The Role of the Writer

LordOfTheRings

What changes had to be made from the original book to the screen play? 

• They had to make the female characters' parts bigger for the film. The gender balance wasn't acceptable to modern day audiences because times have changed. For example: the role of Arwen, within the book, is just a short poem. The writers enhanced her part and she became a main character in the film.

• They decided to take out some certain characters, in the book, out of the film because the writers didn't feel like they added anything to the plot. The story could progress with or without them. Tom Bombadil and Glorfindel were axed from the film in this situation

• For a lot of the writing process, they worked with the actors to create some parts of the script. The actors were told to do in depth character research to develop their parts and through conversation, the writers used the actor's knowledge to tailor the characters to the actors. This helped to make the final film performances more believable.

TheBigBangTheory

How does writing a scene for a series filmed in front of a live audience change how you write or re-write dialogue?

LOTR Screen Play

Unit 24.1 Lord Of The Rings Screen play adaptation worksheet
During the video of the adaptation of the Lord of the rings, take notes on the names of the roles below?

- Commissioning editors (Film and TV):
What do they do who do they work with?

They find new writers and commission work. They read the treatments and decide whether to take a project further or not. They basically sort the good from the bad.

- Producers:
What do they do who do they work with?

They literally do everything! They have to make sure things are in time and on budget. They are responsible for all the crew. The executive producer gives the film kudos (a well known name can boost audience interest).

- Directors:
What do they do who do they work with?

They have overall creative control of the film.

- Script editors:
What do they do who do they work with?

They edit the script so that the dialogue works and the whole story makes sense.

- Agents (Film and TV):
What do they do who do they work with?

They represent the artists and seek work for those on their books. This includes both actors and technical crew.

- Writers:
What do they do who do they work with?

They write it. Throughout the production, scenes were being written and re-written. The actors were allowed to give input.

- You also need to comment on the role of the writer throughout production (pre-production planning, script editing, director or producer involvement, shooting script production, page lock-down, adjustment during shooting stage).

To start, they turned the 3 books into 3x 90 page treatments. 

They had Miramax but they would only produce 1 film, so they looked elsewhere and got New Line on board for 3 films. 

They had to cut out some characters but gave their lines to others. 

Main production team: Peter Jackson, Fran Jackson and Phillipa. 

Everyone involved were huge fans of the books.

The females organised the mushy scenes and the guys organised the fight scenes.

It was filmed in New Zealand and Australia.

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