November 20, 2003

TTT Extended, We Have Been Heard
Danny

I have not had a chance to watch the extended movie, but I did watch a lot of the special features. It was good to hear how Peter Jackson and company responded to negative fan responses in their development of the film. If you watch the part "From book to script" you will learn that they did initially have Arwen at Helms deep and that she was going to be a vicious warior chick. They specifically mention that they became very aware of the enormously negative response among fans when the rumors came out. It gave me a lot more respect for the writers as I learned how they evolved the Arwen role. I never had any complaints about her role in the films so far, but I appreciate it more now. Who knows, maybe they check tolkien-movies.com. Maybe PJ will read this post 8).

From the first time I saw TTT I was dissapointed with Faramir, but I understood how it worked as a film. I had already posted several posts defending the Faramir move for the movie. So I had forgiven that change pretty quickly. It was nice however to hear the thorough explanation of their reasoning (which was almost exactly what I had imagined it was.) Naturally, they could explain their reasoning much better than I could explain my guess at it though.

The gollum special features were absolutely amazing. I recently started a job working for a 3d studio that creates cg for productions (mostly commercials, but also the occasional item for movies.) Being in the studio and doing work in 3d has made me appreciate how much work goes into it. As I watched the parts on Gollum, I was just blown away. The fact that they redesigned gollum's face a year into working is mind boggling. My respect for Andy Serkis as an actor has really grown, as has my respect for the incredible things that Weta did with Gollum. I think Andy was deserving a nomination for best supporting actor. Who knows, maybe he will get recognition in ROTK.

Ok, lastly in reply to fullscreen vs widescreen, it is widescreen all the way for me. The biggest reason for me has to do with composition. I am an artist and painter. As such you come to understand the importance of composition (though I think it is one of my weaker areas.) If you crop a painting, you may be able to include the critical information still, but you often destroy the composition of the piece. Same goes for movies quite often. A well directed film has a lot of skilful composition in its scenes. Fullscreen destroys that aspect of the film. You can tell when a director story boards his work because they have tons of moments in the film where you can take a still and have an amazingly composed picture. Shyamalan (6th sense, Unbreakable, Signs) is my favorite at this aspect of directing. Anyway, fullscreen allows you to see exactly what the director intends you to see, and preserves the composition that he created. So it helps distinguish ok films from great films. Also, I plan to get an HDtv that is widescreen formatted. HDtv will be the tv standard within the next 10 years if I am not mistaken, and at that time full screen will either be stretched to fit or will leave black bars on the sides (which would be more distracting to me than having them above or below.)