Tolkien, by CB Productions, Canada
Jan. 25th, 2018 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI've been reading fic set in Tanya Huff's Smoke series, which is wizards and demons and ghosts and vampires on the set of Canada's best rated syndicated vampire detective show, Darkest Night.
... if you're thinking Angel you're way, way more upmarket than they are. Forever Knight if they're doing great. And there's versions of all your favourites there, like Lee Nicholas, better actor than he ever gets the roles to show.
So I dreamed that particular subset of chaos, and that they'd got the rights to do a TV adaptation of Lord of the Rings.
The dream started when the new to Canada series boss had blown through a majority of the budget already and had basically only filmed interiors in one kingdom. He was looking increasingly grey and acting disconnected from reality, which seemed pretty normal given he'd have to explain the budget thing to CB, so it took us a while to realise the latest round of supernatural nasty was hiding out in the sets treating extras as takeout. So then the action plot kicked off, Henry the royal vampire turned up, it was all very excite.
... I got stuck with that thing I dream where my mouth is full of chewing gum and trying to get it out pulls my teeth out, so I was mostly tangential to that part, until I did a hostage exchange to try and talk the bads into surrendering before Henry got all territorial on them.
Didn't work.
But, plot resolved, that still left CB Productions with rights to Tolkien's work, an announced mini series of Lord of the Rings, and less than half the already miniscule budget they started with.
So drawing on my extensive experience of fanfiction, transformative works, and having watched Slings and Arrows that one time, I saved the day and said: treat it like Hamlet. Like any Shakespeare. There are people that already revere the text, and every change you make will be scrutinised, but, your job here is to translate it for your specific audience. To give it your angle. To make the text your own.
We can't be Peter Jackson. So we're here to make it as cheap Canadians.
... as rallying cries it lacks something, especially in my English accent, but.
If we're trying to convey the feeling of Lord of the Rings, of a distant Shadow that wants to eat the world, of basically peaceful people who never even heard of the players before, let alone stirred up the trouble of so much as one battle of this war?
Where do we start?
So part of the problem was we'd already started. We had a cast, with contracts, so we were paying them however much we used them. But the cast as currently arranged was such a cliche it was plain missing the point of the source text. Height was power and importance, Kings were the most conventionally handsome, Gollum was only conventionally short but there's going to be a lot of makeup and some forced perspective in the mixed scenes. But the whole point of Hobbits is it's the little people that really determine the course of the wars. Kings might wage wars but they hadn't been the ones fighting them, before Aragorn. And he'd been a wanderer, who everyone had mistaken for a plain shifty man.
So, first, rotate Aragorn, Boromir, and Gollum, so Aragorn the tall and fair plays Boromir of Gondor, absolutely convinced he and his are most important. And Aragorn the sketchy wanderer is the short man previously expecting to play the creep.
That leaves a spare Boromir playing Gollum, which would be even more perspective work to rejig, but if he don't want to it's not like we're going to stop there.
Cast half the Fellowship as women. Dwarves and Elves are notoriously ambiguous by the standards of outsiders. Elves are tall women wearing robes and dex focused armour, Dwarves are all bearded trouser wearing miners in tank armour, just reckon outsiders can't tell.
Save money and save actor feet, make hairy feet that can walk on anything a hobbit in joke at outsiders, just have them wear soft leather with the fur on.
actually rethink a lot of the clothing, not just because modern dress is cheaper, but because you can convey *so much information* that way, subconsciously, at a glance. Yes, every step away from the trappings of high fantasy is going to cost you in audience expectations, but if you balance it careful you maybe might buy it back in audience empathy, connection, identification.
And yes, there's already footage to work around, but -
Really lean in to the framing conceit: the whole story is told by Bilbo and Frodo, then translated by Tolkien. That's two people, the younger learning from the older, to write it all down, and then one very much of his time to try and translate it. Tolkien explained he changed all the names to make them sound right, what kind of translator does that? One who you can sell distorted anything and everything to fit his cultural preconceptions. And Bilbo and Frodo by their own account had never left the Shire before the adventure, and Frodo wasn't the one who took the culturally diverse route. They could have missed or misunderstood everything.
Retell Lord of the Rings as if by a series of competing narrators, each very much of their own culture, so the footage we already have was someone who'd never left the city walls and yet was absolutely convinced of the might of Gondor. Or maybe someone who'd only just arrived at the walls, and found the wall concept hella impressive. Or someone who had never been to Gondor and was telling this in the pub at Bree, as far from the realms of Men as it's possible to get.
We'd filmed the cliche, we had to live with that.
We didn't have to stick with it.
Most orcs cast as Black? Someone took the diversity mandate and made it mean black women orcs? Not enough roles to rotate whole crowd scenes out, not once you take into account the costumes already fitted?
Okay, so
start with stripping most of the makeup off. Not in a 'what are Klingons even' way... well, actually, kind of yeah, but like, the people telling the story don't know. Say orcs and darkness and big teeth and crushed faces and call them distortions and... look racist as hell, without really trying, so, take existing orc and makeup and maybe start with them looking conventionally high fantasy monstrous, but have the makeup gradually stop being used as the focus is on orcs for longer (bonus: cheap!) until they're just people. Black people. Being driven to war with whips.
