Oct 102010
 

As evidenced by my last post, my free time and brain-space has been heavily occupied by a writing/film project based on a few early works/drafts of J.R.R. Tolkien, including material from Unfinished Tales and The Shaping of Middle-Earth.  The project is a collaboration between myself, my brother (visual artist, filmmaker, action choreographer and athlete), and two close friends: Jennifer Wicks (costume designer and actress), and Jack Durnin (local filmmaker/cameraman).  While adapting the script, storyboarding, and visualizing the process as a whole (including the inevitable “liberties” I would have to take), I tried to keep this quote from Tolkien himself in mind:

[T]he cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama.

In short, Tolkien wanted people to adapt his work into other media, including films.  Consider the following quote, also from Tolkien, after viewing the original animated films based upon The Lord of the Rings.

I would ask them to make an effort of imagination sufficient to understand the irritation (and on occasion the resentment) of an author, who finds, increasingly as he proceeds, his work treated as it would seem carelessly in general, in places recklessly, and with no evident signs of any appreciation of what it is all about.

What stuck with me while working on my adaptation was the last part: “appreciation of what it is all about.”  As a longtime reader, I think I’ve got a good idea, but as previously mentioned, liberties must be taken.  Where, then, do I take them?  I am working on merging two stories, which take place around the same time period in the fictional mythology, into a single film.  The myths, which in The Silmarillion read similarly to the Greek Mythos or the Norse Myths, continue onward when the specific sections end.  Certain characters were around thousands of years earlier; some live all the way into the latest histories of the mythology.  As a rule with a film, however, the story must be self-contained.  This film’s budget is out-of-pocket; I’m not planning a Trilogy.  I took into consideration which parts of the mythology are important to these specific stories and this particular point in the fiction’s history, as well as, perhaps more importantly, what would be coherent to a film audience who has never touched these books.  Simple example: three precious stones.  Only one of them matters to this story, and only to half the characters, but the entire story is happening because these stones exist.  How much attention should be given to the stone, and how do I tersely explain where the other two are without going into a campfire storytelling session?

I figured it out through rigorous script revision, but listening to the dialogue being spoken on set also helped.  I am usually a person who needs to have every nook of a creative project in order before proceeding, especially when it involves people other than myself, but this time I had to let that go (appropriate for a story that is, if we must tack a theme to it, about letting go) and resolve to revise it as I go along.  That process is working out well.  We’ve had two days of shooting over two weekends, and I’m revising the script after each shoot, on some occasions even editing dialogue while on set – this is different from allowing “improv;” the dialogue is still written, agreed upon and followed.  The only way I can describe it is “adventures in dialogue.”

Linked below is a little 10-minute feature we put together after our first day of shooting.  Within are interviews with me, Phil and Jen; comments from other cast members in the film; some of our ideas about the project at the onset; and of course, some general silliness.  Take note that this footage was shot with a “B” camera in Hi-8; none of the shots, audio or HD footage from the final product is in the video, but you’ll get to see some of the costumes in low quality.

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Sep 252010
 

Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, my former student Richard Hartshorn and his brother Philip set out on an amazing adventure. They made a feature-length motion picture from scratch with nothing but their own inventiveness, persistence, and money (not to mention a tight group of intensely creative friends). Lots of people talk the talk, but very few ever actually do the work. Through the production Richard kept Numéro Cinq up to date on their progress with his film diary. This is the first in a series of ten diary entries describing the filmmaking process from conception to final cut. Each entry ends with a link at the bottom to bring you back to the table of contents. There are photos and videos, training videos, trailers and posters.

Rich is an actor, dramatist, game blogger, screenwriter and teacher. His diary gives NC readers a chance to see inside another art form, an art that is related to writing but slightly different. Nevertheless the process of imagining and assembling scenes, adapting a book to screen, directing actors, editing and so on are all fascinating in themselves and full of parallels in the world of pure writing. Besides that, I am all for people making art, whatever it is, rather than sitting on their butts in the living room. The sheer chutzpah involved in just going out and making your own damn movie is amazing and should be applauded. The world of art is an outlaw world, you can do anything you want.

What’s most exciting is that this isn’t some big budget extravaganza, no Hollywood packaging deal; this is real people who haven’t waited for the money gods to touch them or for their degrees from USC film school, people just following their passion and making art.

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I recently attempted to adapt some of the earlier works of J.R.R. Tolkien into screenplay form.  This is something I’ve wanted to do for years, and the film project that has resulted from this adaptation has been a blast to work on so far.  The challenges in the first stage of adaptation (the bare-bones screenplay) included, among other things, the following: 1) This text is beloved by many people (including myself) – How do I keep it true to the source material while translating it to “movie” form?; 2) These stories have many different versions, as they are from work considered “unfinished,” so I am essentially working from second and third drafts; 3) This isn’t modern run-of-the-mill fantasy; it’s the work of a Professor of Linguistics at Oxford who gave a fictional “history” to his invented languages by writing a mythology (which came in the form of The Silmarillion, The Book(s) of Lost Tales, Unfinished Tales, The Children of Hurin, The Lays of Beleriand and others).  Many of the early drafts are written purely in Old/Middle English.  How do I maintain that quality while making it my own work (not to mention keeping it coherent for someone who doesn’t know/care much about the text itself, since this will eventually be a piece of visual media)?

I.  The Opening – The story takes place at the end of Tolkien’s “First Age,” i.e. tens of thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit.  I’m working from material from three physical books, one of which (The Silmarillion) is an overview written in a style similar to the Norse Myths.  The second, Unfinished Tales (namely the story “Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin”) is written in a close third-person narrative.  The third, “The Fall of Gondolin,” from The Book of Lost Tales 2, is very much a draft, originally hand-written and posthumously published by Tolkien’s son, Christopher (and also packed with footnotes by the latter).  As such, words are smudged and sometimes illegible and only left to speculation:  Did this character originally die here?  Was this guy supposed to have a different name?  Which version do we think Tolkien would have revised/canonized had he lived to publish this work himself?  Speculation, in a way, for me, is part of the beauty of this thing – rather than wondering how someone would have done something and completely limiting myself, I’m choosing what seems the most powerful.  I’m also working from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, in which the author discusses with friends and readers elements of his work that beg explanation (a very interesting one which I’ll come back to later: did the “Elves” have pointed ears?  The logical conclusion is “no,” as Tolkien used commonly known terms from European fairytales – Elf, Gnome, Troll, Ogre, Goblin – to describe his original creations, and later expressed deep regret for doing so, as using these words inevitably places inherent assumptions in a reader’s head).

So, the opening.  Essentially, I’m saying “Dear viewer; let’s catch you up on the last thousand or so years.”  There are a million interesting things to talk about, but I need to keep it limited to what’s important to this film alone.  People who have read it already know and appreciate the mythology, and people who haven’t won’t care (and if they do, they’ll go read it).  My brother’s reaction to my wordy first draft, which opened with the entirety of the Doom of Mandos, was something along the lines of “Dude, I know the stories, and I don’t even get this.”  The second draft toned this down – I used relevant lines from the Dooms for ambiance, while writing my own little “prologue” which featured a voiced-over character in the film describing a few events that directly led up to what’s happening in our immediate tale.  It seems simple enough, but it was surprisingly difficult to add something that wasn’t there (even though it kind of was…just not in my words).

Case in point, writing a prologue of an adapted work that many consider “thick” is something that takes a bit of thought and many breaks to go outside and breathe clean air.

—By Rich Hartshorn

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