Script Discussion S05E11

An Introduction to Elvish is actually a solid starting point for learning about Tolkien's languages. Yes, more information has become available since then, but you won't go too far wrong using that resource. If you'd like to double check, I can recommend the Internet site Ardalambion as a good resource for getting started.


Based on that, I would start with the final vowel. In this case, an 'e'. That should change to an 'i' in the plural.

So, Athrabeth --> Athrabith

(Like certh --> cirth)

For non-final 'a', you change the vowel to 'e' in all occurances. So, you now get:

Athrabith --> Ethrebith

(Like Adanadar --> Edenedair)
 
MithLuin said:
An Introduction to Elvish is actually a solid starting point for learning about Tolkien's languages. Yes, more information has become available since then, but you won't go too far wrong using that resource. If you'd like to double check, I can recommend the Internet site Ardalambion as a good resource for getting started.


Based on that, I would start with the final vowel. In this case, an 'e'. That should change to an 'i' in the plural.

So, Athrabeth --> Athrabith

(Like certh --> cirth)

For non-final 'a', you change the vowel to 'e' in all occurances. So, you now get:

Athrabith --> Ethrebith

(Like Adanadar --> Edenedair)
Click to expand...
 
That works for me. Actually to my Australian ears, 'Ethrebith' sounds like how a New Zealander would pronounce 'Athrabeth'. Thanks for the website info.
 
Okay, so a brief preface.

The Athrabeth is friggin' great. The end gets me every time, I have cried like thirty times trying to get this episode written reading and rereading the Athrabeth.

It is, however, something like 20 pages of prose. And I, being a coward, decided the best plan would be to incorporate it more or less wholesale into the script and attempt to whittle it down once the episode was written around it.

Which means the script is 99 pages at time of this writing.

So! We are looking for feedback and suggestions for cuts! I have largely avoided rewriting the Athrabeth up to this point except to make it plug in appropriately to the rest of the script. I will feel less personally responsible for massacring Professor Tolkien's work if we can make this stage of the revision a group project. :p Nor is what I have written free from trimming or other critique! Take some time and make whatever suggestions come to mind so that we can bring this bad-boy into the neighborhood of 50-ish pages (the frame is entirely absent, as I did not feel I knew enough about the frame to properly integrate it; this will be done at a later date). Thanks for your efforts in advance, and I hope you enjoy this behemoth of a short film script. :p Thanks everybody!

docs.google.com

SilmFilm Season 5- Episode 11

docs.google.com docs.google.com
 
I’ll have a go this weekend - I read Athrabeth again last week (and also cried at the end). I will never let go of the sheer emotional impact of the first time I read this and got to the end part - I had shivers all over.
 
I can see that Nick has gotten out the slasher on the script. Would you like me to have a go as well? I have a feeling that we can capture the essence of the Athrabeth without needing the full dialogue. I can see in places where some of those themes are worked into the conversations with other characters, which will help too. Also scenes with Fingolfin (eg the first one with Cirdan) read a bit too dialogue heavy I think.
 
Ilana Mushin said:
I can see that Nick has gotten out the slasher on the script. Would you like me to have a go as well? I have a feeling that we can capture the essence of the Athrabeth without needing the full dialogue. I can see in places where some of those themes are worked into the conversations with other characters, which will help too. Also scenes with Fingolfin (eg the first one with Cirdan) read a bit too dialogue heavy I think.
Click to expand...

Anyone can suggest edits, which @ouzaru can choose (or not choose) to incorporate. Given the length of the document, we'd appreciate any help you can muster.
 
As you read through the Google doc, you can suggest edits or leave comments in the margin. Either can be very helpful to Brian as he goes through making his edits. If you delete text that is there, it will appear as a strikethrough, so others can still read the original, but see what it would look like without that text. And you can type in your own suggested dialogue, which will appear in a different color. To leave a comment, simply highlight the text in question and click the blue plus box on the right of the page. Our goal is to have this document in a finished state by Tuesday (by which I mean Wednesday Australia time), so we can pass it along to Corey Olsen and Dave Kale before their podcast this week.
 
I've gone through the Finrod/Andreth scenes and done some fairly ruthless pruning of the dialogue. Please feel free to accept or reject anything I've suggested. It pained me to do this editing because I LOVE the Athrabeth and I know that Corey does too, but we can't fit this much dialogue into the episode and I'm worried that our hypothetical viewers will find the metaphysical part of the debate a bit hard to follow. So I've tried to cut dialogue were things veered too much into metaphysical territory and tried to keep the skeleton of the debate intact. My reading of the structure of the debate is:

1) Finrod Misunderstanding about whether Death was there from the start for Atani

2) Andreth Misunderstanding about how Elves think of death and their own end.

3) Discussion of metaphysics leading to Finrod’s theory of Atani as the inheritors.

4) Discussion of the coming of Eru into ARda and the role of Estel and Amdir in Men and Elves.

5) Bringing it back to the present and the anguish of Andreth about Aegnor failed relationship.

