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Old 02-24-2008, 02:49 PM   #42
Brian Sibley
Haunting Spirit
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: London
Posts: 54
Brian Sibley has just left Hobbiton.
Quote:
Originally Posted by davem View Post
(davem scans his posts nervously to make sure he hasn't said anything bad......)

And in case anyone is uncertain, this is the real Brian Sibley. As I noted earlier I emailed Mr Sibley
Yes, davem, this is about as real as it gets!

What is intriguing is to read people writing about the radio series having heard it for the very first time! Anyway, here are a couple of responses/answers/amplifications...

Not surprisingly, many people commented on what they see (or hear) as being weak or ineffectual sound-effects but, of course, 27 years ago (before digital radio and THX sound) they sounded a lot better...

That is not an excuse - just a fact! It is like watching an old black and white movie and saying that it's not as good because it isn't in colour or that the back projection effects weren't very convincing... Any work of art (and I think the radio LOTR is that, wherever and however flawed) has to be viewed - or heard - with some regard to when it was created...

(But, for what it's worth, I never liked the eagle wings!! )

On the use of material from sources other than LOTR: these were all copyright-cleared with the Tolkien estate and included 'The Hobbit', 'Unfinished Tales' and 'Bilbo's Last Song'.

Maybe it was a mistake to include The Hunt for the Ring; I wonder whether people feel the same about the Gandalf/Saruman/Gwaihir scenes that (in the book) are not revealed until the Council of Elrond at Rivendell?

Appropriateness of voices: this is interesting - even in 1981, people wrote to me to say that actor 'X' sounded absolutely like So-and-so, whereas actor 'Y' was completely wrong! How much harder it is since the films which are now so strongly imprinted on everyone's mind that a lot of the Tolkien fan-art that I see is simply a version of the characters as seen in the Jackson movies.

On the question of whether Jackson could have told the story more fully: the answer is, surely, yes! It wasn't that Jackson had less time (he had almost as much as the radio production and many things can be shown quicker on film than in dialogue and spoken exposition); but he made choices - just as we did on radio - and his choices included long battles (over-long some might say!) and many invented scenes to develop the emotional/romantic relationships (the Arwen/Aragorn/Eowyn love-triangle) or to build suspense (like the warg attack and the faux Aragorn death); I think that some of those choices served PJ's story better than they did Tolkien's...

Anyway, thanks for all the new perspectives and apologies for whatever gaffs and errors you uncover - many of which I have lived with and longed to put right in the subsequent two-and-a-half decades!!

I hope people won't be too outraged when I say I was very surprised to discover that the radio series was on YouTube and, whilst I love the fact that people are still discovering this series, I am sorry that it is out there is a form that disregards the copyright interests of a lot of people including the Tolkien estate, the dramatists, composer, musicians and actors or their estates.

Still, thanks for a nice welcome and I'll try to comment from time to time when I've anything useful to say and if and when I can remember anything...
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