Timdalf
Active Member
In the light of inspiration gained from the first podcast of Season 1 let me offer here a first draft of a possible scenario... To be refined, expanded, given dialogue, settings, camera moves, etc. as may emerge. This is long so bear with me. Tell me what you think...
(Surprise! the URL links I included jumped right to providing the actual YouTube videos! The marvels of a good computer program will never end!)
The Silmarillion Film Project
A possible scenario for the opening episode.
First we see Aragorn’s mother Gilraen fleeing for her life protecting her child accompanied by what is left of their forces as Arathorn II is defeated and killed in battle as was Harold Godwinson at Hastings. She flees with them to Rivendell and gives him the name Estel to hide his identity… There he grows up under the guidance of Elrond. And we see a brief montage of him as a boy taken in disguise to the great library of Minas Tirith, and to the Grey Havens where he meets Cirdan the Shipwright. There he first learns the sound of the Great Western Seas and Cirdan describes how they echo in their rolling waves a vast realm of time and beyond the world, to the far west. At last on his 20th birthday Elrond reveals to him his identity, his destiny and his lineage. He sees in the wood the first vision of Lady Arwen. But we do not now pursue the details of their meeting. His education requires more time. After serving many years against the orcs of the North and on the borders of Mordor, at age 49 he journeys to Lothlórien to meet Galadriel (and renew his bond with Lady Arwen who sojourns there). There what he has learned from the Great Writings the Lore of the Elves in Rivendell is taken beyond that history of their trials of the First Age and the history of Númenor in the Second. He is led now by Galadriel to her Mirror and she tells unto him:
You now will go beyond mind, beyond time and beyond space, to indeed before the very beginning of Arda. You will learn not from the writings, but as we all have learned, by experiencing what we all together learned to know to have happened for we have been granted by the Valar to learn of the beginning of things how all things came to be and why the things that are have become as they are.
She shows him her Ring and touches it to her mirror… it sets the waters rippling… then suddenly they become perfectly still and his consciousness passes into another greater reality.
He feels his mind and heart passing out of time and beyond space into an infinite void that contains no thing, but is filled with fields of surging energies. These seem to be the gatherings of stars like great galaxies of lights but are barely perceptible as entities but whose presence, whose perception of all things, is very palpable. They are waves of light that seem also to be like rolling waves of sound, but sounds that perceive… and it is as if he beholds the creative hands of Eru Himself Who is beyond all perception yet present and as His hands move so do the energies of light coalesce and begin to form patterns… They respond to and follow the barely perceptible hands and we sense the hands more by what they guide and move than as themselves. And the sounds rise and merge at one great command: Ea! Be! And these galaxies of light seem to be given forms of a sort and they perceive the physical world come into being.
And Aragorn thus begins to learn of the Valar who are these energies that are coalescing incandescences of light, more presences than physical, more eyes that behold than are beheld. And they join together in this great sea of sounds and begin to be the very sounds and we sense a great passage of time within an instant. And suddenly Arda appears in their midst forming itself out of the sounds, out of the Valar themselves. And so Middle-earth begins to take its shape.
Then as Arda appears we begin through their eyes to approach the emerging of Almaren, which will be a green isle in the midst of a great lake. And the Valar begin descend and appear there where what things are seen are so by means of their inner light radiating from within them until their hands hover in the form of two spheres, first one then another, to form the two Great Lamps that emerge from the spheres formed by what appear to be their hovering hands, even as the hands of Eru gently caressed the realm of Arda into being. And so the features of Almaren begin to emerge.
To understand just what the sounds might begin to be like… listen to the evolving, growing sounds of the opening passage of Wagner’s Ring, to the solemnity of the opening moments of his Parsifal, and to see how the Valar coalesce, listen to the prelude to Lohengrin which depicts in sound the vision of the crystallization of the Grail… and for the dramatic resoluteness of these events in sound listen to the opening bars of Beethoven’s first movement to his 9th Symphony.
The opening moments of Wagner’s Ring Cycle :
4:20
Parsifal prelude:
the first 9:30
Lohengrin prelude:
In 1853, Richard Wagner wrote an "Explanatory Program" for the overture to his opera, Lohengrin, which he had completed in 1848. In his program, Wagner describes a vision of the Holy Grail, guided from out of heavenly mists by a host of angels.
At the beginning, the clear blue air of Heaven seems to condense into a mysterious vision, scarce traceable by the eye of supernatural yearning yet holding the enraptured gaze with a magic spell, in infinitely soft, but gradually more distinct in outline, appears the miraculous host of Angels descending slowly from ethereal heights, and bearing in its midst the sacred vessel. As the vision becomes ever more clear and clearer and hovers down towards the earthly vale, the sweetest fragrance well out from its wings: entrancing vapours stream from it in clouds of gold, seizing every sense with hallowed awe, and thrust into the beating heart’s profoundest depths. Now blissful pain, now delight awakened by the living enchantment… this feeling wakes again to the highest bliss as the holy sight draws ever nearer and when at last the chalice itself is revealed in all the wonder of reality and divine contents send forth sunbeams of sublime love like a heavenly fire, … the Grail pours out its blessing consecrating us to its knightly service; the dazzling flames soften down to a gentler glory, …then the benevolent host wings its flight back to heaven in tender joy, it has brought font of love into the world anew… in the clearest light of Heaven’s aether the radiant host melts and recedes into the distance even as it emerged before.
