I love to read stories of people who take their talents, whatever they may be, and do something extraordinary with them but it’s that much more exciting when that something happens to be in a forum I love.
Last year I posted some information on what appeared to be the first fan film based on the LotR universe. Born of Hope looked good and sounded interesting but I must admit it fell off the radar pretty quickly and I never bothered to follow up to see if it had ever seen a release (if you’re interested, the film will be available online in the fall. Details at the official website.) Now comes word of another fan film and this one looks much darker and much glossier.
A fictional story adapted from Tolkien’s work, The Hunt for Gollum “follows the Heir of Isildur; the “greatest huntsman and traveller in Middle Earth” as he sets out to find the creature Gollum. The creature must be found to discover the truth about the Ring, and to protect the future Ringbearer.” It sounds interesting enough but looks even better. Seriously, these guys are, in my opinion, right up there with Star Wreck. Heck, it looks better than some of the made for Syfy movies. Move over Alien Apocalypse! And after seeing the trailer, I can’t wait to download my very own copy.
The Hunt for Gollum premiered at Sci-Fi London yesterday and makes its debut online, for free, on Sunday, May 3rd (you know what I’ll be doing first thing in the morning). There’s a load of great material on the film’s website (stills, wallpapers, the score) which is well worth checking out.
To keep you at bay until Sunday, check out the trailer which is tucked under the seat!
Big kudos to KC Dyer for bringing this to my attention!
It’s 40 minutes long and obviously trying to fit into the Peter Jackson vision of Middle Earth with similar visual language and whatnot.
Looks great for $6000 (3000 pound). I’ll certainly be watching when it preimeres this weekend.
Just finished this and HOLY SHIT. It’s awesome.
There’s a whole lot of showcasing of effects (especially in the first 10 minutes) but they look so spectacular it’s hard not to be taken in. It’s a great little story that fits nicely as a LotR pre-quel; one that Peter Jackson could be proud of.
The costumes, locales, acting and heck, even the music is above and beyond what I could have expected. Serious WELL WORTH A LOOK.
Haven’t got to it yet, but that is good to hear!
Well production values were top notch, and they found a clever way to avoid having to render Gollum for much of the thing, but it is very clearly a ‘fan film’ which doesn’t really have any ambition on saying anything new or interesting, just slavishly re-creating (fetishising) what they love about the films and filling in a ‘narrative’ hole.
When you think about it, this is not too unlike what George Lucas was doing with the prequels.
Still the acting was pretty solid, the visuals were very very good. The Hunt For Gollum passed the time, but wasn’t revelatory. I imagine that if Weta needed a few extra helping hands, the folks behind this would be pretty qualified at this point.
Agreed that the story isn’t revolutionary but I didn’t expect it to be. The scope is pretty limited but I thoroughly enjoyed it as a tie in to LotR. I hope they sell a nice quality DVD. Would love to add this to my collection. Trying watching the HD version but it was choppy and was barely watchable on my TV.
I watched the HD version, which had all sorts of compression artifacts. But it was a big improvement over the low res version. Quite watchable on the web nevertheless. I guess for LotR completists (and many casual fans of the series) yea, a Blu or even DVD would likely sit nicely near their big LotR box-set.
As for me, it is the top shelf of production quality of a fan film, but really isn’t anything to get hot and bothered about.