Would There Ever Be a Possibility...?

[Eönwë]

I'm sure I posted here earlier post deletion/malfunction

Yes, I think the radio series is a good idea.

[Azaelia of Willowbottom]

This sounds like a great idea, and I'd love to be involved in whatever capacity I can be. I'd love to help out!

However, I'm another Downer who doesn't really live within reasonable distance of anyone (that I know of), and a college theater student which equates to very little money or free time during the school year.

I think making a movie as a community would be an awesome experience, but it would be really hard--we're all over the world, so getting everyone involved in the same place would be difficult, what with some of the great distances that separate us, and the wide variety of schedules and living situations.

I think that it might be more practical to go with the radio drama suggestion. It would be far less expensive than trying to get everyone in the same place at the same time, costumed, fed, with a place to stay, and so on. The bonus is that Downers everywhere could participate if they wanted to. It's easy enough to find (or borrow) a microphone to plug into the computer, and upload files to the internet. We wouldn't have to deal with conflicting schedules and long travel distances.

As for where to start? Probably the same place one would start planning a movie. Outlining. Deciding what's in and what's cut, and what path the story ought to take (chronological order or the order in which it was written). After that would come drafting and editing a script, then casting, and then recording, sound effects, editing, and putting it up somewhere in its final complete form.

Edit: Apologies if this isn't particularly coherent. I'm getting over a very bad cold, and my brain isn't quite 100%.

[Eönwë]

Originally Posted by Azaelia of Willowbottom

Deciding what's in and what's cut

If we're actually doing this, can I have one request. Please keep Tom Bombadil this time! I'm sure we can have some fun with that.
edit: anyway, we have to include our namesake, the Barrow Downs.

[MatthewM]

Originally Posted by Eönwë

If we're actually doing this, can I have one request. Please keep Tom Bombadil this time! I'm sure we can have some fun with that.
edit: anyway, we have to include our namesake, the Barrow Downs.

Oh yes - Tom would stay in if we decided to do that part of the story. But I am thinking, would it perhaps be easier to do a seperate Book (ex: Book II) rather than the story as a whole? For fans like us, we would not be "lost" as to what happened prior, and anybody who will be listening to our project would already be familiar with LotR. So it might be easier to work on just one of the Book's.

Azaelia - good outline.

[Macalaure]

I think the great advantage of a project like this is, that we need to abide to less restrictions than a commercial radio adaptation would have to. We can, for example, take as much time as we like to, or afford to worry less about characters that might not seem credible to a non-reader. There is no real reason to cut anything - unless there is something which turns out to simply not fit into the whole.

This is probably a stupid question, but I guess it should better be cleared early on: Could there be any copyright problems for this?

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

Originally Posted by Macalaure

Could there be any copyright problems for this?

I'm sure that you would have to go through the Tolkien Estate or something to get their approval for this... but other than that little detail, I think that this would work out fine!

[Azaelia of Willowbottom]

I'm not sure, but I believe that as long as it's just for personal use and we're not going to sell it or otherwise make money from it, we should be in the clear as far as copyrights go. In other words, if it goes no farther than our little community, I don't see that we'd have a problem.

However, getting the Tolkien Estate's approval is more than just a "little detail", especially if they expect that we buy the rights, which I can't imagine would come cheap.

I dunno. I don't know too much about copyrights, and I could very well be wrong. Perhaps we should ask someone who knows more about this sort of thing.

[MatthewM]

Originally Posted by Macalaure

This is probably a stupid question, but I guess it should better be cleared early on: Could there be any copyright problems for this?

I really don't think it is a big deal. It's not like we are going to sell it. If everybody went around trying to seek the approval of the Tolkien estate for doing anything LotR related not only would the Estate be overly rich but nothing would get done because the Estate is extremely slow in response. Have you ever ran a search under YouTube for LotR videos? I verily doubt that each person who put a song to New Line's movie clips asked for New Line's permission, along with the Estate's permission, along then with the artist's permission for who's song they are using.

I can see an issue if we were going to sell this for money. But we're not.

So, let's talk about this. How would we record the parts for our respective characters seperately? Also, we would need a voice sample from everybody who was auditioning for a spot...we can't just have anybody saying they will do this project and than finding out they can't deliver, or do not fit their part.

[Macalaure]

Well, I was just asking because Copyright has been discussed a lot recently on the Downs and because, after all, in the ideal case, we would be putting an adapted version of the whole LotR available on the Internet. YouTube is a bad example, because much of what's on there isn't actually legal.

Originally Posted by Matthew

So, let's talk about this. How would we record the parts for our respective characters seperately? Also, we would need a voice sample from everybody who was auditioning for a spot...we can't just have anybody saying they will do this project and than finding out they can't deliver, or do not fit their part.

I don't think separate recording would work out well. I think services such as Skype allow to record calls (not sure whether the quality's sufficient). All who play a role needed in a particular scene (plus a "director", maybe) could just call each other at one time to record a scene. With a little bit of scheduling, this might be a way.

The voice samples are a good idea, but who decides who gets to decide over who gets which role?

[Gwathagor]

Originally Posted by MatthewM

Oh yes - Tom would stay in if we decided to do that part of the story. But I am thinking, would it perhaps be easier to do a seperate Book (ex: Book II) rather than the story as a whole? For fans like us, we would not be "lost" as to what happened prior, and anybody who will be listening to our project would already be familiar with LotR. So it might be easier to work on just one of the Book's.

Azaelia - good outline.

Good thought. It would be cool just to do certain parts of the story that we felt needed improvement, or that we particularly liked - such as the Bombadil episode. Could be a good way to start out, and then expand the project later if all went well.

I'd love to help. I am going to school in the Chicago-area and live near Portland, Oregon (during the summer), so I may be a bit removed from other Downers, perhaps. I'm not sure. At any rate, I'll do whatever I can. Some tasks would doubtless work better over long distances, but I can write and act.