Elf Fantasy Fair 2009 - Lecture
On sunday, the Elf Fantasy Fair's second day, Mark had a so called lecture where fans could ask him questions and he could talk about his work Lord of the Rings and other things. Starry was wonderful enough to make a transcript of this - which must have taken hours!
Mark: "We're ready... is it better with mic or not the mic? Two one one one, that's better. I'll use the microphone? Yep? Hi, everybody! How're you doing? Well, it's great to have you here. Um, I need to get a photo of you guys later (points towards some brilliantly dressed people in the audience) I've taken one yesterday? Oh good. Um, welcome to my talk though I've really no idea what I'm gonna talk about today, because we've only got about twenty minutes. If you've got any questions, please fire away and I can start by giving a broad over view of my involvement in the film. You all remember my fabulous performance in the film. No, you don't, hah! (laughs) That's nice of you to say so! I filmed in the first plot in the prologue and I shot for two months in and around Mount Doom which in New Zealand is Mount Ruapehu which is a volcano and every couple of years it erupts. (more people walk in) Please, come in, please, please! We were just filling time until you got here. (laughs)
Um, and basically in the original... I don't know how many of you know the Silmarillion back stories of Gil-galad, obviously the king of the elves, you know. In the film, it looks a little different, it looks like Hugo Weaving, who I went to drama school with, and he is my herald, all [...] who saw those opening battle scenes, Gil-galad is the king, okay? It is HIS army, all of those elves belong to Gil-galad, he's the it guy. Elrond, he is basically my herald, I don't know whether the word would be "my secretary", he goes and makes the coffee, does all of that for me, but um, it doesn't quite appear like that. Now that reason for that, now there's a little, some industry gossip, is that New Line Cinema wanted the whole prologue gone, they wanted the trilogy to start with the birthday party, Bilbo Baggins' birthday party. That's what they wanted to start with. Peter wanted the whole prologue, which ran, in and up to all of it, ran in for about ten or twelve minutes, because he really wanted to give you the back story that this whole epic history had a start that was well before the actual opening of the trilogy. There was a little heated discussion between the two groups and what they ended up with was a compromise which unfortunately basically got rid of me. So I had to sacrifice myself in the same way that Gil-galad sacrificed himself in the battle, which is where he goes in the battle with Sauron and umm... I don't win. Sauron actually wins. But it's through the battle with Gil-galad that Sauron is distracted and the finger is chopped off. And because - I don't know if you know a lot about elves?
Elves in battle, it's basically the only way they can die. They are immortal beings unless they die in battle. And this is something that didn't quite come up through the film, is that, especially when the elves come back returning to fight at Helm's Deep for the humans, it is an ENORMOUS sacrifice that they make, to go into battle for humans, because if they die in battle they lose their immortality. So, that wasn't quite featured in the film, it's an enormous decision for those elves to make, to actually go into battle on behalf of someone else. And in the original script there was many many scenes of Elrond and Haldir discussing it and "why should we fight for these people" who they don't particularly like or think were particularly bright and Elrond [...] "it is now their time, they are moving forward and we are passing" and so on and so forth.
So, filming was... now this is [...], shhh... you can't tell anyone, absolute chaos. When you actually see the finished product, when we were actually filming it, it is almost unbelievable that it looks as good as it does. Because when we were filming it, umm... I don't know how much you know about, Peter was filming multiple locations at the same time with a fleet of other directors, with a fleet of crews working at very different locations. He would sit in one place - and this is absolutely true - and have up to six monitors in front of him, while he's directing one scene, all these other monitors are being fed through to him of all the other locations. Ha! And that is how he directed a lot of the trilogy. And we were all there going "Oh my god, this cannot work! How is he possibly going to be putting this together." And then of course, there were all of the disruptions of the set. When we were filming in Queenstown, Queenstown had a once-in-two-hundred-years flood, entire locations, entire sets, half of Queenstown was submerged under water. In fact, the major bridge - there's only one bridge that goes into town - washed away! The local government said it's going to take us two months to rebuild the bridge and open it up again. The production couldn't do that so production, they brought in all their builders and rebuilt the bridge of Queenstown, just so that they could keep up filming.
