LOTR - Fellowship of the Ring - Screencap Thingie

A. What were your thoughts as you sat there for the first time watching this image?

B. Do you think its effective in the way it portrays Elves.

C. Did you like the mood, colours, visuals etc?

D. Any other comments.

A- amazingly still quite positive- I was checking out the other elves to see who they had used, and I was reminded very much of Bakshi throughout the prologue.
At this point I was still being fooled by false hope, such as liking the attention paid to design, such as Galadriels elven ring.

B- I was a bit uncertain about the wind blowing in their faces when they held the Three Rings up- that seemed a bit odd to me and I wasn't sure then, and am still not now what it was supposed to be conveying (perhaps a subliminal linking with nature?)

C- I can't say at this early stage when I first watched I was noting those things, which in my book is a good thing- it means they didn't make me crabbit either. I don't think there is anything special about the portrayal of elves here, it pretty much what you expect from decades of Tolkien dominated western art of elves. And as I knew going in who the artists being used where I was not surprised to find the pallette ect tended to reflect those artists choices too. And I thought that worked very well overall in LotR's (I am guessing they just sold their artistic souls and just came up with whatever outlandish shit PJ wanted for TH as asked).

D- I was always a bit wary of the prologue- and over the intervening years this has grown from a wariness to a certainty neither the films nor the book require one of this nature and that whilst it provides a big effects opening it also info dumps in a big way out of context in a fashion which is visually memorable, but not narritvely so.

A. (My 10 year-old-self). "Oh man oh man this is great! Wow who are they? That's what elves look like?? I hope my parents get too caught up in the movie to remember to stop it in time for my bedtime!

B. I do, mostly. The shot promotes the idea of elves as being rather ethereal and luminescent. The one odd thing is that there is one "old" elf in the center background. I do not remember from the lore who this is, but it seems odd that Elrond with his age would look just barely middle-age, while this character is grey and wrinkled. No other elf in the films ever shows age as great as this one does.

The lighting and shallow focus highlight Galadriel, but it is interesting how it actually took me until at least a second viewing to recognize that this was the same elf that shows up later in the same film. 

C. Yes, it is a very pretty shot. As I recall an invisible force seems to blow Galadriel's hair back slightly. This may be wind, but can be interpreted as the "power" of the ring manifesting itself.

D. Thinking back to how the dwarves and men are shown in their shots, I like how in this the elves are more individualistic. The dwarves step up equally to a table, but are mostly indistinguishable. The men stand ranked in terms of power and are all different, one in the forefront.
Although it does bother me a bit that while the dwarves are shown in their halls of stone, the image of the men fades to black (indicating their doom), but the elves are not shown under the sky! This must be because the colour-palate of the prologue did not allow for any blues or greens. And a dark backdrop is more dramatic.


By the by, can we get this moved to LotR discussion? LotR is rather short on active posts, and if it doesn't go there than I don't know what does.

Yep, this is one of the cases where we need an admin, not a mod. Since we are only one picture in it could perhaps restart there? The comments can be done by anyone via copy and paste, Figster would have to press the edit button, then copy and paste.

Yeah when Eldo gets a moment he can easily move the thread to the relevant section. I probably could too if I knew how.

ok its fine by me. I should have put this in the LOTR thread. sorry.

does someone else want to do the next one or shall I? you guys decide if you feel like it. I use this website for screencaps.

http://movie-screencaps.com/category/movie-series/lord-of-the-rings/

I think you should copy and paste the relevant three frames to the correct location and put up a note here explaining where to go. Then worry about the next image.

How do you decide which one to do? Do we have to go in chronological order or can we jump around?

ok made a new thread in the LOTR section but I cant copy and paste other peoples posts.

bungobaggins wrote:How do you decide which one to do? Do we have to go in chronological order or can we jump around?

go in chronological order from the beginning of Fellowship. just choose one you like.

halfwise wrote:Yep, this is one of the cases where we need an admin, not a mod.  Since we are only one picture in it could perhaps restart there?  The comments can be done by anyone via copy and paste, Figster would have to press the edit button, then copy and paste.

Mods can move, split, and lock threads. I went ahead and moved this entire thread from the Creative Corner to the LOTR forum since I agree it fits better there. No copy and paste required. Petty could have done it too if he remembered how.

Oh if mods can do this, that's great! Maybe send them a mod handbook, then you can take some time off.

Mod powers activate!

halfwise wrote:Oh if mods can do this, that's great!  Maybe send them a mod handbook, then you can take some time off.

Yeah, that's probably a good idea. I have considered writing a manual for it recently.

Whoa now lets not be hasty Eldo!!

It is at times you like this you wonder how Petty became a mod in the first place

I know.

anyway thanks Eldo.

can we get back to the game now?

