LoTR Fan Film — The Hunt For Gollum 157
stevedcc writes "This weekend sees the release of The Hunt for Gollum, a Lord of the Rings fan-film. It'll be available on the web for free. The BBC are running an article about the making of the film, with a budget of £3,000 (spent mostly on costumes and make-up). There were 160 contributors involved, many over the internet." I hope it lives up to the trailer (linked from the BBC story); the finished film is approximately 40 minutes.
memoryhole supplies links to YouTube for both the full trailer and a second trailer. Reader jowifi adds a link to NPR's story on the film, writing, "NPR discussed the legality of this type of creation with EFF lawyer Fred Von Lohman, who said it's not clear if such a production violates the copyright for Tolkien's work."
Release date (Score:5, Informative)
Release date is May 3 2009 at 16:00 GMT.
Re:Seems like Tolkien is playing nice. (Score:3, Informative)
Though, in general, LotR should be public domain.
It is not a matter of opinion. Copyright is Life + 70 in the USA. Tolkien passed in 1973. In 2043, his work will enter public domain.
Re:Skeptical (Score:4, Informative)
And thus you expose your ignorance. /sarcasm
The Lord of the Rings was not a trilogy. That is all.
(Oh, and I don't have any trouble seeing what Jackson's films were based on. Perhaps you need glasses?)
Re:Skeptical (Score:1, Informative)
Yes! If you dont watch their movies, bbuy their DVDs & drink their Kool-Aid they sue you for downloading stuff, complain to governments and lobby them to pass stupid draconian laws that restrict your freedoms.
Re:Skeptical (Score:5, Informative)
This movie is based on a few lines in the appendix of LOTR that discuss Gandalf and Aragorn pursuing Gollum between the events of The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring. That's much less to go on than a whole narrative hundreds of pages long.
Doesn't mean it's going to be bad, just means that they don't have as much canon to work with.
Re:Not so clear. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not so clear. (Score:5, Informative)
Try using google, if nothing else:
Protection of Fictional Characters [publaw.com]
How can I tell if a character I have used is copyright protected? [chillingeffects.org]
And yes, aspects of them can be trademarked, too.
Re:Skeptical (Score:5, Informative)
There's more detail on the hunt for gollum in Unfinished Tales [wikipedia.org]. Still not a lot, to be honest.
The most interesting thing is the explanation of how Gollum escapes from Thranduil. Basically, Sauron had been unable to completely break Gollum - perhaps because of Gollum's hobbit heritage. So Sauron had let Gollum go, in the hope that Gollum would find his way to the Shire or Baggins - both names Sauron had got out of him, but both things Gollum didn't know the location of. So Sauron let Gollum go, but kept an eye on him.
Then Aragorn captured Gollum, just outside Mordor. Now, Sauron knew (from Gollum) that the One had been found, but he did not realise anyone else knew this. So he was now worried that Gollum's new captors would discover this information, and thus Sauron would lose an advantage. Hence he arranged for an orc-raid to capture or kill Gollum. However, Gollum escaped. There were also Nazgul in the area, searching for the Shire in the guise of black riders, so in terror of the orcs and the black riders, Gollum hid in Moria./p.
Re:Seems like Tolkien is playing nice. (Score:3, Informative)
Was he using the name in commerce as a source identifier for goods and services? No? Then it's not a trademark. And even if it was, he couldn't assert it against a boat unless he was selling Shadowfax-branded boats. Trademark doesn't give you "ownership" of a name or word. It gives you the right to prevent others from using it as a confusingly-similar source identifier for goods and/or services.
Bottom line, there's pretty much nothing Tolkein could do to stop somebody from naming his hydrofoil "Shadowfax." He doesn't own the word just because he made it up.