We were on Mount Doom, which, if you remember Mount Doom, it's very brown... that is the entire look of it. We woke up one day... it was all white! Because it had snowed. It is a mountain, after all. And suddenly everybody came out and this was the lunch tent, something that is like this (indicating the tent we sat in), much bigger, it sat about six hundred people... and we came out there, the lunch tent had collapsed, it was completely flat and covered in two feet of snow. (laughs) So, that was like, that directing this location "we can't exactly blow dry all the snow out of the way"... and then it was finished. "The rest we'll do when spring is breaking." And umm... it was just like that the whole time and you're thinking: "How is this going to happen?"
There's also another little secret. When um... and everybody remembers, the shooting, Peter was given a budget for the three films and he was gonna shoot them all at the same time. We all know that story. As it went on, the production schedule was getting further and further behind, as they were shooting they were coming up to the release of the first film. Also, he is needing more money, basically. What he does - which I just think was genius and so so much courage - he takes the budget basically for the second and third films, puts it all into the first film and then they release the first film. The first film of course, luckily for Peter, is a huge success, it makes a billion dollars, he then goes back to New Line cinema and says: "We just need to do a few re-shoots on the second and third film." Re-shoots! There were ENTIRE sequences that hadn't been filmed! Which he didn't have the budget for. And that would have only get filmed, if the first movie was a success! By that stage New Line got the check book out: "Anything you want, Peter, here you go!" And there hadn't even anything been storyboarded yet. And we as the actors, and it's a lot of the actors, it's quite hysterical, there would be various times, I think, Paul Norell, the king of the dead, arrived on set, maybe twelve times, only to be told... he was not required, because they hadn't gotten up to shooting his bit yet. He had to come back twelve times till eventually his part was actually done.
Umm... if you have any questions? Yes?
Question: What's your biggest blooper?
Mark: "The bloop... haha! The bloopers, there were quite a lot of bloopers. Umm... there are some other quite famous ones, I'll tell you about mine in a second, but umm... they used to show at wrap parties and things for various milestones, they mixed the blooper reels together for the cast and crew. And there's quite a famous one of Orlando... um... with his quiver. And of course, it looks like he's a very good archer, you know, in a lot of his battle scenes he seems... (makes shooting noises and quick succession)... if you get to see the real footage... (impersonates how Orlando is trying in vain to reach behind and pull an arrow from the quiver, either not being able to grab it, or grab it and drop it while pulling it to the front and so on, all in a very "San Francisco"-manner) ... like that. He could NEVER get it together. When you see him going (quick shooting noises again) ... all of those arrows of his are CGI. (Laughter on and off stage) There was NOT ONE real arrow that he shoots, because he could not get it out of the quiver and actually fire it. Umm... sorry. True story! But I do love him.
The other one which I like was umm... I talked to a guy who was on the set. He had spent eighteen months making Liv Tyler's armour and weaponry. Armour? Weaponry? Do we all remember her great battle scenes?
Audience: "No?"
Mark: No! Ha! He spent eighteen months making the most BEAUTIFUL filigree steel, I mean, with her crest and everything, it was absolutely magnificent. Course as turns up to do and shoot those battle scenes.. Liv Tyler! (Impersonates how she weakly tries to lift the sword and fails) Silly female voice while straining to lift the sword: "I just... I just... can't" (shaking his head) She couldn't do it. At all. So they just cut it, she walked away from it and ... this guy... eighteen months of his life ... and it never got used in the movie! (Laughter) And I remember having a drink with him and he was like... (sobs).
My ones were of course... the biggest problem... this wasn't just me, it was a general elf problem. Umm... general elf problem! How often do you get to say that! Often, especially in the battle scenes, the elves walk in a very very smooth way, so it's almost like you're on a conveyer belt, you know, effortlessly moving forward and all of that. The problem with that we were shooting that on location on the side of a volcano. And there is no, you know, it's not in the studio with a perfectly beautiful smooth floor. And I don't know if you know much about volcanoes but they tend to be covered in rocks. Alright? As a volcano goes off it goes (erupting noises) and a lot of rocks fall out and cover the volcano. That's how volcanoes are. And so there were rocks EVERYWHERE and trying to walk and also hold your focus when you're approaching on film and you got rocks everywhere, it's not very helpful. So there was a lot of elven army walking forward and people just went "Oh!" (impersonates stumbling elf)... you know, blond hair flying everywhere, cursing NOT in elvish!