Mrs Figg wrote:

A. What were your thoughts as you sat there for the first time watching this image?

B. Do you think its effective in the way it portrays Elves.

C. Did you like the mood, colours, visuals etc?

D. Any other comments.

A. I was 10 at the time, and I'm pretty sure my main thoughts were 'wow this movie is as cool as all my friends were saying!' and 'Huh, so that's what 'Elves' look like'-at the time, having only had limited exposure to folklore or more modern interpretations I'd be picturing something akin to pixies or fairies for the Elves (I had heard of The Hobbit, but other than that I had no knowledge of Tolkien or Middle Earth until I watched the film)

B. For a short shot, I think it establishes the Elves fairly well, painting them as somewhat mysterious/ethereal with costumes and body language to match, though it dosen't tell the audience their names or inform us why we should care about them, but that would be too much info-dumping at this point in the film, and it helps keep the Elves mysterious for the audience. As Forest pointed out, it's a little odd that (from memory) the Elves are described as immortal by the voiceover, yet we clear see one of the Elvish ringbearers (Cirdan) is clearly quite aged, although this is canonically correct (Cirdan is the oldest known Elf in Middle Earth by the third age), he is described as

As they came to the gates Círdan the Shipwright came forth to greet them. Very tall he was, and his beard was long, and he was grey and old, save that his eyes were keen as stars; and he looked at them and bowed, and said 'All is now ready.'"

in the Grey Havens chapter in the book, it's a fun easter egg for fans, though it might confuse casual viewers, though in either case they would have to be pretty nit-picky or attentive to notice on their first viewing.

C. Linking in with my point above, yes I do like the colours in this scene, the lighting and colour tone of the shot has a subdued warmth to it establishing the Elves at being the 'higher' race of the three, in contrast to the kings of Dwarves and Men shots which followed-from memory, in both cases the camera in these scenes dosen't linger, and the lighting is much darker, foreshadowing the fall of Man to the Darkness.


D. interesting to note that Gil-galad (the male Elf on the left) and Cirdan (the elderly Elf on the right) IIRC both only appear in another single shot later in the trilogy. Gil-galad appears at the battle of Dagorlad (there's a quick shot of him stabbing an orc with his spear), though they did film additional footage of him in the battle, including his death at the hands of Sauron (which probably explains that stupid looking shot where Sauron reaches out with his hands-from memory in the book Gil-galad is killed by Sauron strangling him with the bare heat of his body), whilst you can see Cirdan standing in the background at the dock during the Grey Havens scenes in LOTR. Nice easter egg for fans, though it's odd they would go to the bother of keeping the original Ringbearers and not explain or use the characters again.

It may just be me, but it also looks like the actor playing Gil-galad is more interested in inspecting his fingernails rather than his ring

malickfan wrote:It is at times you like this you wonder how Petty became a mod in the first place

TBH I sometimes wonder how much of his insistence at not knowing how to do mod stuff is an affectation since I know he can be very responsible and hard-working, even if he likes to pretend otherwise.

Mrs Figg wrote:anyway thanks Eldo.

can we get back to the game now?

Imma get right on it with my response.

A. What were your thoughts as you sat there for the first time watching this image?

To be honest, I don't remember, as I was really young the first time I saw FOTR. I imagine I was mainly paying attention to Galadriel the first time, though on later rewatches as I was looking at more and more levels of detail I was trying to figure out who in the back was whom. My best guess is that they're meant to be Gil-galad and Cirdan, though there was no single Ring-giving like this in the books' backstory.

B. Do you think its effective in the way it portrays Elves.

I think the films push the positive aspects of Elves a little too hard sometimes, but here it's done pretty well I'd say.

C. Did you like the mood, colours, visuals etc?

Yeah, I think the prologue is done really well. The "history became legend..." thing might be lifted from The Wheel of Time as we were recently discussing in another thread, but it's a very evocative and effective way to begin the trilogy. I know they experimented with having a lot of different characters do the opening narration but I think Galadriel was a good choice. She's one of the most knowledgeable characters about those events and Blanchett gives her a certain gravitas that I find lacking in Weaving's "Agent Elrond" a lot of the time.

D. Any other comments.

Thanks for getting this thread off the ground, Figgy!

Eldorion wrote:I know they experimented with having a lot of different characters do the opening narration but I think Galadriel was a good choice... 

I think some of Galadriel's dialogue was pinched from Treebeard in the book...imagine if he had done the opening narration...his slow, slighty befuddled and heavy voice wouldn't have been quite as dramatic...

Hard to believe Cate Blanchett was only about 30 when they filmed LOTR, she portrays Galadriel's age very well i.m.o.

And I agree, thanks very much Figgy for starting this thread

Wait, you don't think the sleepwalking voice was a trifle overdone? Her other mannerisms were more on point, IMHO.

I don't have a clear enough memory to defend each and every line reading, but generally speaking I was okay with the whole "otherworldly" voice they gave her Galadriel. Not the "radioactive" version, though.

I would have preffered Christopher Lee to have done the opening narration ifit has to have a prologue- cant get a better voice for a voice over and it makes character sense as Saruman's area of expertise is the History of the Ring.

I think Lee would have worked really well too. Good point, Petty.