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New Lord of the Rings Trailer
An anonymous reader writes "Apple is hosting the new trailer for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Of course, the trailer is in quicktime. Looks pretty darn good, in my opinion."
I just finished the 4th disc on FotR, and am ready for TTT to be out now!
What kind of news is this? I skimmed it and thought there was a new trailer, got my hopes up, watched it, got mad. Instead it's just that the trailer I've watched 100 times is being hosted by Apple? Even that is weeks-old news. Why is this on Slashdot?
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This is not a new trailer. It has been out for quite a while, at least a month, but probably several.
To play this crap in linux:
l ine/lordoftherings/TheTwoTowers-tlr_fs.l.mov"
t
1. wget "http://progressive.stream.aol.com/newline/gl/new
2. Follow instructions on http://mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/tech/qt-libwine-howto.tx
I'm not sure it will work, but it's worth a try...
I have this very same trailer on my computer. Have had it for a long time now. Slashdot is only about 1.5 months late with this one ;)
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
For one thing, it's made of more than three books, but it's actually just one long big book in three popular parts. There's something in the forward of the books about this. A Tryptych would be a more accurate description.
It's called "Requiem of the Rings," and it's a mixture of Clint Mansell's Requiem for a Dream and some LOTR sounds. The maker is Ajax Projection and they used to have it up for download. It then moved to War of the Ring but now it's gone from there too. But I'm sure you know where else to look.
Then you must not be reading slashdot regularly, because this trailer was the topic of a 400+ discussion back in September.
.. so if you haven't read the book already (what kind of a geek are you?) but are watching the movies, then DON'T WATCH THIS TRAILER, IT'LL SPOIL IT FOR YOU.
What were they thinking?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Peter Jackson is definitely not commanding a high salary (he doesn''t have enough experience), although I rea;;yy hope they give him a point or two of revenue. The same goes for the rest of the cast: no big budget names there.
Instead, we have got a picture that looks like a lot of money was spent on it. If someone at newline ends up making a bundle out of it, so what, we have ended up with a good film. Rgerttably that can not be said of a lot of movies out there.
From another messageboard:
"I found this on a Clint Mansell ('Requiem for a Dream' composer) website, it deals with the music for the new trailer.
It's been the talk of the net for the past week or so, and we can officially reveal the truth! the main theme from requiem for a dream has indeed been re-recorded for use in the lord of the rings: the two towers trailer.
Clint is really pleased with the results - three short pieces were re-recorded with a full orchestra and choir for use in different trailers. the theme is unlikely to be used in the film."
Mansell's website is down now, so I can't verify that.
According to imdb, Howard Shore is making the scores for all three movies. I just hope that he'll improve for 2nd and 3rd movies, I think the score for the first movie was slightly too pompous at few points.
Quicktime is as we all know the most crappy videoformat ever.
QuickTime is an API that defines a file format, not a codec. If you're not happy with the output of whatever codec you're using, use a better codec (or more likely, learn how to tune the one you're using for your subject matter).
It's bloated, and has a ugly player which you can't replace.
You do realise that QuickTime (the API) is not the same as QuickTime Player (the app)?
If you want to write a better movie player on top of QuickTime, knock yourself out - there used to be several such things on the Mac, all using the same API calls as the official player (QuickTime itself doesn't care - it's app agnostic).
Nae bother
marketting aside, the first movie made more money at the box office than all three movies combined. i don't know how that directly translates into money for the studio but i'd imagine that between that and the licensing deals for games and toys they're pretty far in the black from just the first movie alone...
~900m for the movie at the box office and ~300m to make all three movies.
Of course, the trailer is in quicktime
So fucking what? You think I can't play it on Linux? You're wrong. MPLAYER is the solution.
Here is a direct link to the movie:
i ne/lordoftherings/TheTwoTowers-tlr_fs.l.mov
http://progressive.stream.aol.com/newline/gl/newl
This way you can save it to your hard disk (41MB) and not needlessly waste bandwidth (yours, your ISP's, or the host's) every time you want to see it. You can also share it with your friends that don't have broadband by cutting it to a CD. Enjoy.
Quicktime is just the format.
You can choose a plethora of codecs to use when making your quicktime movie, just like an avi or other such format.
You can even use the DV codec, which is why iMovie can capture so easily in realtime from your flashy firewire equipped camcorder without nailing the CPU - it doesn't have to do too much processing.
Hell, if you want you can use mpeg4 although this is only supported in Quicktime 6 (download the player free from apple).
I'm not entirely sure this is relevant, but it's an interesting tidbit nonetheless.
The best reports are that New Line spent about half a billion dollars making and promoting The Lord of the Rings, all three films, and that includes money budgeted but not yet spent on promotion and advertising for the last movie. Of that half a billion, about $300 million went into making the movies themselves. The $500 million figure includes all the cost of making, distributing, promoting, and showing the movies; basically, the studio's total costs.
According to boxofficemojo.com, The Fellowship of the Ring has made about $860 million worldwide for New Line since its release last year. That's only gross revenue to the studio generated by movie theaters; it doesn't include DVD sales or any other sources of revenue.*
The punchline: if nobody in the world buys a ticket for the next two movies, New Line still will have made about a 72% profit on the Lord of the Rings. They could put The Two Towers and The Return of the King on a shelf, finished but unreleased, and still have made a fortune.
* Historically, the ratio of worldwide box office receipts to worldwide revenues from all media is about 1:1.5. In other words, for every dollar of box office gross, a movie can be expected to generate about $1.50 in video sales, rentals, TV rights, book and toy tie-ins, and so on.
I write in my journal
Somebody wasted a mod point. This is not interesting. There is not copy protection on the extended DVD set, apart from Macrovision and CSS that's on virtually every DVD.
I copied discs one and two to my girlfriend's iBook so she could watch them on the plane on the way to her uncle's house. No problems. Works fine. Just like every other DVD.
(Had to clean off nearly 20 GB to make the damn things fit, though. Hope she doesn't need MS Office until she gets back.)
I write in my journal
Typo aside, according to The Internet Database the three movies cost $297 million to make. If the next two moives make the same as the first they should collective gross almost $2.6 billion. Even with Hollywood's creative accounting they should make a huge profit.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.