Wings Over Arda Archives

After some grueling work, the film finally has a release date. There will be a premiere event at Siena College on February 26th, 2011, at 7PM. Screened before the film will be a short movie by my brother.

Without further ado, here’s the new, longer trailer, which includes some story bits. Don’t mind the parts that look a tad garbled; it’s what happens when you try to smush a widescreen HD film into the tiny Youtube box. Enjoy.

All music is original:

“Alamenë” – Jennifer Wicks

“Riverflow” – Dizzi Dulcimer

“Battle for the Silmaril” – Philip Hartshorn

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Stephanie Tribu-Cromme as Idril.

Today, we had our first “guinea pig” viewing of the film. Since my brother and I have been cooped up in the basement – er, editing studio – working on the film, we’ve begun to lose all sense of objectivity. A mutual friend not versed in the works of Tolkien nor the specifics of our film project took a look at the mostly-edited second cut of the film, which contains no music, and which still needs audio work, special effects and minor cutting.

Since the last entry, we’ve been gathering the final pieces of the puzzle and editing our second cut, which far surpasses the first in terms of coherence, sound and pacing. Our biggest struggles now involve audio, as most of the film was shot outdoors (wind! waterfalls! kids shouting!) and some of the already-difficult dialogue is hard to hear. In addition to editing, we’ve been working on the main musical themes of the film, and we’ve ordered the DVD packaging and sleeves. I also edited together a gag reel and a second behind-the-scenes featurette.

The DVD sleeve.

In writing the film, I made an early decision not to dumb down the dialogue. The characters speak as they would in their world. The details of the conflict and the goals of each character, however, are explicitly defined at the outset of the story and kept on top of the film’s list of priorities. Going into today’s viewing, I wanted to make sure the level of audience confusion was at a bare minimum, though part of the idea is that you’re thrown into the midst of a conflict. We start out playing catch-up with the characters, and an inherent sense of urgency remains throughout. Even when the characters attempt to slow down, the story does not allow them to.

The viewing was, I think, a success. Our subject enjoyed the film and was not confused about the conflict. “The locations were phenomenal,” he said upon my asking his favorite part of the film as a whole, “The costumes were amazing, and it was obvious a lot of time was put into everything. It didn’t look like something you just whipped up. It looked like a professional film.” He told me he had a hard time keeping up with character names, but if that was his biggest complaint, I’m happy. My brother mentioned not remembering anyone’s name the first time he saw The Lord of the Rings (having not read the books previously). Tolkien’s properly-named people and locations lend themselves more to text, but as long as you remember who they are in the story, we’ve succeeded.

—Richard Hartshorn

“Wings Over Arda” Facebook fan page

Tolkien Gateway article

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The travels of Tuor and Voronwë will soon be accompanied by appropriate music

Things have quieted down in the production process, but only in the figurative sense. Our main focus right now is the film’s score, which is being worked on by many talented folks. Oh, and I’m working on it, too.

The film includes many scenes of conversation, some poetics, and long crawls of travelogue, all of which flow together into (hopefully) a sort of symphony of visuals where you never see the same set twice. My brother and I came up with a goal on the audio side of this cinematic multiverse: about 90% of the movie’s soundtrack should sound like one varying piece of music. Anna Pauline Kenzie, our resident opera singer who also acts in the film, came up with an excellent song she’s been recording over the course of a month (despite completely losing her voice for the better part of two weeks), and our costume expert, Jen Wicks, wrote a song in Quenya (a form of High Elvish created by Tolkien) and recorded a few demos with her own equipment. As of now, these two pieces act as our leitmotifs for the film’s score.

Listen to Jen’s song, “Alamenë,” below.

Alamenë

Andrew, Kate Chappell and myself in August 2010

My cousin, Andrew Busone, a multi-talented musician best known for playing in New York City punk band Tied For Last, is also skilled on the keyboard, and will be putting together a few tracks for the film’s non-vocal score. Laura McCoy, a fellow VCFA graduate, will be providing the flute tracks. Vermont’s own Red Heart the Ticker also agreed to contribute a nice ambient traveling song.

While editing the rough cut, Philip would sometimes put on music from other artists to help us get a feel for what sort of sound we wanted in the background of a certain scene. Quite often, I’d say, “Just turn off the music; you can’t hear the dialogue,” but many times we struck gold with this technique. A certain scene involves a duo of travelers making their way across a narrow bridge that spans a swamp, with an unknown figure awaiting them on the other side. We need apprehension, suspense, and music you’d imagine playing if a swamp had its own soundtrack.

The challenge of creating the film’s tunes is a journey which parallels, in some ways, the journey of creating the film itself. It doesn’t involve as much standing out in the cold, driving fifty miles or sustaining open wounds, but sometimes I wonder how close we’ll come.

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A trial poster by Ginger Anne London, featuring the WOA logo by Philip Hartshorn

Sometimes you see a big-budget Hollywood film and you notice something in the background that shouldn’t be there, or someone’s hand is in a different spot after a lightning-fast cut, or all of a sudden Steven Baldwin is wearing a different shirt. Y’know, the gargantuan flubs that don’t take anything away from the story but become brief distractions. I’m proud to say that after several eight, ten and thirteen-hour days of nearly nonstop editing, Wings Over Arda: The First Age does not have… many of those.