And um... the real problem is... when we're filming up there, the orcs, basically this huge battalion of orcs coming towards you are all wearing their heads, the orc heads. They could only stay in those heads for about half an hour. Then they had to... there's this big call that goes off "Heads off" and the orcs have to take their heads off. If they don't take their heads off, basically they die. Because they overheat, there's no... I don't know if anybody's done full body prosthetics, you have to be very careful about how long you stay in there, because everything gets overheated and your brain swells and there are problems. So, last thing you wanna be doing is causing a problem before "heads off", right? So, if you're doing a scene you don't wanna stop the scene because then they have to take this huge break to then start the whole process of setting the scene up again. And that was mine. There was this enormous HUGE set up scene where there's a huge track camera, huge crew, tracking as we are advancing and I'm the lead king, okay, Hugo, Elrond was back there somewhere, being a herald, and we're advancing, trying to be very smooth and the camera is just on my spear, so I keep walking forward, trying not to fall over any of the rocks, we've got five minutes to get the shot before it's "heads off", not only that, but also the light was starting to fail and I've got this ENORMOUS spear which... this is the other thing about the spear, is that in REHEARSAL it was rubber! So, you know, if it's about seven feet tall and I've been doing a lot of fighting with it in very close proximities, there's a lot of (shows imaginary spear routine) as you go, and swinging it. BEFORE the first take on film - and I had been rehearsing with this rubber thing which is very easy sort of throw around - the stand-by props guy comes up to me and is very serious and says: "This is Aeglos. This is your real spear." I pick this thing up: "Thank you." THUMP! (falling noise) It was solid hardwood. Six feet of it with this real steel scythe at the top of it, it practically weighed as much as I do. And this is now what I'm supposed to use in these battles which we'd been rehearsing for like four weeks. I could hardly pick the thing up and the other problem with that is that in rehearsal, of course, you've got stunt people all around in these orcs heads and you're having these battles with them and occasionally you miss, or they come too close or you trip or something and you hit them with your weapons. That is fine when they're rubber! But when suddenly you're in very close proximity and you're doing the whole battle and you miss with this huge piece of hardwood and suddenly "OUCH!" (spear dropping), stunt man just going "UAGH!"... and these stunt guys were amazing. They're just instantly going "No, I'm fine, I'm fine! No no, I'm fine!" and you go "I just hit you as hard as I possibly can with a huge piece of wood, how can you be fine?!" (Laughter)
And there was one guy, who was most extraordinary, I would turn around and as I kill this orc, he drops down behind me, and of course I got these enormous boots on as well and then another wave of orcs is coming in, so I have to swing back (huge stomping noise) like that. (laughter) Straight onto this guy's head. (makes another stomping noise - then muffled voice) "I'm alright, alright!" There was three times I did that. And you know, eventually you're thinking "Just get out of the way!"
So, yes, lots of bloopers. This long tracking thing, all beautiful, all perfect, camera's coming in, it's coming down on the spear which is glinting, pans out, and I wish you could see the shot, a beautiful scene, down into the profile and as they get the light just right on my crown as it's coming through, just got that perfect shot when suddenly "trip - bam!" Straight onto the ground. Shot ruined, everything ruined and a lot of orcs and everybody's going: "tsc" (long suffering sigh - laughter in the audience) "Yeah, yeah, you can't be king, you have a problem!"
>Any other questions? Yep?
Question: What was the costume like, armour and such?
Mark: The costume is extraordinary, I mean, apart from being BEAUTIFUL, it was a BITCH to wear! Haha! And especially trying to fight in it, um, because it's quite enormous and I don't know why they did this but the plates, you know the gold plates look slightly like a lobster, you know around the hips and down they look like a lobster tail, and also the chest plate, they were actually a type of plastic so they weren't too heavy. So that's made out of plastic, but what you can't see, and because you can't see it I don't know quite why it's there, I have a full chain mail, real chain mail, an entire full coat of it, long sleeved, down to about here, underneath that. And I don't know if that's just wardrobe doing that to actors or whatever, but that weighed a TON. An ABSOLUTE TON. Um... and then there's all the heavy draping, which again led to a lot of bloopers, cause you got this huge staff that you're fighting with and you sort of like have to "Swing!" (quickly) the costume is completely... you can't get that around... and you just got caught in your lovely cape again. Haha!
