Impact of the proposed Amazon Project on the Silm Film Project

What's next for the Silm Film Project?

  • Ignore Amazon's project. TV show? What TV show? Continue with Season 4 of SilmFilm as planned.

    Votes: 6 42.9%

  • Restart Riddles in the Dark to focus on Amazon's project while Silm Film goes on hiatus for a time.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • SilmFilm leaps ahead to the 3rd Age, covering LotR seasons before returning to Season 4

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • SilmFilm continues with Season 4, but with sporadic breaks for 'reaction episodes' to Amazon's show

    Votes: 7 50.0%

  • *keeping my fingers crossed for Corey Olsen's direct involvement in the Amazon Project*

    Votes: 7 50.0%
  • Total voters
    14
  • Poll closed .
MithLuin

MithLuin

Administrator
Staff member
As Corey Olsen outlined in the Dec. 1st session of the SilmFilm project, we have some choices to make regarding how to move forward with this news of Amazon's newly announced TV show.

One possibility is that Prof. Olsen could become involved as a consultant for the project. If that were the case, he would obviously not be allowed to comment privately on the material in a podcast. I do not know if that is something with any possibility of happening, but, you know, IF.

Another possibility is that he, Dave, and Trish could restart the 'Riddles in the Dark' podcast to comment/speculate on the material. There are several reasons that would not be ideal. Corey Olsen's podcasting schedule is already rather full; he's booked, and can't add something else. So, if they were to do that, something else would have to give, and it would likely be SilmFilm project. But more importantly, what would be the fun in commenting on someone else's adaptation of the material to a TV show when that's what we're doing ourselves?

So, a third possibility is that we could leap ahead to 'Season X' and cover the material Amazon plans to before they get to it as part of the Silm Film Project. As of now, the scope of the project has not been announced. We are guessing that Amazon intends to start with some sort of 'Adventures of Thorongil' LotR prequel material, but that's merely speculation at this point. This would certainly have the potential to bring new blood into the project, as those interested in the Amazon TV show would not necessarily have been interested in Silm Film. The disadvantage, of course, is that we would lose the linear progression of the project, jumping ahead to the Third Age rather than going to Season 4 (start of the First Age). We would leave Maedhros hanging on that cliff for a really long time!

A fourth choice is to ignore the Amazon project for a time, and then to do sporadic after-the-fact commentary (Mythgard class style).

What are everyone's thoughts? Do you have preferences on how the Silm Film project continues after we complete Season 3?
 
I don't think there's enough yet to advocate for a "Riddles in the Dark" style show, and I certainly don't want SilmFilm to go in hiatus! But once shows actually, you know, start airing, if they're not absolute garbage than reaction shows could be fun and insightful. And if they are garbage, cathartic.
 
I think the only reasonable short term action is to continue as if nothing had changed. Reassess when we learn what material will be utilized in the other project.

If it is indeed "Amazon's Adventures of Thorongil", then when we get to the late 3rd age in 2035 we ignore it the same way we are ignoring the PJ and Bakshi and Rankin-Bass films already.

Meanwhile, we can sacrifice some airtime in the occasional SilmFilm session now, while Amazon is in pre-pre-pre-production. If it ends up being too big of a time commitment when there is more regular content to discuss, then we can look at moving it to a different venue (or putting this project on hiatus, or whatever has to happen).
 
Ange1e4e5 said:
So Corey Olson is directly involved in the Amazon project?
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NO.

But, you know, maybe he could be? They will likely have some consultants. For instance, Michael Drout has given input to LOTRO, and David Salo provided elvish and dwarvish translations for Peter Jackson's films. And even the Bakshi film hired Peter Beagle to help with the script. So who knows?
 
I very much hope you do not really consider to stop the SilmFilm Project for an Amazon project - SilmFilm is far too awesome for that!
This was my initial reaction and I still would like SilmFilm to go into season 4. However, having thought a bit more about it I have to say that jumping forward and doing the Aragorn stuff before amazon does it seems actually a cool idea!
 
