and his son Arathorn, who are (I'm just guessing here) the grandfather and father of Aragorn. It is being made by Kate Madison as producer and mostly shot in a Sturbridge-village like place, an Anglo-Saxon settlement recreation near Bury St. Edmunds. THfG was shot in a park in North Wales. I'm still not sure how people make money on this sort of thing, but if they're happy why should I complain?
This next part functions like an addendum to the main as I did not finish (or even write much of) this until after Sunday and having seen the film.
First and main impression it is an earnest homage not only to Tolkien but especially to Peter Jackson. The other related observation is that unlike much of this sort of thing it is not reliant on ironic distance. There is no snark to this. As well no over-use of leavening humor to compensate for the leaden weight of most fan fiction, when throwing itself out to a wider audience. It follows lines laid down by Jackson's project - which he himself peeled out of layers of Lord Of The Rings commentaries and establised popular imagery. It was quite moving and well done. It told a small well defined story and still managed to give it the look and feel of sweeping grandeur. For myself a lurking practical question was: do these under-cut Jackson's upcoming projects and if not why not? The thing to point out here is that there is a lot of room in Tolkien's metaverse. You could send a small army of filmmakers in there and have them not get in each others way. One other thing these projects do which could be usefull to New Line Cinema frankly is that they keep the franchise alive and in peoples hearts while Jackson and del Toro get their act together: "It has been announced by Guillermo del Toro that shooting for this film will not start until 2010: imdb
The Hobbit (2012)." Unless I hear otherwise I may choose to believe there may indeed be some level of awareness between these projects.
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