Would There Ever Be a Possibility...?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by A Little Green

Well, that is done now. We did a discussion of Shagrat and Gorbag and I also did a bit of golluming...

Aah, I also thought about Gorbags when I was choosing what to do, but then I left the idea as I presumed we won't be probably doing Orcs anyway... so I picked something "neutral" (Strider). It's not the crown of creation, but now for the basic purposes it should serve well. Hope Nog gets it all right.

[Thinlómien]

This is beginning to look better and better...

To the concerns of Lommy and Eönwë - and anyone else - I'd just want to say the following... Don't raise the level of expectations for yourself too high. This is no Hollywood or BBC production with professional actors, directors, studio conditions or equipment. We are amateurs all of us who have gotten an idea to do something fun together. Right? It would be awesome if we could - come fall - boast that we have indeed made one chapter from the LotR together over seas and continents. And we have had fun with it. And we can remember that thing when we're old in a way "well, then we did this thing back in the early third millenia... now where's that file again... I was soo young back then, just listen to my funny voice..."

Okay, I agree with this, but I just want to protest a bit. For you can't count me to this category... I don't want to be Frodo because it is against my mental image that Frodo would sound like me and as for Legolas, well, is it too much asked that he would deliver his lines understandably?

If we're doing Lórien, I might reconsider doing Haldir... I like him and I would have great fun with some of his lines. Maybe I must test one day.

[Nogrod]

Okay. I should be doing other things than this indeed as I have millions of things pressing on my schedual, but now I have frustrated myself already for almost an hour with MySpace. And I'm really getting annoyed with the site. It seems they only give you a chance to upload videos and pics there and no more audiofiles.

So anyone knows a site where you could upload audiofiles for free? Or any other means of sharing these files without e-mailing them as most e-mail programs seem to have a 10MB limit (the full version of trial-clips this far is 10,5 MB in mp3 )?

I'll send the clips we have so far for everyone who has given me their mail-addresses when I first take my Bilbo out from there. That should make it under 10MB and thence sendable. But in the future we'd need to find another solution.


The contents of the file are:

1. Oddwen's read-out from Many meetings which has been meddled a bit leaving Oddwen the narration and the role of Pippin. Frodo is played by Lommy, Merry is played by Greenie and Gandalf is played by me.

2. Greenie playing Gollum!

3. Greenie playing Shagrat and Nogrod playing Gorbag.

4. Matthew's new takes on Boromir, three short ones.

5. Legate reading Aragorn and hobbits on Weathertop.

6. Nogrod playing Gimli in The Ring Goes South.


And remember, you can get the file by sending me a PM with your e-mail address! And Mac, Rikae, Gwath, Nerwen, Eönwë... and everyone else... I'm waiting for your clips as well!

[Gwathagor]

I say...Greenie's quite good as Gollum, and MatthewM's new Boromir takes are great.

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Wooow but it's so COOL!!!

Love it!

And Greenie must do a Gollum for sure (Gwathy, "quite good" is too weak words). Woooow

(other edits coming soon)

And Matthew's Boromir gives me the creeps (that means he is great, and also don't interpretate it as anything against Boromir, Matthew - it's just how it's meant to be).

And I will emphasise once again - the Hobbits are not supposed to be taken seriously... *ahem*

[Nogrod]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

And I will emphasise once again - the Hobbits are not supposed to be taken seriously... *ahem*

I'd say nothing there should be taken "seriously". These are just trials to see if the equipments work (I hope Nerwen finds a solution to your background hum Matthew as I feel I'm quite armless with it!) and to give people an idea how other people sound and what they might do.

And I don't think this should be taken as a serious undertaking in the first place if serious means "dead-serious" or going for perfection. We'll never attain that anyway.

Greenie made her Gollum basically prima vista, just choosing the part of the text and reading it with one take. The same goes with our Shagrat and Gorbag (well, we tried different voices a few times to each other thinking what would sound nice but in the end we read it straight with no rehearsals).