The rough cut of the film is finished. Clocking in at 63 minutes (not counting the closing credits), it’s a massive file which will be exported in HD (1080 P) for Blu-Ray discs, as well as standard definition for DVDs. Basement-bound for a week, my brother and I sifted through the various hours of footage, culling the most powerful takes from the ocean of decent, mediocre, and just plain bad. I applied my final script revision during the last two hours of edits, and we had to employ some serious editing magic to get certain scenes to look the way we desired. I ended up cutting one full scene I didn’t need, but other than that, every bit of work we put into the shooting period shows up in some way, shape or form in the film. Next, the film will go into fine-tuned edits, further audio work, and special effects, while others compose/prepare/donate the musical score.

Here’s a little taste of what other members of the cast and crew were up to, besides waiting patiently, whilst Philip and I sat in the basement with our muscles atrophying.

Ginger Anne London, who plays Glorfindel in the film, is proficient in Graphic Design and put together the little gem seen above, featuring the characters of Dior (Philip Hartshorn), Caranthir (Samuel Aguirre) and Voronwë (Jennifer Wicks). I like to call it “People With Hoods.”

Jen with the “Arda Buddies.”

Jen, our costume expert and one of the film’s leads, used the remainder of our costume materials to create the “Arda Buddies” (or “Arda Pals,” I’m not sure which I like better), plush dolls modeled after Jen and myself. Yes, there is a plush doll of me, and Wings Over Arda officially has, to use the parlance of our times, “swag.” I was rather surprised to wake up and see the below photo after naively thinking Jen was joking about making these.

Anna Pauline Kenzie

Music is being done by several talented folks. We’ve received musical contributions from the likes of Andrew Busone (my cousin, guitarist/singer/pianist/drummer extraordinaire); VCFA’s own Red Heart the Ticker; and even a few from musicians who saw our project’s fan page and expressed interest. The main theme/leitmotif of the film is currently being composed by the amazing Anna Pauline Kenzie, an operatic singer and stage actress who also appears in the film as Elwing. Additional tunes are being put together by my brother Philip, who plays the piano and excels at the Finale music program.

Everyone has been pretty well occupied over the past week, and in the spirit of the time of year, given a certain writer/director plenty to be thankful for.

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The following is the first teaser trailer for Wings Over Arda: The First Age, put together from the raw HD footage. Our aim was to focus on locations and faces without giving too much (well, anything, really) away. We started editing the film itself last night, and I think the result is going to be something very special.

Here’s a closer look at the film’s current logo, created by my brother, Philip.

The image includes, from left to right, Voronwë (Jennifer Wicks), Tuor (myself, looking a bit more devil may care than usual), Dior (Philip Hartshorn), Celegorm (Juan Carlos Tapia), Caranthir (Samuel Aguirre), and Curufin (Jonathan Duncan).

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Philip Hartshorn as Dior; Juan Carlos Tapia as Celegorm

A lot goes into writing a fight scene – sometimes. Our challenges for the fight scene in this film came in many forms, the first of which was the source material’s ambiguity concerning the situation surrounding it. The following is Tolkien’s text in The Silmarillion concerning the final outcome of the Sacking of Doriath.

“…Celegorm stirred up his brothers to prepare an assault upon Doriath. They came at unawares in the middle of winter, and fought with Dior in the Thousand Caves; and so befell the second slaying of Elf by Elf. There fell Celegorm by Dior’s hand, and there fell Curufin, and dark Caranthir; but Dior was slain also, and Nimloth his wife, and the cruel servants of Celegorm seized Dior’s young sons and left them in the forest to starve…” -Tolkien, 242

This book in particular is written in a similar fashion (stylistically) to the Norse Myths (Kevin Crossley Holland’s translations come to mind). The story of Dior is expanded in The Book of Lost Tales 2, but this draft was very clearly “un-canonized” by Tolkien before his revisions of the former book, so the above is all we had to work with. I interpreted the scene into the screenplay as a confrontation between Dior and the three brothers as Dior is attempting to get his family (namely his daughter) out of the burning city.

The text from my first draft of the script concerning this scene was equally vague. I scrawled out something about Dior killing Curufin and Caranthir, then dueling Celegorm. I knew this wasn’t exactly how I wanted it, but I was afraid to go further, for the reasons of A) I knew I was going to let my brother choreograph the movements, and B) How was all of this going to happen? Where is Nimloth, and how can I incorporate what happens to her?

I decided to write the death of Nimloth as a separate scene, which gave attention to the characters involved and built up the tension and relationships – both sympathetic and antagonistic- of surviving characters before the end. This worked very well in terms of sets, locations and the focus of the actors.

Take a look at this video, which concerns my brother(our fight choreographer)’s enthusiastic efforts to materialize this scene.

Production Report: The First Stages of Fight Choreography

Putting this thing together was a tall order. The above video was filmed in the later parts of summer when we were brainstorming just how the hell we were going to pull off any of this. As our final weekend of shooting ended this past Sunday, the fight has been done and awaits the cutting room in a currently-crowded lobby. Here are a few sneak peek photos (I’m keeping the fight relatively under wraps) of what came out of the final product. Please note that these photos are captured from the raw footage of the film: nothing has been added or edited (yes, the sparks are real).

What we’ve got is a high-risk, quick-paced, colorful, 360-degree spectacle involving real swords, acrobatics, drama, and gorgeous mountains below. At least, that’s what we’ll have after a few good days at the editing desk.