I think that 1, 2 and 5 are the most important to keep for our story. But I don't think we need to go into the detail of separation and unity. This was clearly a big deal for Tolkien and something he was working through in writing this debate late in his own life. I'm Jewish, so what I've called part 4) of the debate I find a bit alienating because of the strong Christian overtones, which given Tolkien's own theological perspectives and personal faith, is completely understandable. So I have suggested keeping part of (4) as you can see from my edits.

I think viewers will find the pathos of Andreth's grief even stronger because we have shown their doomed relationship, so we can appreciate where Andreth's bitterness comes from in a way that reading the Athrabeth for the first time, I had NO IDEA that the personal part was coming.
 
Good point. And Earendil’s story is part of the culmination of Elves and Humans crossing paths. In SilmFilm I feel the Athrabeth should be setting up season 6 rather than running through the whole development of Finrod’s philosophy.
 
Ilana Mushin said:
I've gone through the Finrod/Andreth scenes and done some fairly ruthless pruning of the dialogue. Please feel free to accept or reject anything I've suggested. It pained me to do this editing because I LOVE the Athrabeth and I know that Corey does too, but we can't fit this much dialogue into the episode and I'm worried that our hypothetical viewers will find the metaphysical part of the debate a bit hard to follow. So I've tried to cut dialogue were things veered too much into metaphysical territory and tried to keep the skeleton of the debate intact. My reading of the structure of the debate is:

1) Finrod Misunderstanding about whether Death was there from the start for Atani

2) Andreth Misunderstanding about how Elves think of death and their own end.

3) Discussion of metaphysics leading to Finrod’s theory of Atani as the inheritors.

4) Discussion of the coming of Eru into ARda and the role of Estel and Amdir in Men and Elves.

5) Bringing it back to the present and the anguish of Andreth about Aegnor failed relationship.

I think that 1, 2 and 5 are the most important to keep for our story. But I don't think we need to go into the detail of separation and unity. This was clearly a big deal for Tolkien and something he was working through in writing this debate late in his own life. I'm Jewish, so what I've called part 4) of the debate I find a bit alienating because of the strong Christian overtones, which given Tolkien's own theological perspectives and personal faith, is completely understandable. So I have suggested keeping part of (4) as you can see from my edits.

I think viewers will find the pathos of Andreth's grief even stronger because we have shown their doomed relationship, so we can appreciate where Andreth's bitterness comes from in a way that reading the Athrabeth for the first time, I had NO IDEA that the personal part was coming.
Click to expand...

The biggest problem I have with ditching the "unity" issue is that is strongly connected to the "deliverance" of Arda, which is Finrod's major motivation for his conflict with Fingolfin in the dinner scene. He fears to lose the Edain specifically because he believes there is more to plumb from that relationship and he does not want to see them all die because they'll have to find new men and develop a new relationship, and even then there is much Andreth seems not to know, so there's no guarantee that new men will have access to the information the Edain do. Will this is not, strictly speaking, a requirement for the fulfilment of what Finrod hopes for, it is something that he would like to explore further. I'm not sure that we can find as compelling a conflict for that scene, and since it's kind of the crisis moment of the script, we would have to figure out a new conflict in pretty short order before Thursday next week. I'm inclined to leave the 5 parts of the Athrabeth where they are for now and see what the EPs say before we go hacking the core conflict of our episode out to replace it with ??????
 
Brian, I know you are inclined to keep the Athrabeth in its entirety. :p But we're at 88 pages, so elements of it do have to go. I agree that hacking out a central point of conflict would be problematic. However, there are 'tangents' that Finrod and Andreth discuss that do not have to happen in this episode. Let's remove those elements and 'pare down' the metaphysics to essential points only.

For instance, Andreth doesn't speak well of the Valar, because they did not extend any invitation to Men. Finrod posits that the fate of Men is beyond their control. But...do we need to talk about the Valar at all here?? The Valar are not what the debate is about. Finrod can make his point about direct knowledge...but then we are done with that. We can figure out what elements of the metaphysics we absolutely need....and let the rest go. It's true that in Tolkien's text, one point leads to another and they all connect, but...we are not keeping the full text.
 
ouzaru said:
The biggest problem I have with ditching the "unity" issue is that is strongly connected to the "deliverance" of Arda, which is Finrod's major motivation for his conflict with Fingolfin in the dinner scene. He fears to lose the Edain specifically because he believes there is more to plumb from that relationship and he does not want to see them all die because they'll have to find new men and develop a new relationship, and even then there is much Andreth seems not to know, so there's no guarantee that new men will have access to the information the Edain do. Will this is not, strictly speaking, a requirement for the fulfilment of what Finrod hopes for, it is something that he would like to explore further. I'm not sure that we can find as compelling a conflict for that scene, and since it's kind of the crisis moment of the script, we would have to figure out a new conflict in pretty short order before Thursday next week. I'm inclined to leave the 5 parts of the Athrabeth where they are for now and see what the EPs say before we go hacking the core conflict of our episode out to replace it with ??????
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Fair enough - but perhaps we can adjust the language so that it is clearer that this is what Finrod is arguing without a deep discussion about Hroa and Fea, which I think are going to go above viewers heads at this point. Long term watchers of the program will understand the music and Eru from season 1, but there has not been much discussion about this since then. Tolkien was not writing the Athrabeth for readers who knew the Ainulindalë because it hadn’t been published at that point. I’m in favour of keeping Finrod’s notion of deliverence, because as you say, it presages Ëarendil.
 
