Fellowship Festival fan report

Thomas in Denmark writes:


Hello Carolyn.

I was lucky enough to attend the Fellowship Festival this weekend and meeting Daniel Falconer and listening in on his panels was one of thehighlights of my life thus far. He is so talented, so nice, so funny andsodown to earth! And being a self-proclaimed geek himself (he went to greatlengths to explain how he just sees "geek" as another word for"enthusiast") . I'm sure he enjoyed the whole weekend just as much as the rest of us.

Sadly his panels didn't exactly have the luck of the draw, and every single time he had to battle for attention with other very interesting activities like the Radio Play or Richard Taylors Orc mak-up sessions. But I did get to sit through the start of the elven armor panel and the entire "Secrets ofMiddle-earth" panel. Especially the latter really appealed to the nit-picker in me.

For an hour this amazing artist talked about how he and several other peopleat Weta (who were already huge LOTR fans before the project) did everythingthey could to make the movies as dense and complete as possible in relationto the lore in the books.Of course I'd already heard about the etchings on the inside of BernardHills breast plate and the frescos in the background in Rivendell that were there even though there were no chance of them showing up on screen. But as it turned out there are just layers and layers of this stuff all through the trilogy and in places you would never imagine! Carvings on shields telling Bayeux tapestry-like stories from the Silmarillion and similar attentions todetail never before seen on a movie production - all taking hours and hours to create only to be shown only briefly in the final cut or not at all.

It was all deeply fascinating and Daniel Falconer mixed fun and informationin a unique blend all through the panel, finishing off with a slide show with several of the crew cameos and proving that everyone in New Zealandreally DID work on LOTR, when he pointed to his wife's cousin in the background of the coronation scene in "Return of the King". Of course I got he autograph (quite a few more than I could have hoped for, actually) and a chance to talk to him one on one later, and he was still just this amazingly cool guy doing what he loved and enjoying to the fullest meeting people, who appreciated his work! What an amazing man!

Greetings,
Thomas in Denmark

Thomas & Daniel...long lost twins?? ;-)

Thanks for the report Thomas!