The Hunt for Gollum: A Brief Discussion of the Fan Made Short Film, A Decade Late
This month I’m working on digital video and audio editing, so I’m going to try my best to make this month’s blog posts about film and sound and all that fun stuff.
So to start off: I love short films. I love to see what kinds of stories can be told in under 20 minutes. Some of them are honestly more impactful than feature length films, because some stories just don’t need an hour and a half plus to get to the point. Have you ever seen a movie trailer so perfectly edited to tell you everything you need to know about the movie that you’re left with no desire to find out what happens? I see them all the time, but usually those are movies I would never go to see in a theater anyway.
Not my point. I just watched The Hunt for Gollum (even though it’s 10 years old and probably no one cares anymore) and I wanted to talk about it.
For a fan made film it is impeccably well done, and really tries it’s best to emulate Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I noticed several things but I’ll start with story. The story honestly isn’t very captivating, unless you happen to be a huge nerd and don’t even care because you’d sit through a full length feature film of just the Council of Elrond. No? Just me? Well, it’s basically Aragorn wandering through the woods for 30 minutes doing ranger things, he meets another ranger who doesn’t stick around very long, carries Gollum around in a sack and then fights some orcs. (Secretly I just want the scene where the elves decide it’s a good idea to let Gollum play in the trees and then they can’t get him to come back down, and there’s an orc raid at that inconvenient moment and Gollum escapes. But that’s not so much the hunt for Gollum as it is Gollum acts like a toddler and outwits some elves.)
The cinematography style is very similar to the trilogy, on purpose, although in comparison I did notice the absence of any aerial shots and great huge sweeping pans of characters running across that gorgeous New Zealand landscape.
The other thing I noticed was the choice not to show much or anything of Gollum. Naturally this could be due to budgeting and animation, but I really liked how it was done and it really was true to the trilogy in that way because we never actually are shown Gollum in full until part way through The Two Towers.
The score is completely original, but I didn’t really notice it until it wasn’t there. There are some phenomenal landscape shots for the prologue and a couple other times throughout, although something about the color editing doesn't match the subsequent scenes and it doesn’t feel like a tonal/mood choice. But maybe that has something to do with filming outside in the dark and not having an entire professional lighting crew at their disposal.
I’m still impressed because they did this for fun and put so much effort in, and honestly that level of effort is my goal for this class.
In an attempt to keep this brief as I stated in the title (because I know I could go on for eight more paragraphs), I’m going to end here and share the trailer. The full length film can be found on YouTube.
So to start off: I love short films. I love to see what kinds of stories can be told in under 20 minutes. Some of them are honestly more impactful than feature length films, because some stories just don’t need an hour and a half plus to get to the point. Have you ever seen a movie trailer so perfectly edited to tell you everything you need to know about the movie that you’re left with no desire to find out what happens? I see them all the time, but usually those are movies I would never go to see in a theater anyway.
Not my point. I just watched The Hunt for Gollum (even though it’s 10 years old and probably no one cares anymore) and I wanted to talk about it.
For a fan made film it is impeccably well done, and really tries it’s best to emulate Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I noticed several things but I’ll start with story. The story honestly isn’t very captivating, unless you happen to be a huge nerd and don’t even care because you’d sit through a full length feature film of just the Council of Elrond. No? Just me? Well, it’s basically Aragorn wandering through the woods for 30 minutes doing ranger things, he meets another ranger who doesn’t stick around very long, carries Gollum around in a sack and then fights some orcs. (Secretly I just want the scene where the elves decide it’s a good idea to let Gollum play in the trees and then they can’t get him to come back down, and there’s an orc raid at that inconvenient moment and Gollum escapes. But that’s not so much the hunt for Gollum as it is Gollum acts like a toddler and outwits some elves.)
The cinematography style is very similar to the trilogy, on purpose, although in comparison I did notice the absence of any aerial shots and great huge sweeping pans of characters running across that gorgeous New Zealand landscape.
The other thing I noticed was the choice not to show much or anything of Gollum. Naturally this could be due to budgeting and animation, but I really liked how it was done and it really was true to the trilogy in that way because we never actually are shown Gollum in full until part way through The Two Towers.
The score is completely original, but I didn’t really notice it until it wasn’t there. There are some phenomenal landscape shots for the prologue and a couple other times throughout, although something about the color editing doesn't match the subsequent scenes and it doesn’t feel like a tonal/mood choice. But maybe that has something to do with filming outside in the dark and not having an entire professional lighting crew at their disposal.
I’m still impressed because they did this for fun and put so much effort in, and honestly that level of effort is my goal for this class.
In an attempt to keep this brief as I stated in the title (because I know I could go on for eight more paragraphs), I’m going to end here and share the trailer. The full length film can be found on YouTube.
"It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish." J. R. R. Tolkien
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