Vlogophiles, interested in some armchair film-making?

[The Grey Elf]

Anybody want to venture how they would create a particular scene for the movie, perhaps employing know-how gleaned from PJ's production vlogs.
Doesn't have to be elaborate. For instance, Smaug is one of the characters I'm most looking forward to seeing. I want him to feel and sound viscerally alive with cancerous cunning and a coiled lust for gold but I would also want him to cinema's first truly beautiful dragon. Picture Bilbo first entering the humidor of Smaug's lair lit a bit like a dark room with ambient red lights, mysterious and somehow seductive with its gleams of treasure piled up beyond the hobbit's ability to fathom in the eerie darkness. We can feel Smaug is there. Bilbo knows that he is before him and yet neither we nor he can see him. Lustrous scales magnificently burnished and partially encrusted with gems, Smaug is so much a part of his blood hoard, he is an enormous malignant jewel himself, still as he slumbers and nearly invisible on his bed of treasure ... until something wakes him. One great eye stealthily cracks open and he stirs into our sight ....

Okay maybe that was a little elaborate .

I am newly registered and an archlurker, semi - reformed. I know how passionate everyone is in this forum so please don't flame me about my flamer Intro if you don't care for it. Else I might retreat back into Lurkersville (and it's lonely there!)

 

[The Grey Elf]

Don't want to leave the impression that I'm only looking for comments on my scene set-up. I do daydream sometimes on how I would make the Hobbit and wondered if anyone else did and was willing to share what their imagination came up with.

 

[Oin K]

It's the opening words: "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit." Those words are so iconic, and they're steeped in history and lore, and I will throw my popcorn at the screen if the film begins with anything but those words.

Rather than a black screen opening with narration over it like FOTR, I envision The Hobbit opening on the wide expanse of Middle Earth, stretched below like a great canvas, not in map form like we've seen before, but more like a satellite view, like this, a view only seen by the watchful Valar themselves (who have taken a special interest in hobbits as a secret "weapon" against the darkness), with clouds swirling above it, and as we slowly sweep downward across the lands, we see from above some famous landmarks we know from Lord of the Rings: the fields of Pelennor, the mountains of Mordor, the falls of Rauros, up the Great River and past the golden wood of Lothlorien, and we see the Mirrormere below as we swoop upward and along the Misty Mountains - Eagles just visible in the distance at the edge of the frame - flying ever lower over the valley of Rivendell - elven towers just visible amid great waterfalls below - and then turning eastward, over the Bruinen, speeding now over the plains past Weathertop, past the village of Bree, over the foggy Barrow Downs, and at last past the Brandywine Bridge, over the Shire, and we see villages below as we slow and glide downward toward the ground, lingering for a moment on the great hill of Bag End, and as the camera gently moves in, we hear:

[/i]"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.[/i]

Zooming slower now, we see, walking up the road below, an old man with a tall blue hat, a long cloak and beard, and a staff, and moving past him up the road we then see Bag End proper: flowers growing, the Gaffer cutting the grass. We see movement through a window: the titular Hobbit, going about his morning business. The camera moves through the window, and we follow Bilbo in his dressing gown as he finishes a cup of tea and we follow him through Bag End as he sets about finishing the washing up, and the narration continues.

Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

More sweeping shots of the vast interior of Bag End, with Bilbo ambling in and out of rooms, finally appearing dressed and carrying his pipe and tobacco, and wandering out the front door. He takes a deep breath of the morning air, wanders over to his bench, and takes a seat, gazing off across the Party Field, when a shadow blocks his view. Here the narrative is broken by a shout of "Gandalf!" from Frodo. The face of Martin Freeman quick-fades into that of Ian Holm, broken out of his reverie, sitting on the same bench. He looks up from the Red Book, which he has been reading and reminiscing over as he plans to set off again on a long-awaited adventure, and he says with equal surprise and annoyance, "Yes, Frodo, what is it?" "It's Gandalf! Gandalf is coming up the road! He's here!" "Oh, is he? Better go and greet him then. He's late."

