The Hunt for Gollum - Highly Anticipated LOTR Film

Hi Everyone-

Ron suggested that I post this over here as well. I feel it's appropriate for this section due to the scale of the work, as well as the thousands of hours of energy and time spent by the cast and crew on making this film. One thing I will make clear is that this score was composed as a collaboration between me and my co-composer Adam Langston. We wrote a great deal of music for this film. In reality, much, much more than makes it into the final cut, (though you will be able to hear some of it on the soundtrack album when it is released).

Here's a little information about the film:

The Hunt for Gollum is a 40 minute Lord of the Rings fan film of very high quality and production values and tells the story of Strider's, (Aragorn's), search for Gollum prior to the majority of events in the Lord of the Rings. This film has been hotly anticipated for a while, with many news outlets giving us coverage:

NPR: High-Def 'Hunt For Gollum,' New Lord Of The Fanvids

BBC: Making Middle-earth on a shoestring

Entertainment Weekly: 'The Hunt for Gollum': How awesome is the new trailer?

More BBC: TH4G on BBC Look North

Also, I was interviewed as part of the most recent Tracksounds.com Podcast, (which also features some of Marius' music as well). For those of you who don't know, Tracksounds is one of the biggest soundtrack/soundtrack review websites out there, and has interviewed everyone from Howard Shore and Brian Tyler, to Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams. For those of you interested in checking out my interview here's the Link.

Anyway, The Hunt for Gollum represents the culmination of years of effort on the part of the Director and Crew, and is definitely something you should check out.

As far as the music goes, I won't break down which cues I did and which ones I didn't do, but I will say the the score is a pretty even mix between my music and my co-composer Adam Langston's music. (We split it up like JNH and Hans Zimmer split Dark Knight, I wrote for Gollum and Adam wrote for Aragorn). I just finished watching it myself and I will say that if you can set away 40 odd minutes to watch this film, you will not be disappointed.

For those of you questioning the legality of this film, in truth, we're in sort of a gray area on this one. Our director, Chris Bouchard, has met with representatives of the Tolkien estate and they have signed off on the project, saying that as long as we stay true to the material, and don't profit off the film we will be OK and lawsuit free.

I hope you enjoy the film! I worked on the score for around three months, and I am very happy with the results.

The Hunt for Gollum Website

Direct Link to HD version of Film

There is also a making of/behind the scenes video available up on the website which features another interview with me, in case you would like to learn more about the Music behind The Hunt for Gollum. For those of you interested in downloading Adam's and my score to the film, a soundtrack album will be available very soon on the film's website for a free download.

Enjoy!

Well this is all great, the movie looks incredible and the music sounds fantastic but the problem is this is a music composition website and a major work (of music) section and you simply have no music to post because the only listenable music apparently is in the trailer of the movie. Since you are the composer, don't you have loose mp3's of the works or something we can listen to? Otherwise I can't justifiably see how this thread would belong here.

I should note that I really like your personal site though, very professional, clean and effective. How much was it?? $$

There will be a soundtrack album out soon, and available to download for free from the film's website. But, as this is a film score, it is more about the music and its place/function/appropriateness in the film than it is about the music on its own, correct? I was hoping more people would watch through the film to get a better idea of the music within the context of the film, and then comment from there. The film is only 40 minutes long after all...

One thing I do realize, and I did make this comment to Mike about this post, is that up to, and including, this point, YC doesn't have a precedent for including Film Music in the Major Works forum. Most people are just writing incidental/soundtrack-esque music to imaginary scenes or short films and posting the tracks in the Incidental/Soundtrack category. Since this film is about 40 minutes long, with a fair amount of music throughout, it might help to establish a precedent for future submissions of film music, (and the films that the music belongs to), to the MW category.

After all, film music and film, (also game music and games [couldn't leave you out Marius!]), go hand in hand. It seems silly to me to try to accurately critique film music outside of the context of the film that it belongs to. Even some of Williams', Goldsmith's, Korngold's, Rosenman, Raskin's, Hermann's, etc. etc. etc., film music doesn't hold up outside of the context of the film that it was written for.

Once the soundtrack album is released I'll make sure to let everyone know.

Requiem: The site is $99 a year for 2 GB of hosting and unlimited bandwidth. The only problem I'm having with it is that the design tools that came along with the site building material only have really crappy looking Mp3 players. If anyone out there has an Actionscript 3 mp3 player, or could design one to my specifications, I'd be more than willing to pay for it.

I think the orchestration was a bit too simple at times, one major example that comes to mind is the fight scene with the multiple orcs. It really could have done with more oomph and a musically fatter orchestration. I just felt like there was too much open air in the music to be the emphasis of a battle scene.

I really missed hearing any recurring motives. There may have been some, but none were memorable enough for lightbulbs to go off in my head. It seemed like perhaps you were trying to be a bit too Howard-Shore esque and lost sight of it? Forty minutes is plenty long enough to develop and few motifs.

Overall I really commend you on many things. The general audio mix was great, the choice of when to have and when not to have music was spot on, the general mood created by the music was fitting, the instrumentation of most of the cues was appropriate, it all fit the vibe and time period of the movie.

One last thing I'll critique is that some of the devices you use to achieve certain moods are a bit cliche(ie. the high strings during pause moments of the orc battle scene). You can get away with them, but its the little creative nuances you put in that really distinguish your music from say, Howard Shore's. I'm not saying get rid of the high strings, I'm more saying embellish upon them somehow to make them unique and fit into the musical entity as a whole.

Overall, it was a good movie, although the best actors were the orcs :P You're music certainly got the job done though, you're well on your way.

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to let you guys know that the soundtrack has been made available to download for free off the website...finally. You can either go check it out at The Hunt For Gollum Movie Website or click here.

EDIT: For those of you interested, according to this News Release, the Hunt for Gollum was the number 4 most viewed film in America the week it was released, trailing only behind Star Trek, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and some Matthew McConaughey film.

Andy

I forgot to add a comment in here.

I was very dubious about this at first. I thought there was going to be copywrite issues, etc, but once you showed me that there were none, I was anxious to get this work placed in MW.

Congratulations on all of the acclaim this work has brought you and everyone else connected to it. I am a huge LOR fan and have read the books numerous times.

The music fits so well to this and continues the feel of the first 3 movies.

Very well done

Ron

I really enjoyed this. I agree with Ron above, I was a little sketchy about this at first, but as a LotR fan, I was able to fall right into the story of the movie. I actually wound up completely immersed in the movie, and ignoring the music completely, which is a compliment to your work which fits perfectly with the moods and there was never a moment where your music pulled me out of the story, or anything out of place that caused me to tune into the music and be distracted while watching. I literally watched it a second time, listening to the music specifically after watching it as a complete film the first time.

I like the aspect of multiple composers writing individually for specific characters. It gives an enhanced mood and yet completely different perspective to each character, and the music does so much for the overall mood of the movie. And yet, there is no obvious change of style as can easily happen when 2 composers collaborate. It was all seamless. Well done on the whole thing.

That's SO NICE!

I didn't know there's a thing called "the hunt of Gollum"

The music is as it should be, Slick and on the spot!

Great stuff!

Ricardo Gidon

Dude, you go to UCI! I grew up on campus, since my dad's an engineering professor there!

Gollum the filthy creature LOL!

Anyways I thought the film was boring.

Peter Jackson did such a greater job!!!

I think this is enough .....

I do agree with you. Those are the most effective way