So lower the bar of expectations and just go on with it. These are no "final takes" or measures of your performance. This is testing. So go on acting! Do overdo your characters! I think the least interesting ones are those who are played "safe" (like my Gandalf in the first clip). Just jump into it and do not care how you sound.

After we have tested enough we can go on recording the actual stuff and then everyone has their chances to rehearse as much as they want and to make as many retakes they wish.


About the roles...

Matthew would like to be Boromir. To me it's okay as he seems to have a good touch with him. We just need to get rid of the background hum if possible. Let's see what can be done. But that also means we should find our chapter from The Fellowship of the Ring? Or could you Matthew think of acting someone else?

If we have a chapter with Gollum Greenie should do that. But that's if we have it as it seems that the best choices for a scene would be indeed taking place in Lorien or Rivendell looking at the people involved.

I can take whatever role you wish me to take. I can make my voice pretty low so it would probably fit that kind of characters; dwarves, wizards, baddies, ...

Other ideas or preferences?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

I'd say nothing there should be taken "seriously". These are just trials to see if the equipments work (I hope Nerwen finds a solution to your background hum Matthew as I feel I'm quite armless with it!) and to give people an idea how other people sound and what they might do.

Of course. Still, some of them are pretty good even for a trial.

Originally Posted by Nogrod

Other ideas or preferences?

As for me, I don't have any preferences - it will depend only on the chapter chosen, once that is known, I may have some. But otherwise, I don't particularly care. Not even about the chapter, that is.

Seemingly, we should pick a part with equally as much dialogue for each character and if possible enough to that point that everyone gets just one character (or more or less, how many will there be of us, anyway?). These first chapters of Second book (especially chapter 3-5) come to my mind, while of course that would disqualify our nice Gollum, but otherwise there's plenty other characters and I think good balance between narration and dialogue (I am still afraid that the narrator will have about 50% of the work on him/herself).

[MatthewM]

Originally Posted by Gwathagor

MatthewM's new Boromir takes are great.

Originally Posted by Legate

And Matthew's Boromir gives me the creeps (that means he is great, and also don't interpretate it as anything against Boromir, Matthew - it's just how it's meant to be).

Thank you! Your compliments are much appreciated.

The clips sound awesome. Great job to everyone. I love how you get those P's rolling, Greenie. I'm very excited that we are getting closer and closer to this.

Nogrod, to your question on the chapter- yes, I definitely would like to be Boromir, I'd rather not act as someone else. So I favor choosing a chapter from The Fellowship, in specific from Book II. Like Legate said, there would be plenty of roles for each to take and a decent amount of dialogue for each. If we wish to incorporate Elves, I would suggest a chapter from Rivendell (The Council of Elrond) or any of three from Lorien- although I think one of them (Lothlorien, I believe) does not have much dialogue from The Fellowship.

edit: I'm working on the mic situation...hopefully I will find a solution with the background noise.

[Oddwen]

I'd say nothing there should be taken "seriously". These are just trials to see if the equipments work

...he says, as he spreads my stuttering & slurry take across the globe.

Great job everyone - I echo the general consensus circling Matthew's Boromir, and Miss Greenie (er, hi, welcome to the 'Downs by the way) - your voice has a bit of a creepy/harsh edge, even when you're not an Orc or Gollum - I'd love to hear your Wormtongue.

I use my Xanga blog for my files - though I don't know if there's a size limit, as none of mine are larger than seven megabytes, and you have to have a Xanga account to upload. You can't download either. They take aac, aiff, au, aug, mp3, wav, and wma files. *shrug*

the Hobbits are not supposed to be taken seriously... *ahem*

Same here. I think they *all* should have Spanish accents.

[Gwathagor]

I don't have any proper recording equipment or software, Nogrod, just the built in microphone on my computer. Do you still want a few readings?