Bilbo shoos Frodo down the path, and when Frodo has gone, Bilbo goes inside, sits at his desk, and pulls something out of his pocket: the Ring, and a letter, which he unfolds and begins to read to himself - the narration we hear in the trailer.

My dear Frodo, you asked me once if I had told you everything there was to know about my adventures. While I can honestly say I have told you the truth, I may not have told you all of it...

Fade back from Ian Holm's face to Martin Freeman's, who looks up to see an old man with a long beard, grey robes, a tall blue hat, and a staff, blocking his view of the scenery. Bilbo takes his pipe out of his mouth and says rather haughtily:

"Good morning!"

To which Gandalf replies:

"What do you mean? Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?"

And so on...

 

[DanielLB]

It's the opening words: "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit." Those words are so iconic, and they're steeped in history and lore, and I will throw my popcorn at the screen if the film begins with anything but those words.

[] QT suggested this very idea a couple of months ago:

Rather than a black screen opening with narration over it like FOTR, I envision The Hobbit opening on the wide expanse of Middle Earth, stretched below like a great canvas, not in map form like we've seen before, but more like a satellite view, like this, a view only seen by the watchful Valar themselves (who have taken a special interest in hobbits as a secret "weapon" against the darkness), with clouds swirling above it, and as we slowly sweep downward across the lands, we see from above some famous landmarks we know from Lord of the Rings: the fields of Pelennor, the mountains of Mordor, the falls of Rauros, up the Great River and past the golden wood of Lothlorien, and we see the Mirrormere below as we swoop upward and along the Misty Mountains - Eagles just visible in the distance at the edge of the frame - flying ever lower over the valley of Rivendell - elven towers just visible amid great waterfalls below - and then turning eastward, over the Bruinen, speeding now over the plains past Weathertop, past the village of Bree, over the foggy Barrow Downs, and at last past the Brandywine Bridge, over the Shire, and we see villages below as we slow and glide downward toward the ground, lingering for a moment on the great hill of Bag End, and as the camera gently moves in, we hear:

While on paper it sounds great, it will end up looking like the opening to Eastenders ... I really, really don't want that [unsure] I agree with everything else though Oin K. I don't want a similar opening to LOTR. I don't want to feel like it's being repeated as that's what happened in LOTR. TH is separate, and deserves it's own unique opening ... close to the book!

 

[The Grey Elf]

Sounds like a great way to begin The Hobbit, Oin K, though I think this technique has been used elsewhere, not meaning Eastenders, which I've never seen. (It also reminds me of one of my favorite Epcot rides, LOL). But there's more to your scene than that and I admire the way you cut together past and present, Frodo, Gandalf, the book, as if the camera would also kind of be zooming into Bilbo's mind and his still very real memories.

 

[DanielLB]

They could start at an actual location (such as the Lonely Mountain, or somewhere else), and zoom around Middle-earth, rather than starting miles above Middle-earth?

 

[artemy]

we heard Martin Freeman speak the iconic first line - I wonder if this is him reading over his account of his journeys, or if he will do a voiceover introduction?

 

[DanielLB]

Since PJ wrote:

One comment that came up from the recent video blog was the Bilbo voice at the end—many of you assumed it was Sir Ian Holm. Whilst Ian will be returning as the older Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, that recording was actually Martin Freeman's voice, taken from a script read through we recorded when the cast first arrived. I have to admit, I wasn't sure who it was when I first heard it, either. Cheers, Peter J

It doesn't give away in what context though.

 

[Oin K]

I'm just desperately hoping it doesn't come after a twenty-minute prologue, that's all. I have a very short checklist of requirements for me to love this film (as opposed to just thoroughly enjoying it), and one of them is that those are the first words we hear, and in Bilbo's voice, even if it ends up being just a segue into a more epic introduction akin to the Last Alliance at the beginning of FOTR.