in thoughts...
Thursday, December 18, 2003
Inspiring Personalities...
heh, think my brother's finding me a pest during hols cos I always choose to use the Internet till late at night... which means I'll plonk myself down with my laptop on the sofa near my living room phone line (yes, still using dialup lah...), and cos my brother sleeps in the living room, at around 12 he'll start trying to chase me off... heh, just realized that I do that to my sister too..cos we share the room, and when I've got school the next day I'll chase her out, cos she always has the TV on when I want to sleep... haha.. oh well...
Anyway, when my bro couldn't chase me off to sleep on Tue he started watching the "behind-the-scenes" interviews for The Two Towers that came with the DVD he bought... and eventually I went offline and started to watch it together with him.. then my sister came over and we just watched it together.. realized that we haven't done this for a loooooong time... so my bro set up his mattress, we turned off the lights, and me and my sis just made ourselves comfortable on the sofa... in the end we watched till it was 1am plus, though my brother wanted to sleep earlier than that... haha...
Opps, I wanted to talk about inspiring personalities.. hmm, ok, here goes:
The LOTR movies are definitely in my list of favourite movies... because of the storyline, because of the acting, because of the music (I'm very determined to get the soundtracks, but I'm thinking they might just offer some 3-part soundtrack after The Return of the King, so I shall be patient and wait... haha) But it's truly inspiring how the crew works... and Viggo Mortensen has gained my utmost respect after I watched the interviews - for both Fellowship and 2 Towers... Let me just mention a few incidents that shows his inspiring personality...
Because shooting the trilogy is such a marathon and a drain on people's energy, it's very important to keep the morale of the people up... everyone matters - the actors, the producers, the editors, the camera men, the sounds people & the stuntsmen... so there was one time when he and a couple of others just thought of having a small "relax" session, looking at the sunrise and fishing and stuff like that, so he asked if the others mind if he asked the rest of the crew to come along.. So he asked, and by sheer power of personality, almost everyone turned up, and they had a small "party" that night... That was in the midst of a very tiring filming schedule... Think they were shooting the Helms Deep scenes, almost 3 months of night shooting, where they had to "fight" every night, running through muddy water, "killing" one another... about 100 stuntsmen, but they had to stand up and fight again after they "died" cos have to recycle, have to act as another Uruk-hai.. haha... so this was Viggo's way of keeping the morale up... and after watching that beautiful sunrise they had to start another day of work which meant that their day ended with another fighting session at Helms Deep... but still everyone willingly sacrificed sleep for a bit of fun and bonding...
All the stunts people admire and respect Viggo a lot, cos he really puts in 101% effort when he does his fighting scenes... and when shooting Helms Deep, he got hit across his face and this really big chunk of his front tooth fell out, but he was just like "Get me some superglue and we'll continue shooting!" haha... crazy guy.. but the director and others were quite freaked out and sent him to the dentist immediately... and Viggo's comment during the interview was that many stunts people get hurt worse, but they just continue, and it's only because he's an actor that they take more care and attention... The stunts people all commented that when they fought against Viggo, they felt as if they were really fighting - no acting there...You can see the respect the stunts people have for Viggo - it shows when they're interviewed to talk about Viggo; just look at their eyes and expression and what they have to say about him... and Viggo started this thing about banging heads with them - it was actually like a "fighting" move, but they just do it out of affection now, but Viggo likes to knock his head real hard with them.. and he's quite mischievous; insinuated this stuntsman to go bang his head against Orlando when he really didn't expect it... ;) He's like a kid, but he's so professional about his work...
and there's this scene when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli arrive at the field to find only burnt corpses of Uruk-hai and a few Orcs, and they thought Merry and Pippin were dead, so Aragorn kicks this helmet across and seems so much in anguish that he goes on his knees... actually Peter Jackson wanted him to kick the helmet far across the scene and try to aim over the camera... they took 4 shots and each time Viggo kicked further and further, closer and closer to the camera, so Peter Jackson thought he'd give Viggo another try and did a fifth shot, which is this one that's used in the actual movie - but this time Viggo didn't kick very far and added this part about going on his knees, really showing the grief and anguish... Peter Jackson thought it was a really good shot... after that they realized that for the fifth kick, Viggo broke 2 of his toes... but he changed that pain he felt to reflect the grief he's supposed to feel for the Hobbits... cool...
And for the various running scenes near the start of 2 Towers, where we see Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn running across large stretches of plains, hilly bits and all that - it was very inspiring to know that all 3 guys were shooting the running bits when they were wounded... Viggo with his 2 broken toes, Orlando who had broken his rib, and the standin for Gimli (cos needed to shoot a small little dwarf guy running behind Legolas & Aragorn, can't use the real Gimli) had a dislocated knee... but if they didn't mention it, looking at the way they ran, I could never tell... the level of professionalism... I salute them...
And Peter Jackson... through the interviews, they showed him working with all the different crew... and he never looked stressed... the crew said he never lost his temper... imagine that... working with so many people, juggling so many things, having to deliver such a big project, BUT NEVER NEVER losing the passion nor the vision of wanting to do a good movie and do justice to the book... it's amazing...
