Season 4 Casting Call

Haerangil said:
Well, we don't even know yet if we're gonna use him, or if he is Maia or man.We were just throwing around some ideas... perhaps the entire fall of man thing will not be told in pictures at all.
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That’s a shame. And I had the perfect guy to play him.
 
So far, I have:

Main Storyline
  • Adult!Idril
  • Ecthelion
  • Glorfindel
  • Glaurung
  • Rog?
  • Fankil?
  • A sibling (or two) of Celeborn
Frame
  • Gandalf
  • Balin
  • Thranduil
  • Legolas?
  • Bard
Can someone please help me with this?
 
OK adding what I can think of:

Main Storyline
  • Caranthir
  • Adult!Idril
  • Ecthelion
  • Glorfindel
  • Glaurung
  • Orodreth's wife (Meril?)
  • Annael
  • Rog?
  • Fankil?
  • A sibling (or two) of Celeborn
  • Celeborn's parents?
Frame
  • Gandalf
  • Balin
  • Thranduil
  • Dain Ironfoot
  • Legolas?
  • Bard
  • Bard's son and/or wife?
  • a Raven?
  • another Dwarf? (Bombur? a woman?)
 
Faelivrin said:
OK adding what I can think of:

Main Storyline
  • Caranthir
  • Adult!Idril
  • Ecthelion
  • Glorfindel
  • Glaurung
  • Orodreth's wife (Meril?)
  • Annael
  • Rog?
  • Fankil?
  • A sibling (or two) of Celeborn
  • Celeborn's parents?
Frame
  • Gandalf
  • Balin
  • Thranduil
  • Dain Ironfoot
  • Legolas?
  • Bard
  • Bard's son and/or wife?
  • a Raven?
  • another Dwarf? (Bombur? a woman?)
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I forgot about Caranthir. Whoops. But yeah, we should have Annael as a leader of the Sindar in Mithrim, would give Fingolfin and Fingon someone else to talk to since there doesn’t seem to be anyone there in that portion of Beleriand until Men, specifically the House of Hador, show up. Dain Ironfoot could be in the Frame. As for another Dwarf, maybe Gloin, considering that in the books he reappears in the Lord of the Rings?

Siblings of Celeborn: perhaps a brother (whose daughter marries Dior) and a sister who lives amongst the Sindar/Silvan in Mirkwood with Thranduil? I don’t say we need Celeborn’s parents, he can make up his own mind about who he marries, right?
 
Well I want his parents alive for other reasons than giving him permission to marry, :p. But that's a discussion on another thread.

Gloin would be a good tie-in to the LotR, and is probably living at Erebor.... although at the Council of Elrond he and Legolas seem not to have met before. Hm. Well not everybody at the party have to actually meet each other.
 
We will need Dain for sure, as he is king-under-the-Mountain, and we wanted Balin for Moria aspiration reasons. There will of course be other dwarves present in the Frame, but we are not likely to 'introduce' them or have them be named characters. I'm not saying there's no opportunity for a glimpse of Gloin, just that we wouldn't be likely to cast him for the role at this juncture. The Frame is ~5 minutes of screen time per episode, and thus over the course of the season, we accumulate enough for a single episode. So, when you think of named characters with dialogue in a one hour episode...you don't want to go too overboard with the Frame. The fact that we already have Thranduil, Bard, Dain, Gandalf, Bilbo, Balin, Celeborn's sister, and possibly Bard's son Bain and maybe even Legolas means...we're getting pretty full.
 
Will Thorondor be a speaking role? We should probably have that conversation at some point.
 
MithLuin said:
Will Thorondor be a speaking role? We should probably have that conversation at some point.
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I think so; the Eagles talk in The Hobbit and presumably in The Lord of the Rings, why not Thorondor, who is the greatest among Eagles? Plus, he doesn’t have the “only talk thrice” rule that Huan has.
 
Fingon at some point, at least during the longish flight back to Mithrim, is going to say "Thank you. What are you?" Surely he responds with words instead of "skaaa." It's one thing for the audience to guess he has some association with Manwe, and another for Thorondor to name himself and say why he and his people were sent to Middle-earth. Also it may take words for this gigantic bird out of nowhere to first tell Fingon not to shoot Maedhros.

He will also have conversations with Turgon, although not this season.
 
Yes, I would think we would want a talking Thorondor, but I'm not sure if we've had that conversation yet. There was a lot of pushback about a talking Ungoliant (once she was in spider form), and she clearly has important dialogue, so I didn't want to make any assumptions about Thorondor. I imagine we will discuss Thorondor when we get to the commentary session on Episodes 1&2, which is currently on schedule to be (roughly) Feb. 22nd. So, if we get the green light for a talking Thorondor then, we can include him as a speaking role for casting this season.
 
Why would the hosts want to get rid of all conversations with Ungoliante and Thorondor? Just because they aren't humanoid?

It's going to be difficult to tell Turgon what happened to his father, or that Hurin has come knocking, just using charades. Without hands.
 
To be clear, the Hosts *don't* want that. There is, however, an issue with depicting talking animal-shaped creatures on a semi-realistic live action show without it looking silly. They may decide to depict Thorondor's interaction with Fingon differently. Or, we may have a talking Thorondor. We'll see.
 
I remember a chipmunk who tried charades in a film. He was... incompetent.

 
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The way to depict talking animals well (in live action) is you don't paste animated human lips on their faces. It should work especially well for birds since some kinds of real birds "talk" understandably with their beaks. A raven or parrot's limit on imitating human speech is its intelligence and its control over its lungs and larynx, not its beak.

We're going to have outright plot holes if Huan isn't allowed to talk.


Edit: That chipmunk isn't even a realistic animal. It has human facial muscles, opposable thumbs, and some kind of shapeshifting.
 
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Faelivrin said:
The way to depict talking animals well (in live action) is you don't paste animated human lips on their faces. It should work especially well for birds since some kinds of real birds "talk" understandably with their beaks. A raven or parrot's limit on imitating human speech is its intelligence and its control over its lungs and larynx, not its beak.

We're going to have outright plot holes if Huan isn't allowed to talk.
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He has to talk, it’s one of the most notable things about him that he can only talk thrice in his life. We don’t need to have him speak until Season 6, I think.
 
I'm merely pointing out that we'll need to confirm a talking Thorondor at some point in the near future. I am not saying that we can't have other characters talk.
 
Faelivrin said:
The way to depict talking animals well (in live action) is you don't paste animated human lips on their faces. It should work especially well for birds since some kinds of real birds "talk" understandably with their beaks. A raven or parrot's limit on imitating human speech is its intelligence and its control over its lungs and larynx, not its beak.

We're going to have outright plot holes if Huan isn't allowed to talk.


Edit: That chipmunk isn't even a realistic animal. It has human facial muscles, opposable thumbs, and some kind of shapeshifting.
Click to expand...
He is a holdover from an animated universe.
MithLuin said:
I'm merely pointing out that we'll need to confirm a talking Thorondor at some point in the near future. I am not saying that we can't have other characters talk.
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True. But it would be more practical to have them talking from a storytelling, behavioral and tonal perspective. How serious can you be with an eagle trying to tell you something without using their lips and trying to use their wings?
 
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An addition: Eldalote is the most prominent Elf that will be put under the Spell of Bottomless Dread.
 
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