script writing for the Hobbit...

well not what I was thinking Petty but I'm sure your hot to someone of the opposite sex... But I have ALWAYS had a thing for female red heads.

I am not sure I have an opposite Sin, and I am having a worrying time imagining what such a person would be like!

everyone has a ying to their yang petty.

ok script has been emailed to my writing partner who will be going over it  for a while and making some changes... She has seen the Hobbit films and read the book and appendices. Her response was not favorable of the film. Other than "entertaining, if you never read the book"... She said the made up plot points that were not in the book "confused" her and made no sense in the story that is told in the book.  There are several other things she said that were negative about the film compared to the narrative of the book.

When I get something back from her I'll probably go through it again and  then I will be sending out  a few copies for people to check out

Can't believe how fast you've been able to write this script, Sin! Very cool that you've finished it and "passed it on" - congratulations, whatever comes out of it, you've actually written a script for a movie, and that's no small feat!

Ringdrotten wrote:Can't believe how fast you've been able to write this script, Sin! Very cool that you've finished it and "passed it on" - congratulations, whatever comes out of it, you've actually written a script for a movie, and that's no small feat!

well I have had nothing but time on my hands being home on disability so I was literally writing 6 and 7 hours a day for much of it. as well as pouring through the allowable source material looking for little nuances in Tolkien's writing that would make the story he told work in a visual medium. I mean I kept a couple ideas from the film like the dwarfs starting with weapons (which really is a common sense thing, they are crafters and blacksmiths of course their gonna have weapons), Thorin's late arrival to Baggend (it does show how serious he is, that all the other dwarfs just immediately stop merry making when he knocks on the door), the dwarfs coming to Bilbo's rescue all at once(time constraint issues. One by one would just take too long).  

I have Bilbo giving Balin the contract back in Baggend that night. I have Gandalf showing up the next morning after Bilbo thinks the whole affair is over giving him a "nudge" out the door. No walking stick, no backpack, no pocket handkerchiefs. he meets the dwarfs just past the Green Dragon inn. Where the contract is presented to Bilbo again there is no signing of it. Gandalf shows up after a little bit, as if out of nowhere. the dwarfs losing most of their supplies and ponies before Trollshaws in a swollen river during a storm, I have Bilbo wearing a cloak and hood too large for him that belongs to Dwalin. He doesn't have his own pony he is riding behind Dori. Bilbo is sent to investigate a campfire in the distance there is no path of destruction he follows.

Gandalf tricks the trolls and my Bilbo is pretty much useless until the spiders. He finds sting in the troll horde on his own, he hides it from everyone and nobody realizes he has sting until the spiders are over. No feasting that is seen but the dwarfs keep chasing what appear to be campfires in the distance and went the round the corner it magically is dark. Finally after a third one the elves detain them similar to the film. No elves killing spiders though, Bilbo actually only kills a few spiders and leads the rest away, and there is a feeling of urgency that the spiders will return while Bilbo is freeing them.  Stone giants are in the distance on both side of the company, rocks are being hurled between them like a game. But since they are in the crossfire they need to find shelter. Goblin town is rather creepy, there is a back door that is guarded, Gollum goes back to his island where we hear his ranting and anger off screen, watching Bilbo get scared about what is to come. Bilbo then follows Gollum out instead of running around aimlessly and finding it by some miracle. the ring is nothing more than a trinket Bilbo finds there is no indication that it is anything other than just a low level magic ring that grants the wearer invisibility. Although we do see minor twinges of something interfering with Bilbo's mental state ever so slightly, just once in a while. Not going on a killing spree with Wargs or baby spiders or any nonsense like that.

Bilbo is smaller than the dwarfs and Dori has to go back down the tree to help him up to the first branch in out of the frying pan. There are wolves, and Wargs who are chasing the dwarfs up the trees, the goblins of the Misty mountain arrive led by Bolg, as a result of the Great Goblins death. Eagles arrive without the moth. We land at the eerie No talking eagles but we see Gandalf in the distance where he appears to be talking to a bigger eagle with more golden feathers around his head. Gandalf later lets Bilbo in on the story of healing the lord of the eagles wing, and why they won't take the dwarfs farther than the carrock.

