Script Discussion: S02E09 - Suddenly Silmarils

Draft Outline

Season 2 Episode 9: The Silmarils - More, Greater, and Better

Protagonist: Fëanor
Conflict: The Noldor seek to surpass themselves. Ominous foreshadowing ensues.

Teaser: Fëanor is visiting Míriel's body in Lorien. He turns, and sees Melkor standing there staring at them. Fëanor is startled, not happy to see him looming over his mother's body, so addresses him brusquely. Melkor says something about how it is so sad that it came to this, and if only someone could prevent such things from happening in the future. Fëanor's response is very dismissive of Melkor's abilities.

Frame: Arwen explains to Galadriel that it's difficult for her to understand why someone would choose to go to Valinor when it's a place she's never seen. Hearing about how great and wonderful it is can be all well and good, but... Galadriel suggests there is a way for her to see Valinor and judge for herself what the greatest days of the Noldor looked like.

Act 1
1. The Naming Ceremony of Amrod and Amras. Maglor is providing the music for his brothers' ceremony. Comments among the gathered Noldor about 7! children, and (perhaps) a reference to the 'Fated' aspect of their names? This gathering is a good opportunity for background stuff and introductions - Mahtan being proud of his seven grandsons, Maedhros and Fingon hanging out together, etc. After the brief ceremony, Fëanor notices one of the children running around with gleaming golden hair, catching the mingled light of the Trees beautifully. He approaches her and asks her for a lock of her hair, demanding and expecting to get what he asks for. The 10-year-old girl denies him, and tells him off, basically saying that it's her hair. Fëanor is very surprised that a child would deny him, but her father Finarfin laughs, saying he got himself into that.

2. Sometime later, Finwë is looking into the palantir that Fëanor gave him. We see him looking at various locations in Middle Earth, but he sees landscapes, not people. He tells Fëanor that it's an ingenious device, but he can't find his friend Elwë anywhere. Fëanor seems uninterested, and informs his father that he's moved on to a new project now.

3. Noldor workshop haven in Tirion. We see Irime working on some delicate glass-blowing, and various other craftsmen diligently working away. Melkor enters the workspace, offering praise and commendation to everyone. When he gets to Nerdanel, he offers advice on her current project, making it clear that they have spoken many times before and are comfortable with each other. Melkor asks about Fëanor's current project, and Nerdanel says he's working with light. Melkor seems enthusiastic about this, saying that light is a great medium to work in. Melkor asks what materials he's using, and makes a few suggestions of different materials that will work.

Act 2
4. Celegorm is hunting with Oromë and Huan, and asks what the forests of Middle Earth are like? Oromë waxes poetic about the wonders of Middle Earth, and all the things there that are different (like seasonal variations).

5. Melkor is talking with the Noldor of Tirion, and he is also talking about Middle Earth. He speaks of the dangers, but also the wide open spaces, and implies that the Noldor are brave and strong enough to face those dangers. His audience is those Noldor young enough to have been born in Valinor, and only have heard of the Journey through Middle Earth from their parents. If there is a voice to discount any of what is said, it's Rumil.

6. Fingolfin and Finarfin have a conversation about how concerning it is that the Noldor are so quick to look down on the Vanyar and the Teleri. {What more in this scene?}

7. Nerdanel visits Fëanor in his private workshop. He acts a bit secretive, shutting down the apparatus when she walks in (oh, it's only you). He complains about interruptions damaging the delicate work he is doing (like opening the door of a photography dark room, and ruining all the light-sensitive film). He explains to her that his project is capturing the light of the Trees. She tries to repeat Melkor's advice, and he shuts her down immediately, saying he doesn't need advice from that megalomaniac. He mentions that this will be his greatest project.

Act 3
8. Frame: Galadriel shows Arwen her Mirror, and then we see a montage of noontide of Valinor, including the Trees, young Galadriel running around with some kids, Fëanor in his workshop, Oromë, a glimpse of Tol Eressëa (but without people).

9. Fingolfin reprimands Fingon for the amount of time he spends with Maedhros. Aredhel is there listening. Fingolfin makes a sword with Melkor's knowledge/advice. [?Ringil]

10. The other artisans ask Nerdanel where her husband has been; no one's seen him in awhile. She makes excuses for him, but is obviously concerned. When Melkor speaks with her, he sympathizes with her concern, and makes the point that working yourself that hard never leads to anything good and that letting your work consume you is dangerous. He would know.