Beethoven’s 9th Symphony:
the first few minutes
(Surprise! the URL links I included jumped right to providing the actual YouTube videos! The marvels of a good computer program will never end!)
The Silmarillion Film Project
A possible scenario for the opening episode.
First we see Aragorn’s mother Gilraen fleeing for her life protecting her child accompanied by what is left of their forces as Arathorn II is defeated and killed in battle as was Harold Godwinson at Hastings. She flees with them to Rivendell and gives him the name Estel to hide his identity… There he grows up under the guidance of Elrond. And we see a brief montage of him as a boy taken in disguise to the great library of Minas Tirith, and to the Grey Havens where he meets Cirdan the Shipwright. There he first learns the sound of the Great Western Seas and Cirdan describes how they echo in their rolling waves a vast realm of time and beyond the world, to the far west. At last on his 20th birthday Elrond reveals to him his identity, his destiny and his lineage. He sees in the wood the first vision of Lady Arwen. But we do not now pursue the details of their meeting. His education requires more time. After serving many years against the orcs of the North and on the borders of Mordor, at age 49 he journeys to Lothlórien to meet Galadriel (and renew his bond with Lady Arwen who sojourns there). There what he has learned from the Great Writings the Lore of the Elves in Rivendell is taken beyond that history of their trials of the First Age and the history of Númenor in the Second. He is led now by Galadriel to her Mirror and she tells unto him:
You now will go beyond mind, beyond time and beyond space, to indeed before the very beginning of Arda. You will learn not from the writings, but as we all have learned, by experiencing what we all together learned to know to have happened for we have been granted by the Valar to learn of the beginning of things how all things came to be and why the things that are have become as they are.
She shows him her Ring and touches it to her mirror… it sets the waters rippling… then suddenly they become perfectly still and his consciousness passes into another greater reality.
He feels his mind and heart passing out of time and beyond space into an infinite void that contains no thing, but is filled with fields of surging energies. These seem to be the gatherings of stars like great galaxies of lights but are barely perceptible as entities but whose presence, whose perception of all things, is very palpable. They are waves of light that seem also to be like rolling waves of sound, but sounds that perceive… and it is as if he beholds the creative hands of Eru Himself Who is beyond all perception yet present and as His hands move so do the energies of light coalesce and begin to form patterns… They respond to and follow the barely perceptible hands and we sense the hands more by what they guide and move than as themselves. And the sounds rise and merge at one great command: Ea! Be! And these galaxies of light seem to be given forms of a sort and they perceive the physical world come into being.
And Aragorn thus begins to learn of the Valar who are these energies that are coalescing incandescences of light, more presences than physical, more eyes that behold than are beheld. And they join together in this great sea of sounds and begin to be the very sounds and we sense a great passage of time within an instant. And suddenly Arda appears in their midst forming itself out of the sounds, out of the Valar themselves. And so Middle-earth begins to take its shape.
Then as Arda appears we begin through their eyes to approach the emerging of Almaren, which will be a green isle in the midst of a great lake. And the Valar begin descend and appear there where what things are seen are so by means of their inner light radiating from within them until their hands hover in the form of two spheres, first one then another, to form the two Great Lamps that emerge from the spheres formed by what appear to be their hovering hands, even as the hands of Eru gently caressed the realm of Arda into being. And so the features of Almaren begin to emerge.
To understand just what the sounds might begin to be like… listen to the evolving, growing sounds of the opening passage of Wagner’s Ring, to the solemnity of the opening moments of his Parsifal, and to see how the Valar coalesce, listen to the prelude to Lohengrin which depicts in sound the vision of the crystallization of the Grail… and for the dramatic resoluteness of these events in sound listen to the opening bars of Beethoven’s first movement to his 9th Symphony.
The opening moments of Wagner’s Ring Cycle :
Parsifal prelude:
Lohengrin prelude:
In 1853, Richard Wagner wrote an "Explanatory Program" for the overture to his opera, Lohengrin, which he had completed in 1848. In his program, Wagner describes a vision of the Holy Grail, guided from out of heavenly mists by a host of angels.
At the beginning, the clear blue air of Heaven seems to condense into a mysterious vision, scarce traceable by the eye of supernatural yearning yet holding the enraptured gaze with a magic spell, in infinitely soft, but gradually more distinct in outline, appears the miraculous host of Angels descending slowly from ethereal heights, and bearing in its midst the sacred vessel. As the vision becomes ever more clear and clearer and hovers down towards the earthly vale, the sweetest fragrance well out from its wings: entrancing vapours stream from it in clouds of gold, seizing every sense with hallowed awe, and thrust into the beating heart’s profoundest depths. Now blissful pain, now delight awakened by the living enchantment… this feeling wakes again to the highest bliss as the holy sight draws ever nearer and when at last the chalice itself is revealed in all the wonder of reality and divine contents send forth sunbeams of sublime love like a heavenly fire, … the Grail pours out its blessing consecrating us to its knightly service; the dazzling flames soften down to a gentler glory, …then the benevolent host wings its flight back to heaven in tender joy, it has brought font of love into the world anew… in the clearest light of Heaven’s aether the radiant host melts and recedes into the distance even as it emerged before.
Beethoven’s 9th Symphony: