Essay Research

I looked at the film 'Lord of the Rings the Two Towers' and special features disc which explained how they created the sets, characters and models as well as where the designers and director drew their inspiration from. I took screenshots of scenes/characters discussed as evidence in the essay to show where the production skethes and studies eventually led.

I looked at Hobbits, Elves and Wizards exploring wonders and worlds of J.R.R Tolkien, it is about the inspiration that J.R.R had for nature and language that drove him to write the book. I included this because there is always an original source that the production designer uses for reference. I also linked this to how the designers would have referenced these ideas for the script that is the guide line for the design of visuals.

I  also looked at Fellowship in peril which is like an online journal crticisng the sets and lighting techniques but also had some good quotes, the one I used was:

‘We installed space lights in the ceiling of the studio and placed huge silks underneath, creating a large, soft top light’ (Lesnie, 2002: 1) because it explains the technique and effect that the designers were looking for in this space.

I used three books, the first was The Frodo Franchaise - Lord of the Rings and modern Holloywood which had a good quote for the first paragraph  

‘... the film would follow Tolkien in treating the story as history rather than fantasy’ (Thompson, 2007: 90), this backs up the use of the original source and how the designers had to view it from a different perspective to fit the purpose of the film.

The second book was The Art of the Two Towers because it had all the visual concepts and sketches that helped to plan the memerable scenes in the film. It also had quotes from the designer working on that particular concept explaing there difficulties and what worked in their opinion. I used a range of image to compare to the screen shots.

The third book was a recormended by Tracey Ashmore when I had my tutorial and it is Movies and Meaning which discusses the ideas and techniques of the stages of production design so that I knew what to look for in the film production. In the essay I tried to analyse all the important visual concept styles that build up into the final production and looked how effective this was carried out in the film.