They're still scarred, but they're telling a very different story, if the 'officers' are overseers and the armies are slaves. Explains the difference in numbers not counting, nobody wanted to die in the war but they didn't especially want to wage it.
Done something racist and uncomfortable? Lean into it in the sense of giving closer focus until you're telling a true story again.
Which will take some doing, I know, if you start at 'orc'. But give them a point of view to do it, and get some good writers of color in, and I guarantee there's someone who has been wanting to tear at the source text in this exact way all their lives.
And then once the enemy keeps black slaves, and the good guys including men of the North, well...
What Shadow wants to draw everyone under their influence, by means of rich gifts and unsurpassed weaponry?
North men riding horses in figures and drills, Rohirrim, but put them in red...
Hobbits arriving in Gondor and Pippin being called a prince because he uses the informal with everyone, except it's because Shire language doesn't have a formal informal distinction and Gondor keeps using tu et vous...
And Hobbits in the first place, people of the land, living quietly in plenty, about to get mown down by the wars other powers bring?
I'm not saying I know enough about First Nations people to cast Hobbits as First Nations, but, think about it. The little-as-in-unimportant people treated as children, who eventually save the day, but find their land trashed when they get home? That's the story of people who belong there in the first place, but somehow get overlooked, not even noticed in other peoples' histories. That hardly seems like white men.
... it could be a class thing, obviously, again, and the way Merry and Pippin are heirs to some kind of power in the Shire is much more farming focused than anything the kings outside do, but, pick and mix it.
Like, I know there's hardly any roles for persons of restricted growth so it's good to actually cast them when it logically comes up, you want small hobbits, but there's a full variety of humans still available.
And they are described as nut brown.
So I checked a wiki for references, wandered off for too long, and ran out of steam on generating ideas. I wouldn't call Tolkien one of my fandoms, though I've watched and read. I'm sure others have had many better ideas.
But I just woke up from brainstorming how to salvage this terrible overbudget cliche of a production, and it seemed to me the trick was to demolish it.
And you couldn't afford to cover the whole Lord of the Rings in the budget we've got left for a mini series, plus every change to the original focus of the text is going to wind fans up, so, open it right up, make this the first season of a much bigger story, tell the stories off the edges of the page, go and focus on the little people again for real.
And make the story your own.
LORD OF THE RINGS: RETRANSLATED
Way more fun.
... if you're thinking Angel you're way, way more upmarket than they are. Forever Knight if they're doing great. And there's versions of all your favourites there, like Lee Nicholas, better actor than he ever gets the roles to show.
So I dreamed that particular subset of chaos, and that they'd got the rights to do a TV adaptation of Lord of the Rings.
The dream started when the new to Canada series boss had blown through a majority of the budget already and had basically only filmed interiors in one kingdom. He was looking increasingly grey and acting disconnected from reality, which seemed pretty normal given he'd have to explain the budget thing to CB, so it took us a while to realise the latest round of supernatural nasty was hiding out in the sets treating extras as takeout. So then the action plot kicked off, Henry the royal vampire turned up, it was all very excite.
... I got stuck with that thing I dream where my mouth is full of chewing gum and trying to get it out pulls my teeth out, so I was mostly tangential to that part, until I did a hostage exchange to try and talk the bads into surrendering before Henry got all territorial on them.
Didn't work.
But, plot resolved, that still left CB Productions with rights to Tolkien's work, an announced mini series of Lord of the Rings, and less than half the already miniscule budget they started with.
So drawing on my extensive experience of fanfiction, transformative works, and having watched Slings and Arrows that one time, I saved the day and said: treat it like Hamlet. Like any Shakespeare. There are people that already revere the text, and every change you make will be scrutinised, but, your job here is to translate it for your specific audience. To give it your angle. To make the text your own.
We can't be Peter Jackson. So we're here to make it as cheap Canadians.
... as rallying cries it lacks something, especially in my English accent, but.
If we're trying to convey the feeling of Lord of the Rings, of a distant Shadow that wants to eat the world, of basically peaceful people who never even heard of the players before, let alone stirred up the trouble of so much as one battle of this war?
Where do we start?
So part of the problem was we'd already started. We had a cast, with contracts, so we were paying them however much we used them. But the cast as currently arranged was such a cliche it was plain missing the point of the source text. Height was power and importance, Kings were the most conventionally handsome, Gollum was only conventionally short but there's going to be a lot of makeup and some forced perspective in the mixed scenes. But the whole point of Hobbits is it's the little people that really determine the course of the wars. Kings might wage wars but they hadn't been the ones fighting them, before Aragorn. And he'd been a wanderer, who everyone had mistaken for a plain shifty man.
So, first, rotate Aragorn, Boromir, and Gollum, so Aragorn the tall and fair plays Boromir of Gondor, absolutely convinced he and his are most important. And Aragorn the sketchy wanderer is the short man previously expecting to play the creep.