11. Nerdanel tries to get Fëanor to take a break, asking him what the rush is (the Light of the Trees will still be there tomorrow) and he retorts that she doesn't understand what he's doing and knows nothing about it. She feels that is unfair, as he won't explain. He tries to explain that he is very close to a breakthrough, and that if he steps away now, it will all fall apart.

Act 4
12. Aredhel joins Celegorm and Curufin on a hunt. Huan greets her happily, making it clear she has spent time with them before. She mentions the upcoming wedding of her older brother.

13. Fëanor emerges from his workshop with the silmarils on his head, and accidentally walks into Turgon's wedding. Everyone is shocked and awed by him. Fëanor is more gaunt and haggard than he was before. The light of the silmarils are like the light of stars...because they are essentially these tiny mini-stars, not really 'gems' at all.

14. A messenger from the Valar (Thorondor?) arrives summoning Fëanor to Valmar. We then see Fëanor showing the silmarils to all of the gathered Valar and elves, and Varda hallows them. Fëanor announces that these are his greatest work, but he'll never again be able to achieve this. Everyone is very excited, but Nerdanel looks worried, seeing what toll this project has taken on her husband. Melkor meets her eyes and shares a concerned look with her (the cause of his unease is left ambiguous).

Tag
Frame: Arwen's reaction to what she has seen in the Mirror. 'The Trees were more lovely than I imagined,' but also it was a little bit...all the same? Galadriel recognizes that Arwen's heart is in Middle Earth.


Things to work in - more build up with Fëanor's workshop. Him refusing meals, getting upset with people trying to enter or disturb him as that ruins everything and he has to start over. Does he work in darkness? I feel we covered the ideas of his obsession being combined with a feeling of 'so close!' as well as his ambition to surpass the achievements of the Valar.

We didn't really talk about how we would get to the point of making swords, just that it has to happen.

This episode now showcases the palantiri and the Mirror of Galadriel before we get to the Silmarils. It's going to be easy to upstage them, so we really have to sell the buildup and audience anticipation there to make this work.

Anything else?
 
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Sorry I couldn't make it guys, Thanksgiving weekend I was cooking for 18 people so I had to defer my little macabre celebration of the death of Fidel Castro

I actually woke up on time (mostly not hung-over!) but I felt like death and I have a lot going on this holiday season, so I figured I better bite the bullet and get some sleep. As usualy, you guys have done perfectly well without me. We should see about schedule some of those supplementary chats to work on world building, maybe? Or should we just wait until next year?
 
Good work guys! I like the low intensity which gives the feeling that something really bad is going to happen, you've got a lot of small things there that will grow but so far it isn't clear in what way. Things don't look predictable. Nice. I also like the way you make the palantiri look, they don't seem particularly useful or interesting.
 
ouzaru said:
We should see about scheduling some of those supplementary chats to work on world building, maybe? Or should we just wait until next year?
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There are definite advantages to getting to this sooner rather than later. For instance, for this episode, what do these 'workshops' look like? Does each house have a workshop space incorporated into the design, or is it more detached like a garage or basement space? OR, is there a region of Tirion where all the elves have their workshops, organized by trade, and completely separate from the family/living/home spaces? [Like the lowest level of Minas Tirith or something.] Is there a metal-working district, a fabric district, etc? Are items placed out for sale, or is everything gift/barter in this society? This becomes relevant, because we want to show Fëanor doing something unique and unusual by locking himself up alone in his workshop, and it would help the scriptwriter to understand what is envisioned. Similarly, we have a *lot* of ceremonies on screen in this season, and we don't want them all to look alike, so differentiating between the 'family parties' and 'formal state' celebrations of the elves will be helpful. Is a Vanyar wedding different from a Noldor wedding?

But, it's also true that we are currently a few episodes behind the execs, and we're nearing the end of the season here. Also, Christmas Eve and New Years Eve are Saturday nights, so we won't be meeting then. So, if we manage to get Episode 10 in next week (Dec. 10th) and Episode 11 in after that (Dec. 17th), we still won't be able to get to Episode 12 until January 7th (even though the Hosts are discussing it on Dec. 16th) and will finish up Episode 13 on January 14th at the earliest (while the Hosts will likely get to Episode 13 on Dec. 30th). So, at the current time, our focus needs to be on getting our Script Outlines complete, polished, and submitted to the Execs so that we can 'greenlight' the script-writing process for any interested parties. They have some end-of-season business to attend to (like casting and a review of creative efforts by Bre and Philip), but they will likely be eager to move on to Season 3 as soon as possible. We don't have a deadline yet, but chances are they won't inform us of the deadline until it is upon us, so....best to stay on top of this.

