aka, why this project is going to take so many seasons!
I know that this is something we have said at various times over the years. We're telling a story, not making a documentary. The Silmarillion is the history of the Elves during the Time of the Trees and the First Age of Middle-earth, and so it would, perhaps, be possible to view Silm Film as an attempt at making a historical account of those events. To tell the story more or less as written in the book (which has more in common with a history text than a novel in many places).
But we aren't doing that. We are fleshing out the stories, telling them as stories, and allowing the audience to get to know the various characters. That takes a lot more time!
As an example, here is a 12 minute documentary film about the Chernobyl liquidators who contained and mitigated the radioactive fallout of the 1986 nuclear disaster. It consists of photographs and video footage from the time, with a voiceover narration explaining what was done.
This short video touches on the various different types of work done during liquidation efforts - the firefighters and first responders, the miners, the nuclear engineers, the military personnel, the 'biorobots' who cleared debris off the roof, those were responsible for killing animals in the exclusion zone, etc. In other words, the information contained in this short video is quite similar to the information about the liquidators provided in the HBO miniseries about Chernobyl. Obviously the miniseries includes other topics (such as the cause of the disaster in the first place), but most of the show is focused on the liquidator efforts. And the HBO series takes 5 hours and 40 minutes to tell that story.
When we try to include too much content in an episode or a season, or focus too much effort on exposition and 'information dumps', we run the risk of losing the emotional connection of the audience to these characters, and flattening the story into a recitation of events rather than an actual...story. That is one reason it has been so important to give our stories 'breathing room' to fill in the details that will lead up to events described in the book, and explore how characters may be thinking or reacting to things before they know how it will all turn out.
One of the main differences between a documentary and a dramatization is that in the latter, you see the story from the perspective of those who are living through it, whereas in a documentary, you have the perspective of an outsider, looking in, with the distance of history to guide your perspective. The narrator of the published Silmarillion definitely has this distance, making comments about how things will turn out before the story reaches that point. The narrator knows how the First Age is going to end - the importance of Eärendil, the ultimate failure of the Noldor and the loss and destruction of every single elf kingdom in Beleriand...these things are known, and that knowledge colors the way the story is told. But for the Noldor living through it at the time, it might not seem that defeat is quite so inevitable, and they might not be able to imagine what circumstances would have to be in place for the Valar to intervene.
Here is another video, this one focusing on the use of perspective in the HBO miniseries Chernobyl to transform the story from a documentary to a personal dramatic event unfolding in 'real time' for the characters living through it. Naturally, the perspectives used here are very different from the impersonal view of a documentary (at least prior to the final episode). [Ignore the 1 minute ad at the end of this video]
I know that this is something we have said at various times over the years. We're telling a story, not making a documentary. The Silmarillion is the history of the Elves during the Time of the Trees and the First Age of Middle-earth, and so it would, perhaps, be possible to view Silm Film as an attempt at making a historical account of those events. To tell the story more or less as written in the book (which has more in common with a history text than a novel in many places).
But we aren't doing that. We are fleshing out the stories, telling them as stories, and allowing the audience to get to know the various characters. That takes a lot more time!
As an example, here is a 12 minute documentary film about the Chernobyl liquidators who contained and mitigated the radioactive fallout of the 1986 nuclear disaster. It consists of photographs and video footage from the time, with a voiceover narration explaining what was done.
When we try to include too much content in an episode or a season, or focus too much effort on exposition and 'information dumps', we run the risk of losing the emotional connection of the audience to these characters, and flattening the story into a recitation of events rather than an actual...story. That is one reason it has been so important to give our stories 'breathing room' to fill in the details that will lead up to events described in the book, and explore how characters may be thinking or reacting to things before they know how it will all turn out.
One of the main differences between a documentary and a dramatization is that in the latter, you see the story from the perspective of those who are living through it, whereas in a documentary, you have the perspective of an outsider, looking in, with the distance of history to guide your perspective. The narrator of the published Silmarillion definitely has this distance, making comments about how things will turn out before the story reaches that point. The narrator knows how the First Age is going to end - the importance of Eärendil, the ultimate failure of the Noldor and the loss and destruction of every single elf kingdom in Beleriand...these things are known, and that knowledge colors the way the story is told. But for the Noldor living through it at the time, it might not seem that defeat is quite so inevitable, and they might not be able to imagine what circumstances would have to be in place for the Valar to intervene.
Here is another video, this one focusing on the use of perspective in the HBO miniseries Chernobyl to transform the story from a documentary to a personal dramatic event unfolding in 'real time' for the characters living through it. Naturally, the perspectives used here are very different from the impersonal view of a documentary (at least prior to the final episode). [Ignore the 1 minute ad at the end of this video]
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