This is the Live Journal Entry I made on September 13 2001 about the preview/making of of Lord of The RIngs that was hosted by Lincoln Center on September 9. Itr was posted 4 days later because of being too tired on the 9th or 10th and then getting side tracked because of that thing that happened on the 11th.
13th September, 2001. 9:51 am. LORD OF THE RINGS
Went Sunday night with Lucy Anne to see a preview and making of the Lord of the Rings. It was late, 930pm at Lincoln Center.(The earlier show sold out before I could get tickets and seeing how small the theatre they held it it in, it isn't surprising.)
Sean Bean, Elijah Wood and Orlando Bloom were in the audience, and afterward I got their autographs. All were charming and wonderful. Bloom, who's first real taste of fame this is was shocked anyone would want his autograph. Bean was trying not to be noticed but was wonderfully charming when he was. Wood was equally charming.
They showed the second trailer and tons and tons of video showing how the movie was being made. Lots of stuff on the computer work which was awesome in the true sense of the word - the computer generated Sean Bean looked real, especially since the real one was there for comparison.
The presentation that was done to sell the film to New Line was shown.(The movie was with Miramax who passed after tons and tons of work had been done- work that was shown in the presentation.) New Line picked it up after suggesting that Peter Jackson's idea for two films filmed back to back which people would have to go to theatres to see was insane....(bad feeling in the pit of the stomach)... especially when you could make three films.(Great Joy and Happiness)
There was way too much stuff discussed to go into here, but it all looked wonderful, except for two things, the first was a party sequence which looked bad at least in the behind the scenes stuff we saw.It looked like people doing dress up, but I'm not worried since it was simply behind the scenes stuff.
The second bit I'll get to in a minute.
The night was a slow build up to a completed scene that takes place in the tomb in the Mines of Moria. We saw how everything was done, the sets, the costumes (Some guy spent over a year just making chain mail out of PVC pipe, ten hours a day, everyday, doing nothing but linking the links together.He did it out of love of the stories. And when it was done he went on to his new and truly boring job somewhere else.)
We saw how the whole thing was made and then we saw the scene.
The scene was the attack of the Orcs and th Cave Troll into the tomb.
It was incredible except for one small bit of animation that seemed out of place or unreal. As the Troll ( a completely CGI monster) attacks he is swinging this huge chain around. Legolas ties the chain to a pillar and then runs across the chain on to the trolls back and fire arrows point blank into the trolls head and back.
Exciting stuff- except it looks unreal. All the motion is wrong. And the reason it looked wrong is that we had just had two hours on how great the rest of the animation was and this little bit wasn't. The Troll, which exists only as a computer generated image looked real, but the elf on his back looked fake. Very weird.
Still I'm dying to see the rest. The first film runs 2 hours 45 minutes., the others will be equally long.
Has Peter Jackson gotten it right?
Yes, but there will be quibbles and there will be people who wanted everything in the movie, there were two people who sat in front of us and who were behind us on line and they were very very protective of the books. They seemed ready to jump at anything they didn't like.
Ultimately anyone who is really upset is going to be upset because it wasn't how they would have done it, or because their favorite part was removed. Too bad. Whats there looks like a masterpiece and will in the long run I think will stand the test of time.(Though I'm lowering my expectations one notch simply because I see the gap between what is and what I read into the trailers and pictures- this isn't bad, its just getting my expectations into the realm of realistic)
But thats just my opinion, I could be wrong.
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