Why are you making this film?
My first experience of fan films was as composer on Star Wars Revelations. This was publicised quite heavily around the internet, and it got me thinking about what I could do myself as a director. Fan films are a great platform for reaching an audience. Now 3 years later I'm deep into making The Hunt For Gollum. The idea is to showcase what we can do in terms of film-making on a low budget (read microbudget!), but also to pay tribute to Peter Jackson's trilogy, and we're all big LOTR fans of course. It's kindof a dream for me to make this kind of epic scale movie (even though just a short, it's got some spectacular sequences including a large scale choreographed Orc battle.)

Collaborative Filmmaking
This wouldn't be possible without a large number of dedicated volunteers who are collaborating on the movie.  We also have strong links with the other big UK LOTR fan film, Born of Hope, and they've kindly let us use many costumes and props from their art department.  Also we've formed a special effects team headed by a young sculptor called Luke McNally which is creating the Orcs and nasties for both productions.  It's pretty exciting.  We have a team of more than 70 contributors and volunteer cast/crew working on the project.

Middle Earth in good old Blighty.
To recreate the magical scale and beauty of Middle Earth we travelled out to the mountains of Snowdonia in North Wales.  The landscape (and weather) out there was really moody and evoked a quality we could only dream of.  We also recently shot a large fight sequence in Epping forest with a raiding party of Orcs.

High Quality - No Budget
We're trying as hard as we can to produce something with a cinematic feel, that really pulls you back into this magical world.  It's not easy but with a large team of professional people behind the project, and some very ambitious visual effects we think we can acheive similar quality production values to the New Line Trilogy.  We hope this film can reach out to a large audience (we're releasing it for free) and showcase all the talented artists and crew working on it.

Check out the official website for updates on The Hunt for Gollum, teaser trailers, pictures and lots more info: www.thehuntforgollum.com.