But um, the interesting thing which again hasn't been seen which is... I don't know if some other fans of the books and the previous books had some issues with as well, is that Peter wanted Gil Galad to be, cause all the elves are very dispassionate about battle, they don't particularly wanna do it, but if they ARE gonna do it, they are gonna be very good at it. They have a code of battle which is very precise, unemotional and a type of perfection which is a very elvish approach to things. Except for one, and that was Gil Galad. Gil Galad, it's one of the reasons why he's got dark hair and he's the only one who looks dirty, because he LOVES battle. And he's the one with blood spatters, spattered blood over his face, because he loves getting in there. Whereas all the other elves look like they had a bit of a fight and then they got washed, got their hair done, but not him.
Anybody else? No? Yeah, oh sorry, yeah?
Question: Is there anybody else... (difficult to hear)
Och god! That I would've killed to play?!...
Umm... who's really cool in it? Umm... I think Gollum is the best. I don't know about killing in order to play a CGI character, ha!, but he's just so cool. Especially when he starts being the whole, you know, the dual character. Umm, alright? That just reminds me of something. I remember I was talking to a group once and they were very very committed fans and very deeply passionate about the books and umm... I was kinda clowning around as I'm wont to do and something came up about the journey and the ring and I really stupidly said "That's one of the things I find slightly odd about the films is that after they end the huuuge journey they're lying on the rocks and you think it's all over when suddenly the eagles arrive and you know, pick them up and save them and everything is... see, why didn't they just give the ring to the eagle and the eagle flies in and then just drops the ring?" And then, of course, like so many put their hand up they were very outraged and very angry with me (with German accent): "Mr. Ferguson, no! The eagles, they are sentient beings and they would be perverted by the ring!" And I went: "Ah, right, that's true. Well then, why then doesn't Frodo keep the ring, sit on the eagle, then fly in and just drop it?" - "Because that would be a boring story!" (laughter) "Yeah, now you're on to it! That would be..." No, you don't want the logic police sort of investigating such things. That would be terrible, but I found the eagles very interesting.
But there are also some very cool parts in it. Umm... some of the bad guys... I always enjoyed playing the bad guys, I played quite a few of them, played quite a few of them in Xena. I think I got killed by Xena a record of about five or six times and umm... if you're going up against Xena you generally knew you're gonna die. (Somebody from the audience yells) "Put the pinch on me?" (Laughter) Yeah, I got a few different pinches from Lucy! Um yeah, we were rehearsing a scene once and we were looking for some little thing for her to show... I was playing what I thought was a warlord who was equal status as Xena and at one point he puts a bit of a move on her... umm... that she and I would be, you know... (winks) and when she rebuffs me, she could've politely basically turn me down or turned away. No, Lucy suggests, she goes (grabs crotch painfully) (laughter). Yeah. Yeah. And then it's close up on my face. Lucy thought it was HELPFUL to my acting (laughter)... Now I'm sure a lot of men would have been really happy to come into that crotch kind of contact with Lucy Lawless, but um in this... (laughs) No, no. She got a bit method (referring to method acting?) on me, then. It wasn't that much fun.
Any other questions or are we gonna wrap up? Nothing else? No? NO?? Yes!
Question: What have you seen of the fair...?
About the fair? Oh, look, this has been fantastic! I really had no idea what to expect and I've been to a few conventions before but this is completely unanalogous, and the thing I love about it and I've been talking to a few people is, this amazing sense of acceptance, of people from all various different books of life, from different ... of the fantasy world, and everybody here, there is no sense of "what are YOU doing here?". It's just a sense of welcome to all of these different parts, it's just wonderful. One of the things I'm doing when I get back is um... I'm gonna do a story on the fair for the Herald (NZ Newspaper) and it's actually a part of the travel section, so hopefully we'll be seeing a few more Kiwi's here next year. I don't know whether I'll be talking about it or whether it's going to be in the paper. But I've had a fantastic time, it's completely blown me away. And the thing I love is not just the creativity but the sheer BEAUTY of so many of the costumes. But also what people have been investing in the costumes when they arrive, when they walk, it's all... you know, they're completely part of this world. It's wonderful. So, thank you for having me here. And um... thank you very much, see you soon, I'm around and about, come and see me. (Applause)
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