The Lamps

Alright, we are on to something. Now, I'm going away for a few days (to Kraków as it happens - but no, not to do research for a possible Lamp site) and might not be so active here. #SavetheLamps
 
Enjoy Krakow! (What a strange coincidence; I've never been there myself.)

I've been trying to think about what it would be like to have a completely static light source. Obviously, the position of the sun changes all the time, and there's only one of them. Two static Lamps is just....different.

The position of the sun in the sky is based on:
  • geographic location (latitude, longitude, and [to a lesser extent] elevation)
  • date (time of year)
  • time of day
The sun travels a slightly different path through the sky each day, which is related to the times of sunrise and sunset changing throughout the year, and the maximum height of the sun in the sky being higher in the summer than the winter. I'm going to give it some thought and see if the 15° idea is something I like or not.

This site can help with describing the motion of the sun for a particular location:
http://www.sunearthtools.com/dp/tools/pos_sun.php
 
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Well, just giving that some thought, it would make navigation a whole hell of a lot easier. The process of doing so is rather boring, so I'll skip it. There would be no night, so it would be a complete change to the ecosystem. Do you think there would be a certain amount of greenhouse effect, maybe? With no night to bleed of excess heat?

Tropics would be at the north and south of the world with a more temperate region in the center. Long shadows that increased as you moved away from a lamp would start to fade around the equator.

Means that Utumno can't be quite as extravagant an ice palace until after the lamps come down if we ever do show it.
 
Stationary light sources mean no moving shadows, no 'lengthening' shadows as the day goes on, no morning light, no evening light, no dusk, no nightfall, no dawn, no....no CHANGES in the lighting situation. Just, perpetual day, though in some places that 'day' is no doubt dim based on the far away, low-angle light from the Lamps. No seasons (so the passage of time seems timeless, like in tropical places).

Two lamps also *might* mean double shadows. Like so:
shadow-double-shadow-of-a-woman-1997.jpg


Part of this 'nothing ever changes' motif is perfect for Almaren, as the Valar would see the appeal. And part of it is frustrating for creating differences in scenes.

I agree that the advent of the Lamps would cause *vast* changes to the ecosystem - so, we grow some huge forests and see some new creatures, but also have a massive die-off (the Permian mass extinction event, going with our hand-waving real world prehistoric timeline). The Time of the Lamps would be the Mesozoic Era (the age of the Dinosaurs).
 
Here are our choices for angles for the Lamps:

Triangles-in-Combination.png


Certainly, they have to be at less than 45°, as they will appear impossibly tall/weirdly proportioned/too close at the higher angles. I think that somewhere between 15° and 30° will be visually appropriate - they can appear far away and tall, but not too tall. Focusing on the height/distance is wrong from a production standpoint - you focus on how they will appear from Almaren (or close up), and let the viewer guestimate the distances involved.
 
Here is what 15° Lamps on either side of Almaren would look like. The 'scale' will be determined entirely by the size of Almaren in this picture. The tinier Almaren is, the taller the Lamps must be....but the light is at 15° regardless.

15 deg lamps.png
 
Well, we are going to have some scenes where the camera is right near the lamps, so we would have to have an idea of how tall they were for scale model/set design purposes.
 
And here is what it would look like if the Lamps were at a 30° angle, as seen from Almaren. I don't think this looks any more ridiculous, but it is getting a bit....tall. I don't think we want to go any higher than this.



30 deg lamps.png
 
Oh, agreed - we have to choose a scale eventually. I just am pointing out that the proportions are rather independent of the distances involved - that could be 5 m or 5 miles, and the image I just drew would look the same. The Lamps could be knee-high in these pictures.
 
I agree that 30 degrees is probably the highest we would want to go. Also, at 15%, if we set the lamps a continent apart, we might not be able to see the pillars at all from Almaren due to atmospheric interference, just the lamps themselves. It would kind of eliminate having to worry about having these immense towers dominating the landscape in every exterior shot.
 
Looking at your pictures above MithLuin gives me the feeling that 30 degrees is a little too much. 15 is too low for me... Maybe 25 degrees will be perfect. Given the sizes we've talked about, how far does that put them from Almaren?
 
The script outline is already presuming taller lamps. However, I did bomb the Grrlz of Middle-Earth LOTRO stream, and got Trish to call out #SavetheLamps, so ... I think we might be making some headway.
 
In answer to your question, I'll give you distances from a central point based on different heights for the lamps.

Lamps Distance from Almaren
100 ft. 215 ft.
500 ft. 1073 ft.
1000 ft. 2145 ft.
1 mi. 2.15 mi.
10 mi. 21.45 mi. (See where this is going? 🙂)
25 mi. 53.91 mi.
75 mi. 161 mi.
100 mi. Guess.
450 mi. 965 mi.
1850 mi. 3967 mi. (About the distance they are in the text, assuming Earth and Arda are the same.)




Let's take a look at 15 degrees, for giggles.

100 ft. 374 ft.
500 ft. 1866 ft.
1000 ft. 3732 ft.
1 mi. 3.74 mi. (I know you're surprised.)
10 mi. Really?
25 mi. 93.3 mi.
75 mi. 280 mi.
100 mi. Just Stop...
450 mi. 1680 mi.
1075 mi. 4012 mi.


Honestly, I don't really have a problem going lower than 15 degrees, closer to 10 would be fine for me as long we put a valley between to avoid having to get the light over mountains.

100 ft. 567 feet
500 ft. 2835 feet
25 mi. 142 mi.
75 mi. 425 mi.
450 mi. 2552 mi.
700 mi. 3967 mi.



EDIT: Well, that doesn't look at all like it should. For those who want to try to boil their eyes reading all that, the first number is the size of the lamps, the second, their distance from Almaren.
 
Nicholas Palazzo said:
I agree that 30 degrees is probably the highest we would want to go. Also, at 15%, if we set the lamps a continent apart, we might not be able to see the pillars at all from Almaren due to atmospheric interference, just the lamps themselves. It would kind of eliminate having to worry about having these immense towers dominating the landscape in every exterior shot.
Click to expand...


I agree that just seeing the Lamps themselves and *not* the pillars from Almaren would be highly preferable. We want them to seem somewhat far away, but not so distant as to be lost on the horizon. Of course, in scenes that take place *at* the Lamps, the massive pillars would dominate the scene, with the Lamps themselves straight above and therefore out of sight.

We haven't described the terrain around Almaren too much yet, but unless it's a valley, I think that 10° would be lost on the horizon and partially obscured by natural features. So....not ideal, but possible. It gives us distance, but makes the Lamps look small and the light look like twilight.
 
Well, how the light would look would depend a lot on how bright the light was, and since we have light from both sides at Almaren, it might actually make shadows harder to discern.
 
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