The Lord of the Rings Trailer... New Higher Quality Download!
Published at: Jan. 26, 2001, 6:04 p.m. CST by staff
Hey folks, Harry here... At 8pm cst, New Line is going to be launching a new version of the LORD OF THE RINGS trailer... It will be in REAL VIDEO format... but... According to New Line, it will be DOWNLOADABLE... SAVABLE... Which means you folks wanting to see the thing, should be able to. Also, it is going to be FULL SCREEN... DVD QUALITY. Something that even QUICKTIME hasn't done yet. I haven't seen it for myself yet... but that's the pitch. I'm headed to check it out at the official site right now and will write back about the quality and impression of the technology. Remember... the future of ONLINE film is attached to this type of technology... streaming, downloadable DVD quality films.... Let's check it out and see if the dream is reality.
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All right... So I just got back from downloading it... The file size is nice... just 11.7 megs... But I feel the quality of image is still nowhere near DVD or even the best of QUICKTIME... The first thing I notice is the pixelation in the moving red clouds in the big MASSIVE shot. Also there are functions that I miss from QUICKTIME... like frame by frame... reverse motion... the ability to loop it, so that it plays over and over again. The sound quality is awesome. The image works best prior to full screen... and there, it is still not 'a moving photograph'. I haven't yet seen the technology that Ira Rubenstein and SONY are planning on rolling out which they claim is streaming downloadable DVD quality... I await this miracle technology... I really do. But so far, I haven't seen it. Kudos to New Line and Real Video for attempting and giving us something we can download... but it still isn't FULL SCREEN QUICKTIME UBER PRESENTATION... and that's the quality that LORD OF THE RINGS deserves... at least till something EVEN better comes along.
Also... I've been doing a lot of thinking about the marketing of LORD OF THE RINGS recently and it dawned on me as to EXACTLY what NEW LINE should be doing with the campaign. My father just bought on Ebay a program from THE TEN COMMANDMENTS. Now depending upon your personal beliefs... THE TEN COMMANDMENTS was either one of the greatest historical films or one of the greatest fantasy films. Either way, DeMille sold it as bringing the story, THE MOST POPULAR BOOK OF ITS TIME, to life. It had a listing of the 'various Hebrew banners', it had historical games... all things 'from the days of the pharoah'!!!
Now the set up for this comes from Peter Jackson's answer he has been giving us about how he is approaching these films as HISTORICAL FICTION, not fantasy. Now... if NEW LINE approaches the marketing of these films in a similar manner... then they will take the films from being 'mere fantasy' into the world of films like TITANIC, STAR WARS, TEN COMMANDMENTS, etc. I include STAR WARS in there because it is a fantasy/science-fiction realm... that George Lucas had attempted (and successfully I might add) as a historical (A long time ago) fiction (in a galaxy far far away).
The next trailer needs to be something along the lines of that original DeMille TEN COMMANDMENTS trailer. Something long... LOOOONGER than the typical trailer... that gives the audience a clue as to the size of this universe... the majesty of the various civilizations that lived there... what it was like to live in that day in this world... and what is at stake. Again... WATCH THE TEN COMMANDMENTS TRAILER! The LONG ONE.
