Filmmaking experts

dietlbomb

dietlbomb

Member
Despite the imaginary unlimited budget for the SilmFilm project, there are inherent limitations of film as a medium on storytelling.

The show is hosted by three experts on literature, but nobody with experience making (or even criticizing) films. I suggest finding someone who has dealt with the challenges of editing, tone, lighting, sound design, visual style (tough to capture on a podcast), but especially pacing and directing, to appear periodically on the show to provide some sort of gut check to keep the filmmaking dimension of the project plausible.


Note: I am not that guy. I know nothing about making films.
 
I'm an aspiring screenwriter/producer that's currently working up to production on a short film I wrote. I'm no expert, but as I have time I'd love to help out with more of a filmmaking slant!
 
I am by no means an 'insider', and I have never worked on a 'Hollywood' film set. I do, however, have a film degree and have worked on many smaller projects for work and school.

The main problem with discussing stuff like editing, pacing, light and sound, etc. is that all of this on a film or television set is up to the director. Even on a television show like the Silm Film project is being planned as, each episode is in the hands of that episode's director.

Each television show does have a showrunner(s) who is the captain of the collective ship, so to speak. The showrunner is in charge of collective consistency despite diverse direction. Currently Prof. Olsen, Dave, and Trish could be seen as the Silm Film showrunners, but since there are no plans to go into actual production, in depth discussion on the podcast would be largely irrelevant. This is what the forums are for anyway. So if someone here were to write a script, and someone interested in directing wanted to "direct" that script, they could conceivably gather a team and map out the episode in detail.

But while podcast discussion is (I believe) largely meant to discuss pre-production, this is not to say that nothing about speculative production should be talked about during the live sessions. In fact some of the topics for certain episodes will have to be discussed and already have been discussed (visualizing magic, overall tone, special effects.)

I do think it would be fun to have somebody come onto the show periodically and (as you put it) gut check us with production/post-production realities on certain topics (while being fully aware that our work is ultimately speculative and not meant to be reality.)
 
We do have plans to have film people on from time to time. We've just begun, so it might be a bit, but surely we'll have at least one someone on during Season 1.
 
I am planning to exploit my wife's professional network. The challenge, of course, is that the groups of working film professionals and Silmarillion readers are both quite small, so their overlap is even smaller!
 
davekale said:
I am planning to exploit my wife's professional network. The challenge, of course, is that the groups of working film professionals and Silmarillion readers are both quite small, so their overlap is even smaller!
Click to expand...

The true reason to get married, so you can exploit your spouse to have guests on you're niche podcast =p

And tell me about it, I NEVER encounter other film people who are knowledgeable when it comes to The Silmarillion. I spent way more time defending Tolkien's writing back in college (people who complained about how the text of Lord of the Rings was boring and too description-heavy..... D=), so it's not just a matter of a lack of interest, but active disinterest. I've only found other artists thanks to the internet, but they're not film artists. The only person I've encountered offline, who wasn't indoctrinated by me, was my roommate back in school who was a writing major (we'd have long discussions about Glorfindel; it was great).

I did meat one of the main concept artists for the original Lord of the Rings trilogies about two years back, and he seemed nice enough that you could probably get him on, but his expertise are environment paintings, so I'm not sure how well that will tie into plot discussion.

I think a good bet is to find a professional in the industry who is knowledgeable about something like screenwriting and then have them on to more give a lesson on screenwriting and then ask them questions that could help out with approaching the project, or something like that.
 
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