End of reveled details for now  but it was a project of passion for me anyways. There were days I would get started and then not be able to stop typing. I would be up at 6am and go to bed at 3 in the morning. Next day I would have something stirring in my head get up grab the book by 6 or 7 research some things and get right back into it. I mean It's not completely done yet, once I get it back I'll probably make more changes cause i still get ideas running through my head. So who knows it may take another 6 months till I'm happy with the final result, but once I 'm happy with it I'm gonna let people read it.

I like you version so far, Sin, and it sounds like alot of fun having a project like that. Makes me want to write something myself

Ringdrotten wrote:I like you version so far, Sin, and it sounds like alot of fun having a project like that. Makes me want to write something myself

Thanks, the scene I wrote with Bilbo and Gandalf. Where Gandalf "nudges" Bilbo out the door is really comical Before Bilbo even realizes what happened he's halfway to the Green Dragon. Kind of has an absent minded Abbott and Costello/ Three Stooges feel to it, without being completely slapstick. Hopefully when people read it, that's what they will get from it

sounds good Sin, some good choices there. I do so like the feasting Elves and the lights just popping out though, that's probably one of my favourite bits in the book. Its unusual in that its an obviously magical thing happening also like the White Hart is probably magical, there's not that much actual magical stuff in the book, apart from a Dragon I guess.

Thanks Figg... Like I said it is a real passion project. Once I get started it was hard to stop. The white Hart was a beautiful scene. It was not easy to write either because I wanted it to feel like it was a hallucination without going the whole tripping on mushrooms route that PJ went. I tried to play it as if the dwarfs hadn't slept for days and were delirious with being tired and not tripping on some illegal substance which was very difficult to do.

I think people are going to notice a lot of subtle things that Jackson blew way out of proportion.

Sat down today with an unexpected party and made a slight change...
Kili and Fili have a bit of dialogue in the book but it seemed rather lopsided to me, so I did a bit or rewriting with it... They have the dialogue split between the 2 of them. one will start a sentence and the other finishes it. I know one is older than the other but I decided to sort of make them like twins. (not really, just really close brothers)

It reads really cool IMO. I figure they are young, their brothers and from what I can gather rather close. So I figured why not.  I also added the line from Gandalf about giving Bilbo what he asked for and Bilbo going crazy trying to figure out whether he asked for anything or not...I also changed the dwarfs starting to show up from supper time to tea time and added Bilbo inviting Gandalf to tea. Opening the door to find Dwalin there instead.

Just a couple small changes but I really like them

Did a word count on some of the characters from the unofficial fan transcript of BOFA.

Thorin: 953 words
Bilbo: 879 words
Bard: 703 words
Gandalf: 654 words
Thranduil: 387 words
Alfrid: 365 words
Legolas: 282 words
Tauriel: 181 words

How THE HELL can Bard have nearly as many words as Bilbo! that just sums it up really.

I was genuinely surprised that Bilbo was the runner up. Thought he'd be third at the most.

Here are the tallies from the last two movies.

well I must say my Thorin so far is a wind bag but his word count is not as much as Bilbo's.  My Thorin is kind of a pompous ass, thinking himself above the entire company. Not to say he doesn't have civil conversations with them but there are many times in what i wrote where he has a condescending tone. I did give a few of Thorin's lines to Balin, like Thorin was above Bilbo at one point and Balin was kind of Thorin's second relaying his wishes or intentions to Bilbo. But have edited it back to the way it was in the book for the most part

I want to keep my story Bilbo-centric showing him as the main character and that it is his story and not Thorin's or Gandalf's as Jackson did

After writing something like my Hobbit script I can see so many errors Jackson and his writing team made. Getting caught up in rearranging the story and trying to complicate it. Which is why i stuck to the story Tolkien wrote. While I did include flashbacks of Azog and Dain, Smaug's coming and claiming the mountain, I did beef up Bolg's involvement and Bard's character just a bit. BUT I figured out where to draw the line that still kept them minor characters with major involvement while not rewriting their history,or stories. Bard has no son in my script although I put a scene of him making eyes at a nurse at the BOTFA, hinting at him having a future relationship. (but its so brief its hard to catch) War has a way of bringing people together.

