The Nitpicks of Power, Part I: Exploding Forges

https://acoup.blog/2023/01/20/collections-the-nitpicks-of-power-part-i-exploding-forges/

by xrayarx • 3 years ago

48 14 3 years ago

As fun as the nitpickings are, Bret posted some criticisms of RoP to his twitter that I thought even more illuminating regarding the director using the storytelling medium to just lie to the audience. It rings true to me. All the "clever misdirection" just felt clumsy.

https://nitter.cutelab.space/BretDevereaux/status/1617645693... https://nitter.cutelab.space/BretDevereaux/status/1618083297...

Xylakant• 3 years ago

There’s also the full article about the major things where RoP falls flat back from mid December https://acoup.blog/2022/12/16/collections-why-rings-of-power...

yamtaddle• 3 years ago

The lying-soundtrack thing is indeed cheap as hell.

Re: the missed opportunity of soundtrack in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, later in that string of posts—that's, unfortunately, a hallmark of modern film-making. They've cheaped out by shoving soundtrack development to a part of the process that makes other things easier, but also means the soundtrack tends to get neglected. The Every Frame a Painting channel (RIP) on Youtube has a video about this that does a good job of covering what's gone wrong and why, and at one point explains not only how a particular scene in (IIRC) Captain America 2 could have used its soundtrack better, but then demonstrates that the existing soundtrack is so very bad that the scene plays obviously-better and its emotional beats hit harder if you remove the music entirely.

[EDIT] LOL, whoops, I got that Cap 2 bit mixed up (it was other Marvel scenes where the channel demonstrated that removing the soundtrack often had, at worst, no effect on the quality of a scene)—in that one, it was actually a case of the music being basically OK but so little attention being paid to the overall effect of all the audio that they slapped a prominent, totally pointless voice-over on it, such that in that case the scene's actually far better if you leave the music but cut out all the other sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vfqkvwW2fs

That's the video, coverage of the process-related causes of soundtracks being a forgettable after-thought in most modern "blockbusters" starts around 5:50. There are other videos on Youtube that go even deeper into the "how" and "why" of that, too.

[EDIT 2] I think an especially telling line comes in one of the clips of the composers sitting around together, where they're all talking about the effects of extensive use of placeholder music: the guy says something like "you look at the edit without the music, and it's wrong"—I don't think he means wrong for new music (which can be molded to fit the scene), I think he means it looks like it obviously could have been edited better and wasn't only because the editor got fixated on trying to make the edit fit the placeholder music.

Rodeoclash4• 3 years ago

I'm still working my way through the article but one of the things that jumped out for has been about the armour.

I was lucky enough to be an extra in the first set of Lord of the Rings movies and (at least for the chain mail) the armour they produced was "real". As in, people actually made A LOT of chainmail out of interlinked rings for the production. The way he's mentioned scale mail not correctly hanging on the body wouldn't have been an issue where chain was used in the first few movies (although I'll admit they probably made it out of a lighter material then real chain, it was still quite heavy however)

The other armour used was made from real metal (aluminium maybe?) if you were close to the camera (termed "Hero" armour) and if you were further back it was a softer sort of plastic. In particular the Helms Deep elf costumes had this plastic armour as a sort of skirt and we were constantly getting in trouble for sitting on it and bending it out of shape.

dilippkumar• 3 years ago

Wow. Such a unique experience.

What was the whole process like? Did you see anything on set that was amazing but didn’t make as big of an impact on screen?

Rodeoclash4• 3 years ago

Hmm, probably the level of back story they went into when training us as extras that didn't make its way to the screen somehow.

The bulk of the work I did was the night shoots at Helms Deep (actually a quarry just north of Wellington). This is where the elves + Rohan fight the Uruk Hai. When we did a bit of stunt training so we could do the background fighting, they kept telling us how powerful the elves were. How they'd had 1000's of years to practice fighting. You see this a bit with Legolas and the way he slides down the stairs on the shield but the rest of the elves are just fodder.

One small anecdote about this, if you go back to the very first media that they started releasing before the movies came out, this video: https://youtu.be/2UDTbQrOGa0?t=63

At the ~1:03 mark you can see two very quick shots, one is Legolas spinning the daggers around at Helms Deep, this made it into the movie (he also screwed this shot up about 8 times, I know this because I was in full costume as an Uruk Hai behind him fighting off a panic attack from overheating by swinging the sword around so much) and the next shot is a bunch of elves running into the spears of Uruk Hai.

When we did this shot, it took about a night of work, the original intention was that the elves would run into the ranks of Uruk Hai and just vanish. The Uruk's would be looking around themselves confused then the elves would one by one be popping up and killing the Uruk's.

Typing it out, it does seems kind of stupid but it did illustrate the original thinking they had with the elves martial abilities.

kragen• 3 years ago

I'm guessing they didn't rivet each ring shut like for real mail, did they?

niccl• 3 years ago

no, it was made of rings of polythene (I think) plumbing pipe, which were then split. they just twisted the ring so the split opened, linked as needed, then let the twist go. Then metal coated everything. The people doing it wore their fingerprints away over the years (literally) they were doing this

Rodeoclash4• 3 years ago

I'm not sure of the process, I know they spent years making it though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyXeHccKTDs

Lazare2• 3 years ago

The same author did a kit review of the Gondor armor from the movies, and was (broadly) quite positive about it: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/10/collections-gondor-heavy-infan...

His observations seem to mesh closely with yours; he mentions in particular that the Gondor armour seems to have been constructed "properly", and hangs correctly (regardless of what the materials used were).

It seems that the LotR movies did a significantly better job on the armour than the RoP show has. Which is a little surprising given their enormous budget, but I guess they had different priorities (and fair enough, of course; I'd be surprised if that sort of thing is even noticed by one viewer in a hundred).

Animats• 3 years ago

That white scale "armor" in the first pictures doesn't look like armor at all. It looks like a gambeson, the padded layer worn under plate armor. Fighters might wear that when in the field but not in combat, and strap on the plate pieces when headed for trouble. Unclear if the show got that.

Lazare2• 3 years ago

If it was a quilted gambeson, that would make a lot more sense, but it seems quite clearly to have a shape and structure to it - see in particular the shoulders and, in some cases, what appear to be breastplates shaped to emphasise the bust. So if it's meant to be cloth, it's apparently cloth over metal plates, which is the opposite of how a gambeson works.

And if you look closely, it really does appear that the white armor has a 3D textured surface that is a lot more like scale than it is like quilted fabric.

I agree that it doesn't look much like any sort of armour, but I think the show was aiming for scale.

The Nitpicks of Power, Part I: Exploding Forges

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