Note: These are my notes from the conference. Will contain poor spelling etc. Also my Elder Days knowledge is a little rough.
Greetings and Opening Remarks – Corey Olsen
- 3 types of attendees. Onsite, remote and recorded. So must be disciplined with microphone usage
- Use Microphones. Don’t forget they are always on.
- Acknowledgement of country by Ilana
- Around 70 attendees, including around 27 in person
- If you are remote then please interact
Nothing is Evil in the Beginning – Panel Discussion with Corey Olen, Ilana Mushkin, Phil Menzines
- This is a fairly central part of the legenderium.
- See the Silm Film podcast. Who to do everything
- Isn’t this just fan fiction?
- Kinda of, but Tolkien sort of did the same thing. Eg addressing text from Beowulf via Hama in the LOTR
- Sauron is kind of the protagonist
- s1 – Valar
- s2 – awakening of the Elves , arrival in Valinor
- s3 – Fenor’s speech, kinslaying, rising of the Sun
- s4 – Rescue of Midros
- s5 – Arrival of Men
- s6 – Beren , Sauron stiring up trouble in pre-Bree
- Music being composed for it.
- Castings including notifying actors they are cast
- Why did Melkcor go bad?
- Tolkien doesn’t really duplicate
- Jilted lover an drawn towards the Simirils
- Tried to duplicate with a bit of subtlety
- Love something and desire to possess it is usually seen as bad
- What Trajectory should we give to Melkor to show his journey
- Going off on your own is often seen as a sign of going bad in Tolkien. Morgoth ticked that box too
- Needs some more backstory than what we see in the book. Can’t make him evil right away, it must evolve
- Halls of Mandos not very visual either.
- Midpoint of season 1 is the destruction of the lamps. Melkor not being given enough credit for their creation
- Story has to be parallel to what the music duplicates
- Creating lamps and wating credit = Has own themes of the music and wants to manage them
- Backstory of the Balrogs. Started with Glorious Angelic Wings. Melkor gets them to destroy the lamps and their wings get burt off. Now they only have shadow wings
- “The Mythic Story of How Balrogs lost their Wings” is a highlight of Season 1
- Melkor’s relationship with Sauron
- Later we will echo Melkor’s fall with those the fall of other characters
- What he tells himself vs what he tells other people.
- Melkor Actor is Michael Fassbender. Has to be Hot
- Mairon/Sauron is Simon Woods ( red hair is important)
- Why did Mairon/Sauron go bad?
- A Keen Student
- When things get to a crisis in late Season 1 when wanted Manwai and Melkor’s split to feel big
- Now Mairon has to cross a boundry to talk to Malkor, he has to really choose sides
- Melkor understands and recruits him. Aula doesn’t see the problem
- Early version when Ussay(s) goes over
- Music by Phil Menzies
- Themes for a “Fall”
- Need themes for characters an also for things that would happen multiple times in the story. Used a little in the Oath of Feanor
- Common in Tolkien: Someone thinks they are doing something that is good, but in reality is doing the opposite and are doing evil
- Melkor Theme. Various versions as his character progresses
- Corey says Phil’s music elevated Simfilm up a level and made it a bigger project
- Mairon/Sauron theme is used for the Exploring the Rings podcast theme. Variation of Howard Shore’s Ring theme
- Long time before the Valar work out the war needs to happen
- “The War to Begin all Wars” episode title
- Working through “how would we duplicate this” pushes us to answer a lot of the questions about what Tolkien sort of meant by things
- “It is challenging casting mortal characters for a 20 year show”
- Question. The show is a modern way of telling a story vs tolkien told the story in an old fashion way
- There are a whole bunch of expectation on how modern miniseries work. Have been tempted to resist these expectations
- Book of lost tales difference is even more. It is not something written by someone just like you
- Tried to stay true to the essence of the story (although borrowed other versions of some parts that Tolkien wrote).
- You couldn’t make a TV show is exactly the same as it’s is written. But making it work is part of the fun
- Question: Is Melkors goal to create things fundimantally wrong?
- The impulse to create is not evil in itself
- Feanor is a good example (well at the start anyway)
- Vardar’s rejection of Malkor. Duplicate as not liking his character (narcasis, bad vibes) not rejected due to fortelling
- Question: Is redemption a thing?
- Yes, some examples. Eg Boromir and Gandalf has hope for Saruman (he was in the first draft of LOTR). Ossay, Galadriel in some versions
- Question: Character’s motivations fore they became evil. Is “Wants to make things easier, impatience” a thing. Other examples might be Gollum
- Irony of that sort corruption. The thing they want isn’t a bad thing usually. But to get past obstacles in the say they do bad things and then fail to get their goal anyway.
- Sharkey’s rule over the Shire has little order or even sold “rule”
- Person who wants to be lord of light become lord of darkness
- Question: Interaction between Gandalf’s ring Naria and the One ring
- Going to be hard to do.
- Elrond gets very defense that Sauron never touched them. But doesn’t mean they were a good idea
- 12 season to get to the War of Wrath
- One 3rd age problem to avoid. No palanteri
- Question: Lots of feedback about Rings of Power. Has anthing in the rings of power inspired you vs those that you havn’t liked.
- Obviously they stole from us. eg PTSD Galadriel
- Must have Blood Splashed on her due the kinslaying
- Various plans for Galadried in the future. He veres Saron but “No Rafts”
- Can understand time compress and chronolgy shifting. Especially short-lived humans
Tengwar Calligraphy by Jenni Aldred
- Much of LOTR writings are just english written in a different writing form. Transliterated not translated
- Tengwar are based on phonetics doesn’t fit 100% with English. Can go either with pronunciation or actual spelling when you write them
- Advantages and Disadvantages of each.
- Workshop will use Orthographic or spelling mode
- Table for characters
- Lots of detail here that is too much to type. Explaining the tables of characters
- Sindarin mode, Quenya mode or full mode. Exactly where Vowels are put
- Sindarin mode works best for English
- Examples to translate
- “When you start being a tolkien expert, you get people emailing you for advice about their tattoos”
- List of useful Tengwar resources
- www.tecendil.com is a free online tool
Nature Relations of the Legendarium with Muhammed Alpaslan Tandirci
- This area Heavily analysied in this past by other researchers
- Wrote Masters Thesis (in Turkish) on this
- Pre-history:
- Divine intervention, Geological Transformation, Ecology of War
- Melkor makes war on Nature as well as beings
- Second Age
- Deforestation and Ecology of Imperialism
- Deforestation of Numenor reduced it’s power
- The 3rd Age
- Price of Enrichment and crafts – Dwarfs. Punished for disrupting the balance
- The Great Plague and The Long Winter – Broke the power
- Changes in Forests, Uncanny in the Waters
- Both places are now associated with evil and Danger
- In previous ages they were associated with Good
- Conclusion
- As the ages have progressed the impact on Nature has decreased
- The laws of middle earth are less magical and more mortal as ages progress
- Question – How would it work in the 4th age
- A: Should improve due to Aragorn’s good policies. But things are less magical and getting close to our current world
- Question: How are spiders represent
- Answer: Spiders and wolves are seen as always
- Question: How does forests being maintained vs natural affect things?
- Answer: In most cases felling of trees does result in replanting.
- Question: How popular is Tolkien in Turkey
- Answer: Disappointed since the books nowhere near as popular as Harry Potter. Middle Earth seen as boring in comparison. People into history often like it. A very Niche interest.
- Author is in Birmingham but hasn’t found as much Tolkien-related stuff as he had expect.