I kept the Azog stuff but have it as a flashback during a nightime scene in the eerie told by Balin, Told as if to kids while sitting around a campfire, those kids being Kili, Fili (since they are the youngest and weren't at that battle), and Bilbo who knew little of dwarven history. plus to beef up why Bolg wants to kill Thorin so badly. Pure revenge 1 for Azog 2 for the Great Goblin.. I wrote some dialogue for Bolg at the BOTFA which went "I should thank you dwarf, for making me great goblin." "But the debt owed to my kin is unforgivable." "You see even Orc blood is thicker than water, and an Orc never forgets" All the while they are fighting sword to sword... (Thorin has a couple rebuttals in there too, but I'm just giving Bolg a moment right now)
At which point I want the camera pulled back showing Thorin going down under Bolg's sword. At which point the camera comes around to Kili and Fili who run in weapons drawn to defend their fallen king and uncle. Bolg's body guards cut them down before they ever reach Bolg, we see a wounded Thorin trying to get to them and Beorns comes ripping through Bolgs body guards to save Thorin... at which point everything fades to black as we are close up on a bloody Thorin's face. Cut to after the battle is over dwarfs are putting wounded orcs and goblins out of their misery on the battle field pulling wounded elves dwarfs and men off the field. The whole of after battle. Comes around to Gandalf arm in a sling....

enough for now Don't want to give away too much till I am ready to

The declining number of words spoken in each film is an interesting trend to note. I'm sure part of it is due to all the exposition in AUJ but the increased action in the latter two films is probably the bigger factor. I wonder how pronounced this same trend was in the LOTR films.

I'm also curious how much of Bilbo's dialogue in AUJ was Ian Holm and how much was Martin Freeman. Mostly Freeman I'm sure, but Holm did narrate the prologue.

BOFA is also considerably shorter than the first two movies.

Eldorion wrote:

I'm also curious how much of Bilbo's dialogue in AUJ was Ian Holm and how much was Martin Freeman. Mostly Freeman I'm sure, but Holm did narrate the prologue.

I just did a word count for Ian Holm's Bilbo in AUJ: 760 words.

I'm just guessing off-hand, but I'm willing to bet money that the largest chunk of Bilbo's dialogue comes from the riddle scene.

Scratch that, I'm just looking over the transcript, and Gollum has more dialogue than Bilbo during the riddle contest.

Man, that's over 30% of Bilbo's dialogue coming in the first 10 minutes or whatever. That's actually a bigger chunk than I expected. Freeman!Bilbo still would have been the second most talkative character in the film in his own right though, with Holm!Bilbo coming in fourth. I don't want to get too reductive here but I find it interesting.

bungobaggins wrote:BOFA is also considerably shorter than the first two movies.

I thought it was a little closer to DOS in length for some reason, but yeah, 17 minutes shorter (theatrical to theatrical comparison). That probably accounts for the discrepancy between those two, though the drop off from AUJ is still big even if you adjust for length. The first film only had eight minutes on DOS.

Eldorion wrote:Man, that's over 30% of Bilbo's dialogue coming in the first 10 minutes or whatever.  That's actually a bigger chunk than I expected.  Freeman!Bilbo still would have been the second most talkative character in the film in his own right though, with Holm!Bilbo coming in fourth.  I don't want to get too reductive here but I find it interesting.

and most of that is about Erebor I think, IMHO something Bilbo has no place narrating anyways. I have always hated that they made the film more about Thorin than Bilbo right from the start by the way Bilbo narrated about Erebor

I never understood why Jackson did what he did. I understand trying to make it epic but I think it was an epic fail. I mean really Bilbo had no place narrating about dwarven history and culture as far as I could see.

All they ended up doing was making a story about a hobbit about a dwarf who wanted to be king. I mean i get Thorin needing to be important in the film but he should have never been more important than Bilbo

I would also guess that the Gandalf Bilbo relationship made up a lot of Bilbos dialogue in AUJ, and that that effect didn't return at the end, where they are again off on their own, probably says something about the speed to which the story was wrapped up.

Bluebottle wrote:I would also guess that the Gandalf Bilbo relationship made up a lot of Bilbos dialogue in AUJ, and that that effect didn't return at the end, where they are again off on their own, probably says something about the speed to which the story was wrapped up.

It did feel like it just ended abruptly didn't it Not sure what they were thinking, probably that the milk had run dry since people had already paid to see a third film.

Yeah. Did you say somewhere that you felt Peter Jackson just lost interest in the movies when they didn't have the popular culture impact he expected? That's very much how the ending felt to me, anyway. Like he lost interest.