LoL. Legless Lego Legolas!

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

With just a week remaining before the official premiere of The Hobbit part 1, news and hints of the movie are flooding the global info-sphere like a horde of Orcs. Now that we know the movie will be stuffed with spectacular battles and elf-on-dwarf love (Kate from Lost playing an elvish warrior princess, WTF?), the latest addition to this awesome hype is Colbert's series of interviews with actors from The Hobbit, which has spanned the whole week: first Gandalf ("You! Shall!... Pass!"), then Bilbo himself ("Here's a Lego Legolas. A leg-less Lego Legolas."), and then monkey Caesar... er, I mean Gollum, etc etc etc. Also, where the Orodruin Hell did Colbert get the Sting from!?

The map at the beginning of this week's Colbert Report is hilarious btw:



"Hipster's Deep"? ROFL!

I loved this bit the most:



And yes, there IS a legless Lego Legolas!



Btw what's all this debate on the 48 frames per second thing? Why do some people seem to hate it so much?

Comments

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

I am disappointing. I was expecting some explanation as to how a Lego Legolas could be very drunk.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

I am disappointing

Why, you haven't done anything disappointing yet. :P

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

"DAMN SPELL CHECK AND YOUR ABILITY TO DESTROY COMIC TIMING!!!"

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

48 frames isn't what we're used to, so it's jarring. Without getting into the technical aspects, it's actually "closer" to "real", but because we're not used to seeing films on the big screen like that, it seems more "fake".

Apparently there were similar complaints when films were moving towards the current 24 fps - people were used to the jerky motion of the 14 fps silent films, and 24 just seemed wrong to them. I'm sure we'll all get used to 48 fps, eventually. Hell, even Edison, back in the day, thought we shouldn't be showing films at anything less than 46 fps.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

I think it has to do with the mental associations we have with that speed of film, as it's used mostly for television, which may make if feel a bit "small screen".

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

Small-screen sounds kinda quaint.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Because of differences between what frame rates are used in film vs .video, we tend to associate a certain "look" with one or the other. Folks watching some of the early released fottage of the Hobbit at 48fps said it seemed to them (at first, at least) like a made-for-TV thing. Our brain associates that "look" with television, and it seems out of place on the big screen, where we're used to 24. Supposedly, after watching for awhile, one gets used to it, but it's supposedly pretty jarring at first.

That said, once you get those big gorgeous landscape shots or massive effects sequences, the higher frame rate really makes it pop.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

I do think if it becomes commonplace to use it, audiences will adapt just as they did for color, 'talkies' and computer animated films.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Me too.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

4K HD uses 120 fps. I have no idea who will be buying those new TVs here in the states, but....cool shit!

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Seriously. I have a friend who's always up to date (well, more up to date than I am, at least) on the latest electronic stuff. The new stuff they've got coming out is pretty awesome.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Have never seen those before. Can you really see a difference after a certain frame rate? Sometimes I think you'd have to have the eyes of an eagle to perceive the difference in quality advancements visually these days.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

No, the resolution is significantly improved in the newer HD formats that are coming down the pike; and that's why the frame rate is upped so high with 4K HDTV, otherwise motion is very uneven.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

So really, tv evolves and movies stay one step behind. Brilliant :)

[telemann.livejournal.com]

No, it's the other way around. TVs are catching up to motion picture film. Film negatives have much more detail than any TV set could output, even with the planed HDTVs. Frame rate has nothing to do with that ;)

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Are any movies shot on film anymore?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Most of them still are, and even if they aren't, those movies are shot at rates much much higher than anything done in broadcast TV production.

[pauraque]

Yep, that's it. This is the same reason that sometimes when I play games I cap the framerate at 24 because it makes it feel like a movie, so it tricks me into seeing it as a more "epic" experience. I'm well aware of how it works, but I enjoy fooling my brain. :)

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

The Hobbit gets the Colbert bump? Or rather, he feeds his enormous LOTR-geekiness. Either way: me happy! :-)

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

If Arthur Dent is Bilbo Baggins, then what does it make Zaphod Beeblebrox?

I'm betting on Gollum.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

The problem with 48fps is that it destroys most depth illusions - greenscreens and such become obvious and it makes interior scenes look like stage play sets.

Also things like seeing Gandalf wearing contact lenses creates distraction rather than enhancement.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

There will be theaters showing the movies in the standard fps rate.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I'm impressed he stretched out to three movies on the one hand, but then again they split the last Harry Potter and Twilight films and people went to go see it. Nothing like bilking the system for money.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Depends if there's enough source material to fill them. Tolkien had a lot more going on in his universe at any given moment in its history than was ever expounded upon in the other two examples.

That's not to say it's guaranteed to be more successful in terms of story, just that at least there's more to draw from and being able to avoid the appearance of padding.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

The producers purchased the film rights to the appendices at the end of LOTR. Tolkien planned a rewrite of The Hobbit to deal with some of the plot holes (LOTR evolved as he wrote it; and it's fascinating to read those preliminary versions and compare it to the finished book). The trilogy of Hobbit movies will fill in the details and background stories.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

I started out this post thinking to say "It will never happen, but I'd love to see a movie treatment of The Children of Hurin, which was my favorite, and one of the most tragic stories in The Sillmarillion"

then I went looking for the Quenya translation of the story's name, as it was referred to in Tolkien's work, and instead discovered that Christopher had finished / fleshed out that particular tragic narrative and it is now available as its own work.

SQUEEEEE!!!!!

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I adore the collection of Father Christmas Letter's Tolkien prepared for his children. I got a Kindle version of that with lots of the pen and ink illustrations Tolkien did (including the North Pole Polar Bear his two sidekick cubs, Paksu and Valkotukka), along with some alphabets and letters from the elves in Santa's workshop.

Such phenomenal creativity.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

But will they ever make a movie out of it?

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Especially interesting are the early editions of The Hobbit, where the ring Bilbo won was not nearly as consequential as it became.

(Tolkien, Author of the Century is a must-read for LOTR decipherers.)

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I remember that. I first read it in a famous Bulgarian cartoon magazine. The whole ring episode occupied no more than half a page.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Colbert's Sting: a gift from Peter Jackson. He's also got a chess set of LOTR characters, made from white and dark chocolate, a gift from Vigo Mortenson (sp?).

That guy is a complete and utter Tolkien geek. Back when he was on the Daily Show, Stewart read a question to Elijah Wood concerning the specific Elvish dialect spoken before the shards, a question so full of detail that it had to be Colbert. Wood confirmed what the question asked, shocking Stewart; he had probably assumed Stephen pulled the question out his ass.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Ha, just looked that up. Stewart looked so much younger back then!

Elijah Wood tells the story about the Fellowship tattoos. I'd forgotten about that. It's part of what made the cast commentary (and director's commentary) on the Extended Editions so great - you really get the sense of a real camraderie they formed during the making of the film.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Linky?

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/181944/june-07-2006/balrog