Timing

Haakon

Administrator
Staff member
Our executive Three have been discussing the project as something that will go on for almost 40 years. This obviously effects casting. Especially since we have a frame which ties actors to being a certain age at two quite different points in time. The actor playing Elrond this year will not look as young as he does today when he is "called back" in 2055. We could of course say that all scenes that include that actor will be "filmed" in 2016. Technically it's also possible to film someone who we cast as Aragorn in 2050 (who probably isn't born yet) and cut the film in a way that makes it look like they were filmed on the same day. But is this desirable?
This is perhaps just an example of the kind of problems that comes with time moving on that we haven't really discussed. And are there other unseen problems here? What kind of casting problems can we see connected with the passage of time? Let's try to find them, and solve them.
 
Well, as impossible as it is, I would say that the best way to go about it is plan everything ahead rigorously, and film everything as concurrently as possible, especially scenes with the Valar. For anything that is impossible to do that with, we'd have to have the original actors do their lines on green-screen, then if possible have them come back to do the scene so that the younger actors have somebody to play off of.
 
So we should specify the year of casting - for example, we might say "Varda is Lucy Liu in 2016".

The thing is, if we're filming people on green-screen, we are open to the possibility that we use their acting even if they happen to die before they appear in later seasons. But then, that is almost like using already dead actors. Or should we recast if actors pass away?
 
Well...in reality, the casting of a TV show consists almost entirely of unknown actors/actresses, and our casting has a lot of big-name actors in very minor roles. Essentially, our casting would only work if they were all very hungry for work ;).

So, from that point of view, I'm not too concerned. You pick an actor/actress, and then people know what you intend for the character to look like. It allows the costume people to know info like height/build/coloration when designing.

If the actor ages over time, so be it. If the actor dies, so be it. Recasting a different actor 15 seasons later is fine. I don't think we have to invest too much thought in how to preserve a particular actor in a particular role. We will have human characters go from young to old over the course of a season, eventually. Obviously we're going to cast someone different for teenage-Hurin-in-Gondolin than for the actor who will be Hurin later.

I do think it would be helpful to (eventually) have a complete cast list, including which seasons/episodes the character will appear in.
 
Well a list is a good idea. Were do we put that list? (I would start a thread or something but I have no idea (except from what was said on Twitter) who were chosen in the poll.
 
I guess we could incorporate it into the script outlines? List of characters at the beginning of each episode? We would likely miss some of the people in the background, but it would be a start. And then keep a master list....
 
Yes a list in the beginning of each episode plus a master list would be good.
 
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