Born of Hope

• 1. Introduction

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  Born of Hope began with a budget of £8,000 - Kate Madison's entire life savings - and became something far larger than anyone involved originally planned. The film, a 2009 British fantasy fan production set in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, follows Arathorn and Gilraen, the parents of Aragorn, in the years before The Lord of the Rings begins. What drew Madison and her collaborators to spend six years and the savings of a lifetime on an unofficial film? And how did a modest idea from 2003 grow into a production with a cast of 400 people camping in tents across the British countryside? The answer lies in a story Tolkien himself barely told - and in a group of people determined to tell it.

• 2. The Idea Takes Root

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  In 2003, Kate Madison wanted to submit a film for the Tolkien Fan Film Exhibition. The original plan was modest. Then the project grew, and kept growing, until April 2006 when the first test shoot took place. Principal photography did not begin until June 2008, stretching through 2009. That gap between the first test and the main shoot represents years of preparation for a production that, by its own terms, could never earn a cent - the film had to remain non-commercial to avoid legal conflict with the rights holders to Tolkien's work.

  Madison committed her £8,000 in savings before the project had secured anything beyond her own belief in it. The turning point came when a trailer was posted online, generating an additional £17,000 in contributions and lifting the total budget to £25,000. That online audience also set a target: the film would debut at Ring*Con 2009, and it did. Afterward it was streamed free on DailyMotion and later on YouTube, reaching almost a million hits by March 2010.

• 3. The Story Tolkien Left Untold

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  Screenwriter Paula DiSante, credited under the name Alex K. Aldridge, drew on the appendices of Tolkien's 1954-55 novel rather than its main narrative. The appendices contain the bones of Arathorn and Gilraen's story - their courtship, their brief marriage, the birth of their son Aragorn, and Arathorn's death - but Tolkien devoted few pages to it. Scholar Robin Anne Reid, who wrote about the film, identified this as a case of what researcher Henry Jenkins called "refocalization": directing attention toward minor or underused characters and toward romantic relationships that the original text passed over.

  Reid also noted that Born of Hope was unusual among fan films for including more than one or two women in its cast. The film's female characters include Gilraen as the central figure, her mother Ivorwen, and several original characters created for the production. Madison herself played Elgarain, an original character - a ranger and Arathorn's closest friend, whose death in the film's final act is one of the story's pivotal losses.

• 4. Shooting Across Britain

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  The bulk of production was filmed at the West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village in Suffolk, a reconstructed settlement that gave the production its central location. For wider landscapes, the crew moved across Britain: scenes were shot in Epping Forest, Snowdonia National Park, Clearwell Caves, and the Brecon Beacons. These locations required the cast of 400 to camp in tents so that early morning shoots were possible without the logistics of daily transportation.

  Christopher Dane, who played the lead role of Arathorn, became one of the film's key creative forces during production. He contributed to the script and handled the editing of the final cut, a degree of involvement that extended well beyond his on-screen role. Chris Bouchard, who had worked on the separate fan production The Hunt for Gollum, joined as a camera operator and effects artist. Madison, already directing and producing, was also performing the role of Elgarain - a workload she carried through the entire shoot.

• 5. How Critics Responded

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  Wendy Ide, reviewing for The Times, awarded Born of Hope four stars out of five. She called it a "near note-perfect homage to Jackson's vision for the Rings" and wrote that the film was "very well cast", adding that "practically all the performances have a skill level far above that which is usually evident in low-budget cinema".

  Tom Lamont, writing in The Observer, called Born of Hope the most credible adaptation among the many fan films based on The Lord of the Rings. He quoted a reviewer at another publication who had written "Every shot of this film was made with love, and it shows", and he singled out the original orchestral score as "stirring". The film went on to win the 2010 London Independent Film Festival award in the category of Best Micro-Budget Feature - a formal recognition from a competitive festival rather than simply from the fan community the film was originally made for.