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Fan-made Hunt for Gollum a hit: servers crash
A Lord of the Rings-themed fan-produced film called The Hunt for Gollum premiered online on Sunday, and within 24 hours it had had about 250,000 views, with nearly all fan comments on the Web site giving the film a thumbs-up.
The premiere was so successful that it brought down the film's Web servers for a few hours. Director and executive producer Chris Bouchard, speaking exclusively to SCI FI Wire by telephone from England, explains, "The Web server got completely overwhelmed by all the traffic. We got it back online quite late that night. I think everybody saw the release and went on at the same time. It was the number of requests it couldn't handle. It's quite cool! We had no idea how many people would watch it."
Bouchard adapted the script from an incident mentioned in J.R.R. Tolkien's original Rings trilogy. "All the story is in the appendices, and it's referred to by Gandalf during the first book," he said. "That's a very basic structure of the story, which says Aragorn went to look for Gollum, and he found him, so we filled in the detail."
The Hunt for Gollum also had its world theatrical premiere on Sunday at the Sci-Fi-London film festival and a U.S. premiere later in the day in Yuma, Ariz., thanks to two Yuma residents who worked on the sound and visual effects. The London event was attended by Bouchard, star Adrian Webster (Aragorn) and other members of the cast and crew, who took audience questions afterward.
According to Bouchard, neither he nor his crew had any clue what to expect in advance of the screening. "They'd been giving away tickets for free to the audience, so we didn't really know if people were signing up to it or not until we walked in, and it was all full," he said. "It was quite weird, actually, watching it with a real audience, and they were all very quiet throughout the film, so I thought they really hated it!"
As to the film's positive reception, Bouchard said, "I was shocked, actually, because I was expecting a lot of stick for interpretations. We thought maybe the actors, they've got a lot to live up against trying to play [roles played by] Ian McKellen and Viggo Mortensen. On the whole, the comments from people who've watched it so far have been really nice. We've definitely had some good nitpicks as well, but we're quite surprised they've been so nice."
The Hunt for Gollum also stars Patrick O'Connor, Rita Ramnani and Gareth Brough It streams online. Bouchard reports that the film will remain on the site indefinitely and will likely be available from a few other streaming sites as well. He would also like to bring it to other film festivals this year, though no definite plans have been made.
By MisterCosmic at 7:53 AM ON 05/06/09
Excellent little film... hope they release a downloadable DVD (or Blu-Ray) version with some behind the scenes material. And I could see other fan films like this being made... there are lots of little Tolkien tales yet to be told...
By budgethero at 9:22 AM ON 05/06/09
i dont think they will. it's ok to fan movies and stuff, but u can make money off of them. copyright rules.
By Alan at 9:54 AM ON 05/06/09
Copyright and intellectual property is about more than money. Just because a project is nonprofit doesn't mean you can violate someone's (like the Tolkien Estate) copyright.
There is a quote from the director on wikipedia that addresses copyright-
"We got in touch with Tolkien Enterprises and reached an understanding with them that as long as we are completely non-profit then we're okay. We have to be careful not to disrespect their ownership of the intellectual property. They are supportive of the way fans wish to express their enthusiasm."
So, it seems they obtained permission.
By Gaijin at 10:45 AM ON 05/06/09
True, copyright laws prohibit them from SELLING a DVD to the public. However, it is perfectly legal for them to post an ISO image of the DVD on a website or made available vai BitTorrent to download and burn your own copy of the DVD. Several fanfilms have done this in the past, including the very popular "Star Trek: Phase II" series.
By budgethero at 11:11 AM ON 05/06/09
"i dont think they will. it's ok to fan movies and stuff, but u can make money off of them. copyright rules."
self correction, it's ok to make* fan movies, but u cant* make money.
also, GREAT movie. awesome!
By P.M. at 11:14 AM ON 05/06/09
It wasn't the most interesting story from Middle-Earth to adapt, but it's a good film nonetheless. My biggest complaint is that the sound was so low that I had to turn the volume to max and press my headphones to my ears to hear much of the dialogue. But there's a certain charm to these independent and fan made movies that I like about them. Also check out http://www.bornofhope.com/Welcome.html
By starmaid at 3:37 PM ON 05/06/09
Really well done little film! Although it hit the high points from the movies (Arwen/Aragorn, Aragorn/orcs fight, aka with Lurtz), they really did put their hearts into it--and it shows. If we can't get the movies, this is a great substitute
By Bill at 5:57 PM ON 05/06/09
I have mixed feelings about this project. On the one hand, it shows what can be done with a small budget and a lot of passion. On the other hand, the story they used as the basis for their film took up just a few pages in the novel, it doesn't add anything new or insightful to the characters or their situation.
On a side note, I think the rule with fan films and copyright is that fan films can't infringe on the ability of the copyright holders to make money off of the copyrights they hold. The ability of Tolkien's estate to make oodles of cash off of JRR Tolkien's work is not infringed by a fan film being given away for free -- especially when Tolkien's heirs are finding "new" Tolkien manuscripts almost every year. Fan films fall in the legal gray area of fair use as a form of "folk culture", so to speak.
Copyright was originally just that. The right, granted by the government, to print books for a set period of years. Copyright was originally established to protect London printers from loosing money to cheaper Scottish printing firms. Once someone purchased the book they could do almost whatever they wanted to with it - throw it in the fire, use it for toilet paper, roll cigarettes out of it, even read it - as long as they didn't print and sell their own copies. When the copyright expired, the book was fair game and anybody with a printing press could make and sell copies.
Today, copyright law is so dense and complicated that it threatens to stifle creativity. Artists, filmmakers, writers, and other creative people have to retain armies of lawyers just to make sure their creative endeavors aren't violating somebody's copyright. A lot of now classic creative projects wouldn't be made today because of issues of copyright. A good example is the Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie. Steamboat Willie was a parody of Buster Keaton's film Steamboat Bill, Jr. which in turn was based on the song Steamboat Bill. Imagine the copyright headache if that cartoon was made today. See the book "Free Culture" by Lawerence Lessig for an insightful and in depth look at how big media companies use copyright law to control creativity.
By mrhis2ry at 6:21 PM ON 05/06/09
Well done!! If only some of SciFi's homemade weekend movies were made this well. I hope they do more.
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mrhis2ry:
Well done!! If only some of SciFi's homemade weekend movies were made this well. I hope they do more....More »