Session 5-21: Creative Commissions!

MithLuin

MithLuin

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The first Silm Film session of 2021 will be held on Thursday January 7th at 10 PM Eastern Time, and our focus will be on Creative Commissions for Season 5. This is the session where we brainstorm about how to portray various aspects of our show on screen, and set challenges to be met by our various and sundry listeners.

The main focus of the session will be on Music, but any creative work that you would like to 'commission' for the season is fair game!

Here are Corey Olsen's questions to get the conversation started:

What themes in Season 5 do we want to capture in musical themes?​
What themes from prior seasons do we want to incorporate or modify for Season 5?​
What should the theme of Men be? And will we have three separate but related subthemes like we did for the Vanyar, Noldor, and Teleri?​
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Session 5-22 will be held on January 14th at 10 PM Eastern, and will continue the discussion of Episode 2 and (hopefully) move in to Episode 3 as well. Please see the threads in the Script forum for those discussions.
 
Would this be a good point to bring up the fight choreography I made for Fingolfin and Maedhros in Season 4? I missed the deadline last time.
 
No, this is not the time to showcase creative work; this is the time to talk about new creative work we'd like to see for Season 5. It's a 'commissioning' session.
 
Musical themes: a love theme between Elves and Men? Howard Shore never develops a love theme for Aragorn and Arwen in The Lord of the Rings, he keeps using different ones (ie Aniron in Fellowship). I’d suggest an incomplete version for Aegnor and Andreth (symbolizing that they don’t get together), and this would not be heard in full until Beren and Luthien. This would then be reprised (with different instrumentation) with Tuor and Idril.
 
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Also bouncing ideas off for the Frame, since nobody’s gone to Harad in the books or films and would likely have a different sound than what’s been heard before.
 
Ange1e4e5 said:
Musical themes: a love theme between Elves and Men? Howard Shore never develops a love theme for Aragorn and Arwen in The Lord of the Rings, he keeps using different ones (ie Aniron in Fellowship). I’d suggest an incomplete version for Aegnor and Andreth (symbolizing that they don’t get together), and this would not be heard in full until Beren and Luthien. This would then be reprised (with different instrumentation) with Tuor and Idril.
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This is a good idea, to make the focus being the romantic love between the two races. Corey was very clear last season that he did not want a "theme that plays when people are in love". By making the focus the love between the two races, and more to do with the mingling of the races, this can be developed with the culmination being Earendil.
 
One idea that I had for a Musical theme: a theme of determination and will to go on, and it could change depending on the scene's circumstances.
 
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Emily said:
One idea that I had for a Musical theme: a theme of determination and will to go on, and it could change depending on the scene's circumstances.
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Hi Emily,
What scenes would you expect to hear this theme in? Is this something unique to season 5 or is this a general theme that could be heard in any season?
 
I am sorry that it is vague; I do not know much about musical themes. one scene that the theme could play is when the House of Haleth enters Nan Dungortheb. The theme is probably a general theme that can be played in any season.
 
One thing we will be discussing in the session..... well three things are the themes for each of the houses of the Edain. Corey will discuss which attributes we want to highlight. I am guessing that the theme for the House of Haleth may focus on the determination that Haleth possesses to take her people through such a dangerous place as Nan Dungortheb so we may get that "determination" sound you are looking for.
My question for everyone is what I said above, what attributes do we want to highlight for each of the three houses for musical themes.
Just to give everyone a refresher the themes for the three kins of the Eldar were:
  1. Vanya - their devotion to Manwe and Varda.
  2. Noldor - their excellence in crafting and the change to weaponisation and military might.
  3. Teleri - the waves of migration across Middle Earth as they tarried and became fragmented.
 
Since we’re patterning at least some of the score from Howard Shore’s work, I’ve also been thinking about instrumentation since Shore seemed to characterize the races by instrumentation; the Hobbits are represented by woodwinds and violin while Isengard is in low brass and clanging percussion (anvil or brake drum).

In our case, the House of Beor could be woodwinds, maybe a harp (would be rather apt since they’re close to Finrod who is skilled in the harp), the House of Haleth, who lives a more rustic life from the get-go, have violins and flutes, and the House of Hador‘s theme ha a more fanfare-like sound since they’re the most militaristic culture.
 
Ange1e4e5 said:
Since we’re patterning at least some of the score from Howard Shore’s work, I’ve also been thinking about instrumentation since Shore seemed to characterize the races by instrumentation; the Hobbits are represented by woodwinds and violin while Isengard is in low brass and clanging percussion (anvil or brake drum).

In our case, the House of Beor could be woodwinds, maybe a harp (would be rather apt since they’re close to Finrod who is skilled in the harp), the House of Haleth, who lives a more rustic life from the get-go, have violins and flutes, and the House of Hador‘s theme ha a more fanfare-like sound since they’re the most militaristic culture.
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It's important, I think, that the three themes have elements at least that can work together. How better to establish the building blocks of the Numenorean theme, which will follow the kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor, and perhaps even touch Aragorn's leitmotif.
 
Aragorn may need to give up his Hope theme when his true name and heritage is revealed. There is scope for a new theme to be developed in S6.
As to Numenor, I have already started to think about a theme for "the Land of the Gift" in isolation, so I may need to draw in elements from the Edain themes as they are developed.
 
The theme of the season is the changefulness of Middle-earth, and characters' reactions to that. So, it might be cool to have an elven-based 'resistance to change' and a human-based 'embracing change' pair of themes.
 
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