All of that is just to say that we will have to save the supplemental world-building chats for the gap between seasons 2 and 3 (while the Execs are dealing with creative overview topics), and will have to see who is interested in having that chat and what can be discussed. I think an agenda or list of topics in advance would be extremely helpful, as it's not based on a particular episode and 'elvish culture in Valinor' is too vague for planning purposes. But in the meantime, we can have a thread here on the forums with that topic, to get input and get the conversation going, so that when we do have the chance to plan a discussion in a month or so, we're ready for it.
 
I was going to suggest the same as Marie, that we do some world-building during the time which would be the "off-season" since a lot of Season 3 will be taking place in the same space as Season 2.
 
I really do have to read over the Laws and Customs to try to remember what we know about things like Naming Ceremonies and weddings/engagements.
 
Oh lord, the video quality is quite poor. I had a suspicion it would be when we kept having trouble understanding each other. I need to get my tablet up and running before next weekend. Anyway, I have a couple of segments rendering. Hopefully I can get the rest done in shorter order than last week's session.
 
Gratuitous Hamilton references:

"Talk less. Smile more. Don't let them know what you're against or what you're for." ~ Melkor

"Take a break!" ~ Nerdanel "Why do you work like you're running out of time?" ~ Company

"When all is said and all is done, Fëanor has ideals; Melkor has none."

"Must be nice....must be nice....to have Finwë on your side." ~ Fingolfin and Finarfin

😀
 
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Yay for computers! I agree that they make writing *much* easier. (One does not compose long treatises on a phone, nor does one write lengthy stories on an ipad, unless one is a masochist.)

It turns out we have 2 choices for Noldor naming ceremonies to open this episode with.

Essecarmë was a ceremony announcing a child's father-name shortly after the birth, and kin from both sides of the family would be invited to attend.

Essecilmë was a ceremony taking place when a child was about 10 years old (keeping in mind that elvish children don't reach full-grown until 50 or even 100 years, this is still quite young) in which they could choose the name they wished to be known by. This chosen name was considered private and would thus be used by family and close friends, but not be the name used in the history books or by strangers.

So, do we want newborn twins or 10 year old (read: physically more like 4 years old) twins at this ceremony? And do we want it to be twin-centered or Fëanor-centered?

Keep in mind that the audience is not going to be very sympathetic to Fëanor losing himself in his project if that means leaving his wife to raise twin infants on her own (though presumably there is a household and a bunch of older brothers to assist).

Personally, my preference is for a Essecilmë ceremony, because it's my understanding that they both choose Ambarussa 😛
 
MithLuin said:
Personally, my preference is for a Essecilmë ceremony, because it's my understanding that they both choose Ambarussa 😛
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Mine, too! Not only because that is absolutely adorable but... if these two are so close they literally wish to be called the same thing, are so identified with each other... how horrific is it going to be when one of them dies, leaving the other bereft? *evil face*
 
I've reread 'the Shibboleth of Fëanor' in The Peoples of Middle-Earth (HoME 12) to make sure we're getting the names right.

This is also where we get the story about Fëanor asking Galadriel for a tress of her hair - but he's supposed to ask 3 times, and then afterwards Galadriel decides he is her unfriend forever. (Yes, Tolkien invented unfriending long before the internet, but he used it as a noun, not a verb) So I think we have trivialized the story a bit, but I can't really see any way for us to have him persistently ask her on screen. The 'version' of Galadriel here works well for me, though, so definitely worth reading.

And, yes, in this version of the story, both twins choose to go by Ambarussa. Their father-names are Pitya-finwë (small-Finwë) and Telu-finwë (last-Finwë). Important to note that Fëanor knew that he and Nerdanel were done having children at this point. All of Fëanor's sons chose to go by their mother names, with the exception of Curufin - Curufinwë was also Fëanor's father-name, so he's named after his father regardless, but his mother name is....Atarinque, Little-Father.

This is also where we get the version of the ship-burning where the youngest twin dies, and it's recorded as Ambarussa asking 'Did you wake my brother Ambarussa first?" And when the truth comes out, he laments that his brother's name was Umbarto all along. In this version, Nerdanel's estrangement from Fëanor seems to occur during the rebellion, which is where we're putting it, so that's good.


In general, I do like this version of the story that we get in these later writings. I'm not such a fan of the Lost Tales versions, as you get a lot more people just being stupid there, whereas the later versions have more tragedy to them. I realize that Corey Olsen prefers the earlier writings, and is not such a fan of the later stuff, so he's willing to incorporate a few details, but mostly we'll find our common ground with the published Silmarillion.
 
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