First TH4G Flier

Wow!! Carlos Avina (from our friends the Born of Hope team) just emailed me with his design for this beautiful flier for the film... Thanks Carlos!

4 weeks to go...

..until the shoot! It's going to be great, but actually pretty daunting. I've been working on preproduction and script for the past 4 months but in the final run up there's loads to do: costume finalising, Ranger casting, storyboarding, wig fitting, props, more locations... Fear not though, it's all in hand. :)

A few words on the story

A new chapter in the Lord of the Rings saga, created by fan's of Tolkien. This short film is set in Middle Earth and depicts events leading up to the Fellowship of the Ring. Synopsis: The Ring of Power has been taken from Gollum by Bilbo of the Shire. The heir of Isildur sets out to find him before he falls into the hands of the enemy and reveals the location of the Ring...

Here's a brief synopsis of the film's story in TH4G (and pics of some locations!)

It's technically a PREQUEL although our story is based carefully on Tolkien's appendices to The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit. We're creating a serious, epic and cinematic tribute to the Tolkien and also the film trilogy. Our story takes place after The Hobbit but before The Fellowship Of The Ring and follows a young Ranger of Arnor (although one of great lineage) in his journey to find the creature.

A PREQUEL to The Fellowship of the Ring


By the way, these are pictures of where we'll be filming in September: Snowdonia, N Wales, UK

"Gollum has ventured out of his cave deep beneath the Misty Mountains. He's searching for one thing. The Ring, which was taken from him by Bilbo who tricked him but also named his homeland; The Shire. Many evil things are being drawn towards Mordor and Gollum inevitably is drawn towards the black land. The heir of Isildur sets out to find him before the creature can be captured by the enemy and reveal the location of the Ring...

Next I'll do a post on the cast I guess.

Making Orcs 1

I spent last Saturday with Luke McNally (special effects designer) making casts for the Orc masks. We took casts of the faces of our Orc actors so that Luke can custom design the prosthetic masks to fit their faces exactly. Here's a video of the process. was a lot of fun.

THFG_bts1 - rough edit
Uploaded by residuemovie

What they might look like...

Logo Teaser

Here's a little teaser, basically just a logo test. It was really satisfying to create this using the LOTR Ringbearer font and some music I composed a while back. It's exciting to see a little flavour of what might be to come.

THFG_LogoTeaser
Uploaded by residuemovie

This entire clip was made in Sony Vegas 6 (apart from the music of course). It took about 2 hours to make.
Next up I'll post on the story, the cast, the locations and there's even a behind the scenes video of us making our first orcs this weekend...

Welcome to the blog

I've just created this blog for my new film project, which for now I will be calling THE HUNT FOR GOLLUM. So, what's this film about? It's a short (not going to bite off too much this time). It's a Lord of the Rings fan film. Yep, that means it's set in middle earth with similar character, but tells a new part of the saga (and luckily there's plenty Peter Jackson left out for us to tell).

And as for story, I'm not going to say too much just now but it takes place in between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring, and follows one of the Rangers of the North...

Fear not guys my main project Human Residue is still pushing ahead, but as it's now deep in post production, this gives me a chance to get back out on set and shoot something else while the warmth of summer is still with us. Secondly, it's always good to take a break from a project and Residue has been so overwhelming for the past 2 years that I really need something new to get excited about Then I can come back to editing Residue with fresh eyes.

Meanwhile check out the website for fellow LOTR fan film Born of Hope who are kindly collaborating with me on this project. It's really exciting to be working with Kate and some of her team.

Enjoy the blog, I aim to keep it up to date with all the info of the film production over the coming months.
Peace
Chris