I spent some time yesterday working out if there was a way of dramatising at least part of this debate to cut down on the dialogue -but didn’t come up with anything. I guess given Finrod’s gift for telepathy, he could be representing some of his understanding visually, but that may be too opaque for viewers. Perhaps that would be a way to help with conveying Finrod’s hope for the future would be to show it visually with voice over.
 
I think we can lose explicit reference to the Valar without too much trouble; I think my hesitation to do away with references to them stems from their lack of presence in the book, which is less of an issue in our adaptation, I believe, and therefore irrational.
 
Ilana Mushin said:
I spent some time yesterday working out if there was a way of dramatising at least part of this debate to cut down on the dialogue -but didn’t come up with anything. I guess given Finrod’s gift for telepathy, he could be representing some of his understanding visually, but that may be too opaque for viewers. Perhaps that would be a way to help with conveying Finrod’s hope for the future would be to show it visually with voice over.
Click to expand...
There is a little bit of this in the episode already, although I don't necessarily think we are invited to think it is a depiction of telepathy, rather artistic license driving home a point. I don't want the episode to be full of it, but I think it will bear some more additions; to be honest, I'm a little disappointed in how very rooted in regular prose my screenwriting seems to be, I don't have enough fluency with the language of cinema to be super creative with adaptation, and I think this episode really shows it. Any suggestions for locations and content of such dramatizations?
 
I think the Athrabeth conversation after the feast with Fingolfin (currently sitting at pages 60-67) needs some heavy adaptation work.

This is in many ways the heart of the Athrabeth, so I do not want to tear apart at it, slashing ruthlessly. And yet, at the same time, I think it could use a *lot* of amendment. Not merely to make it more concise, but also to focus the discussion of hope.

Finrod opens with asking Andreth's reaction to the happy vision of Arda Healed he shared with her earlier. The first two pages of the scene are Finrod waxing poetic about the role reversal of Elves and Men in this future paradise, while intercutting with Fingolfin's departure.

Then, Andreth throws cold water on it. Nice dream, but that's not the reality here and now, is it? How would we ever get there?

Now we are ready to talk about hope, and Finrod can define Amdir and Estel. This is not new to the audience; it's a 'refresher' - Estel was described in Season 1, as it is Aragorn's name as a child, and 10-year-old Estel is a main character in our Frame. And in Season 4, Finrod and Turgon discussed Amdir and Estel when they had their visions from Ulmo. It's fine for Finrod to define terms for Andreth, but I wanted to point out that we have already been over this ground before. Keep the 'defining terms' part as to-the-point as possible.

Andreth counters with the 'flight in a dream' language, stating that what Finrod calls Estel must be vain hope, since it is not based on reason, and it is not something Men have. We then get into the 'Old Hope'.

Screeeeeeching halt. How about... no. Prophesying the incarnation of Jesus Christ is not a thing we ought to be doing in our Silm Film script. Yes, I am well aware that Eru entering into Arda someday is in the original. But that is not the story we are telling - we are *never* going to deliver on that hope, and so it will look like Andreth is right and it is a false hope. That *does not work* in this adaptation! The Messianic Hope of the people of Bëor is...Eärendil. Let's prophesy *his* coming! They came to Beleriand seeking 'the Light in the West'. Let's use that as the Old Hope. The Old Hope that, someday, the mortal Men would reach the uttermost West and be mortal no longer, having seen the primordial light that shines there without blemish....an escape from Death. Finrod has mentioned the light of the Silmarils in his vision of Arda Healed, so it can fit. They have discussed how Andreth thinks that mortality is not natural to Men.

Andreth can still claim that she does not believe that this will ever happen, but it *will* - and so estel will prove true. That is a rather important aspect of Estel...it cannot be disappointed, despite the fates of individuals. The audience, seeing the whole story, will know that the hope was not in vain, even if they had to wait many generations for it to come to fruition. Even if the tale of Beren and Lúthien and the tale of Eärendil are only in part a realization of this hope.

I realize that this will cut out a good deal of the conversation about Eru and the Valar, and will require rewriting to keep any of the original content. I am fine with making some conjecture about what Eru's role in bringing about Arda Healed might be, but mostly simply trusting that Eru *does* have a plan, rather than articulating how that might come to pass. I know that is frustrating, but I think it a very important step in the adaptation process. If it is a choice between retaining a clever reference to the incarnation of Eru as a Man, or maintaining the truth of the estel hope....well, I think it is clear which I choose.

We discussed the Old Hope at 2:06:32 in the original script discussion for this episode.
 
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