That leaves a spare Boromir playing Gollum, which would be even more perspective work to rejig, but if he don't want to it's not like we're going to stop there.
Cast half the Fellowship as women. Dwarves and Elves are notoriously ambiguous by the standards of outsiders. Elves are tall women wearing robes and dex focused armour, Dwarves are all bearded trouser wearing miners in tank armour, just reckon outsiders can't tell.
Save money and save actor feet, make hairy feet that can walk on anything a hobbit in joke at outsiders, just have them wear soft leather with the fur on.
actually rethink a lot of the clothing, not just because modern dress is cheaper, but because you can convey *so much information* that way, subconsciously, at a glance. Yes, every step away from the trappings of high fantasy is going to cost you in audience expectations, but if you balance it careful you maybe might buy it back in audience empathy, connection, identification.
And yes, there's already footage to work around, but -
Really lean in to the framing conceit: the whole story is told by Bilbo and Frodo, then translated by Tolkien. That's two people, the younger learning from the older, to write it all down, and then one very much of his time to try and translate it. Tolkien explained he changed all the names to make them sound right, what kind of translator does that? One who you can sell distorted anything and everything to fit his cultural preconceptions. And Bilbo and Frodo by their own account had never left the Shire before the adventure, and Frodo wasn't the one who took the culturally diverse route. They could have missed or misunderstood everything.
Retell Lord of the Rings as if by a series of competing narrators, each very much of their own culture, so the footage we already have was someone who'd never left the city walls and yet was absolutely convinced of the might of Gondor. Or maybe someone who'd only just arrived at the walls, and found the wall concept hella impressive. Or someone who had never been to Gondor and was telling this in the pub at Bree, as far from the realms of Men as it's possible to get.
We'd filmed the cliche, we had to live with that.
We didn't have to stick with it.
Most orcs cast as Black? Someone took the diversity mandate and made it mean black women orcs? Not enough roles to rotate whole crowd scenes out, not once you take into account the costumes already fitted?
Okay, so
start with stripping most of the makeup off. Not in a 'what are Klingons even' way... well, actually, kind of yeah, but like, the people telling the story don't know. Say orcs and darkness and big teeth and crushed faces and call them distortions and... look racist as hell, without really trying, so, take existing orc and makeup and maybe start with them looking conventionally high fantasy monstrous, but have the makeup gradually stop being used as the focus is on orcs for longer (bonus: cheap!) until they're just people. Black people. Being driven to war with whips.
They're still scarred, but they're telling a very different story, if the 'officers' are overseers and the armies are slaves. Explains the difference in numbers not counting, nobody wanted to die in the war but they didn't especially want to wage it.
Done something racist and uncomfortable? Lean into it in the sense of giving closer focus until you're telling a true story again.
Which will take some doing, I know, if you start at 'orc'. But give them a point of view to do it, and get some good writers of color in, and I guarantee there's someone who has been wanting to tear at the source text in this exact way all their lives.
And then once the enemy keeps black slaves, and the good guys including men of the North, well...
What Shadow wants to draw everyone under their influence, by means of rich gifts and unsurpassed weaponry?
North men riding horses in figures and drills, Rohirrim, but put them in red...
Hobbits arriving in Gondor and Pippin being called a prince because he uses the informal with everyone, except it's because Shire language doesn't have a formal informal distinction and Gondor keeps using tu et vous...
And Hobbits in the first place, people of the land, living quietly in plenty, about to get mown down by the wars other powers bring?
I'm not saying I know enough about First Nations people to cast Hobbits as First Nations, but, think about it. The little-as-in-unimportant people treated as children, who eventually save the day, but find their land trashed when they get home? That's the story of people who belong there in the first place, but somehow get overlooked, not even noticed in other peoples' histories. That hardly seems like white men.
... it could be a class thing, obviously, again, and the way Merry and Pippin are heirs to some kind of power in the Shire is much more farming focused than anything the kings outside do, but, pick and mix it.
Like, I know there's hardly any roles for persons of restricted growth so it's good to actually cast them when it logically comes up, you want small hobbits, but there's a full variety of humans still available.
And they are described as nut brown.
So I checked a wiki for references, wandered off for too long, and ran out of steam on generating ideas. I wouldn't call Tolkien one of my fandoms, though I've watched and read. I'm sure others have had many better ideas.
But I just woke up from brainstorming how to salvage this terrible overbudget cliche of a production, and it seemed to me the trick was to demolish it.
And you couldn't afford to cover the whole Lord of the Rings in the budget we've got left for a mini series, plus every change to the original focus of the text is going to wind fans up, so, open it right up, make this the first season of a much bigger story, tell the stories off the edges of the page, go and focus on the little people again for real.
And make the story your own.
LORD OF THE RINGS: RETRANSLATED
Way more fun.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-26 01:37 pm (UTC)I do have a feeling it would end up looking more like Xena does Middle-Earth, but there are worse fates for sure.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-29 03:34 pm (UTC)