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I agree that we should just go on with Silmfilm. Reaction shows could be great but I don't think much will happen in the next year, so we would probably be into season 5 when it's time to think about such things.
I was kind of surprised by Corey's and Dave's point of view that we should jump ahead to young Aragorn as a preemptive move and that Corey said specifically that he didn't want to wait and see what the Amazon project is going to be about. I can't remember their exact reasoning there, but I recall that I wasn't convinced by it.
It's a pity that you can't vote for more than one alternative in the poll, though... I'd love to see Dr Olsen as a consultant for Amazon, but I couldn't vote for that.
 
The current SilmFilm Project should definitely keep going, but it'd be nice to have discussions about what Amazon is doing as well.
 
For those who did not hear the Dec. 1st podcast, you can hear Dave, Trish and Corey's discussion of this here:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/signumu.ou...ilm_20171201_SilmFIlm-Season-3-Session-11.mp4

Starting at 5:30 and continuing to about 31 min.

For the record, none of them seemed terribly interested in a speculation version of Riddles in the Dark II, but would perhaps welcome someone else taking on that project within Mythgard.



Also, as of right now, we do not know the showrunners, content or expected air date of the Amazon project (which was only announced last month). So, it is possible that more information coming out would sway our choices. We don't have to actually decide until we finish Season 3, of course, which will not be until late April/May at the earliest. But I wanted to provide some feedback for the Execs to know what everyone's thoughts are right now, what options we like, could live with, or would actively dislike. That will help them in making this decision.
 
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I would prefer to see the SilmFilm continue. Like Ange1e4e5 I find the First Age more interesting (and less explored!) than the Third. I would rather ignore the Amazon project, and don't want to work up high expectations about its quality.

If Prof. Corey Olson did somehow get involved in it, would he have to stop SilmFilm?
 
Faelivrin said:
I would prefer to see the SilmFilm continue. Like Ange1e4e5 I find the First Age more interesting (and less explored!) than the Third. I would rather ignore the Amazon project, and don't want to work up high expectations about its quality.

If Prof. Corey Olson did somehow get involved in it, would he have to stop SilmFilm?
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Not necessarily, though we might have to do a bit of dancing in the frame stories, since those are actually in the time periods Amazon can work with.
 
I passed on the poll results to the Exec Team, and let them know that everyone here on the messageboards seemed pretty set on continuing with Season 4 of Silm Film when Season 3 comes to an end. They discussed this briefly at the beginning of Friday's session.

Dave Kale warned us that while that may be true, the Exec Team is pretty interested in considering the possibility of skipping ahead to cover material before Amazon gets to it, and it seems inconceivable to Corey Olsen to simply ignore Amazon's project. So, we will likely revisit this topic in the future. We'll likely finish up Season 3 around May, so we will see what is happening then.

For anyone who is disheartened by this, I seriously suggest you find someone else who wants to do a full-blown podcast about the Amazon project and have that person pitch it to Corey as being under Mythgard's umbrella. He's maxed out, but that doesn't mean there's not room for other, related voices. That might not be enough to settle the issue, but it really ought to help.
 
That does certainly seem to be the consensus here! But I know that both Corey Olsen and Dave Kale seemed keen to tackle the Third Age material before Amazon got a crack at it. So, we'll see what they decide at the end of Season 3.

I have to admit that my own interest in this project would decrease significantly if we jumped ahead in time. But no doubt there are people out there who would be much more interested if we had The Adventures of Young Aragorn as our main story, who knows?
 
MithLuin said:
That does certainly seem to be the consensus here! But I know that both Corey Olsen and Dave Kale seemed keen to tackle the Third Age material before Amazon got a crack at it. So, we'll see what they decide at the end of Season 3.

I have to admit that my own interest in this project would decrease significantly if we jumped ahead in time. But no doubt there are people out there who would be much more interested if we had The Adventures of Young Aragorn as our main story, who knows?
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So why do they want to tackle the Third Age? Do they not like the Silmarillion?

I must agree with you that my interest would be damaged if the Adventures of Young Aragorn usurped The Silmarillion as the main story. It’s called the Silmarillion Film Project for a reason. Besides, I’m looking quite far ahead to the Great Tales; Of Beren and Luthien, The Children of Hurin, and The Fall of Gondolin.
 
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