[ Daily Tolkien ] Beorning questions...

Suite 101 ^ | January 14, 2000 | Michael Martinez

[ecurbh]

do you have any of those costume portraits of Gandalf the White that show his feet?

Unfortunately no, not in anything I have. You can kind of see them when he is walking into Theoden's hall. I tried going to Penny's site to look for a screencap of them, but it seems to be down right now.

[HairOfTheDog]

I looked in the Theoden's hall shots too, but none showed his feet better.

The best one might be that out-take shot where Ian was riding so badly. I will go find that.

[HairOfTheDog]

OK - I think this photo most predominantly shows three things: First, that Ian McKellan is no horseman, but also that he has really skinny legs. But on the positive side, it shows that he does have the guts to try to do his own riding!

It also shows his shoes...

[Texaggie79]

Another thing I noticed. The film seemed to imply that the lord of all horses was ridden bare back. It has no reigns. And when it ran up to Gandalf it had no saddle........... Wassup with the stirrups?

[HairOfTheDog]

Well, Shadowfax in the book was ridden bareback with neither reins nor saddle, but it just wouldn't be safe to put even an accomplished rider bareback on a stallion and expect to have the kind of seat necessary to stay on and control the horse through required fast movements. And there would be no way that a non-rider like Ian McKellan could do it safely. So they cheated. It is visible only in a few shots (the one above is an out-take)

Giving the rider a small saddle under there is a perfectly acceptable cheat. The amount of extra training they had to go through to get that horse working without bridle was difficult to accomplish. They could have easily skipped that detail about Shadowfax and not had many people complain. But they did it.

[Texaggie79]

They can computer generate entire war scenes that look 100% real, yet they cannot digitally erase some stirrups?

[HairOfTheDog]

Oh they probably did.... Did you see stirrups in the film? - Or are we still talking about the picture above? - That is an out-take.

[Texaggie79]

In the film. I believe when he was riding into Rohan, and when he was riding into helms deep.

[HairOfTheDog]

Hmmmm.... well, I will look. You probably weren't supposed to notice!