Though I hate it when movie makers do terrible things to the classics, somehow I think I might be more lenient regarding this trilogy, even if they do huge changes to the book... Haven't read the book yet.. only read a bit of part 2... but seeing their passion, I think can forgive also lah... ;)
Anyway, when my bro couldn't chase me off to sleep on Tue he started watching the "behind-the-scenes" interviews for The Two Towers that came with the DVD he bought... and eventually I went offline and started to watch it together with him.. then my sister came over and we just watched it together.. realized that we haven't done this for a loooooong time... so my bro set up his mattress, we turned off the lights, and me and my sis just made ourselves comfortable on the sofa... in the end we watched till it was 1am plus, though my brother wanted to sleep earlier than that... haha...
Opps, I wanted to talk about inspiring personalities.. hmm, ok, here goes:
The LOTR movies are definitely in my list of favourite movies... because of the storyline, because of the acting, because of the music (I'm very determined to get the soundtracks, but I'm thinking they might just offer some 3-part soundtrack after The Return of the King, so I shall be patient and wait... haha) But it's truly inspiring how the crew works... and Viggo Mortensen has gained my utmost respect after I watched the interviews - for both Fellowship and 2 Towers... Let me just mention a few incidents that shows his inspiring personality...
Because shooting the trilogy is such a marathon and a drain on people's energy, it's very important to keep the morale of the people up... everyone matters - the actors, the producers, the editors, the camera men, the sounds people & the stuntsmen... so there was one time when he and a couple of others just thought of having a small "relax" session, looking at the sunrise and fishing and stuff like that, so he asked if the others mind if he asked the rest of the crew to come along.. So he asked, and by sheer power of personality, almost everyone turned up, and they had a small "party" that night... That was in the midst of a very tiring filming schedule... Think they were shooting the Helms Deep scenes, almost 3 months of night shooting, where they had to "fight" every night, running through muddy water, "killing" one another... about 100 stuntsmen, but they had to stand up and fight again after they "died" cos have to recycle, have to act as another Uruk-hai.. haha... so this was Viggo's way of keeping the morale up... and after watching that beautiful sunrise they had to start another day of work which meant that their day ended with another fighting session at Helms Deep... but still everyone willingly sacrificed sleep for a bit of fun and bonding...
All the stunts people admire and respect Viggo a lot, cos he really puts in 101% effort when he does his fighting scenes... and when shooting Helms Deep, he got hit across his face and this really big chunk of his front tooth fell out, but he was just like "Get me some superglue and we'll continue shooting!" haha... crazy guy.. but the director and others were quite freaked out and sent him to the dentist immediately... and Viggo's comment during the interview was that many stunts people get hurt worse, but they just continue, and it's only because he's an actor that they take more care and attention... The stunts people all commented that when they fought against Viggo, they felt as if they were really fighting - no acting there...You can see the respect the stunts people have for Viggo - it shows when they're interviewed to talk about Viggo; just look at their eyes and expression and what they have to say about him... and Viggo started this thing about banging heads with them - it was actually like a "fighting" move, but they just do it out of affection now, but Viggo likes to knock his head real hard with them.. and he's quite mischievous; insinuated this stuntsman to go bang his head against Orlando when he really didn't expect it... ;) He's like a kid, but he's so professional about his work...
and there's this scene when Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli arrive at the field to find only burnt corpses of Uruk-hai and a few Orcs, and they thought Merry and Pippin were dead, so Aragorn kicks this helmet across and seems so much in anguish that he goes on his knees... actually Peter Jackson wanted him to kick the helmet far across the scene and try to aim over the camera... they took 4 shots and each time Viggo kicked further and further, closer and closer to the camera, so Peter Jackson thought he'd give Viggo another try and did a fifth shot, which is this one that's used in the actual movie - but this time Viggo didn't kick very far and added this part about going on his knees, really showing the grief and anguish... Peter Jackson thought it was a really good shot... after that they realized that for the fifth kick, Viggo broke 2 of his toes... but he changed that pain he felt to reflect the grief he's supposed to feel for the Hobbits... cool...
And for the various running scenes near the start of 2 Towers, where we see Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn running across large stretches of plains, hilly bits and all that - it was very inspiring to know that all 3 guys were shooting the running bits when they were wounded... Viggo with his 2 broken toes, Orlando who had broken his rib, and the standin for Gimli (cos needed to shoot a small little dwarf guy running behind Legolas & Aragorn, can't use the real Gimli) had a dislocated knee... but if they didn't mention it, looking at the way they ran, I could never tell... the level of professionalism... I salute them...
And Peter Jackson... through the interviews, they showed him working with all the different crew... and he never looked stressed... the crew said he never lost his temper... imagine that... working with so many people, juggling so many things, having to deliver such a big project, BUT NEVER NEVER losing the passion nor the vision of wanting to do a good movie and do justice to the book... it's amazing...
Though I hate it when movie makers do terrible things to the classics, somehow I think I might be more lenient regarding this trilogy, even if they do huge changes to the book... Haven't read the book yet.. only read a bit of part 2... but seeing their passion, I think can forgive also lah... ;)
posted by Sodium-squared at 12/18/2003 11:14:00 AM
<< Home