Gollum's acceptance video

June 8, 2003 12:38 PM

Gollum's acceptance video for winning Best Virtual Performance at the MTV Movie Awards. [Via /.]
posted by homunculus (24 comments total)

It's funny because he says 'fuck'.

Or at least that's my understanding.

Actually it was quite funny in an MTV sort of way.
posted by Space Coyote at 12:47 PM on June 8, 2003

It's funny for a variety of reasons, at least to me. Nice to see WETA go to that length for a joke, also nice to see some limited recognition for virtual characters finally.
posted by jonson at 1:20 PM on June 8, 2003

At least it worked out better than when the people behind the Gorillaz spent GBP10,000 on an acceptance speech for the Brit awards and ended up not winning.
posted by Space Coyote at 1:38 PM on June 8, 2003

By the way, if the video is still suffering from the /. effect, someone put up a mirror here.
posted by Space Coyote at 1:40 PM on June 8, 2003

MTV is still around? weird..
posted by ZupanGOD at 1:51 PM on June 8, 2003

I think people don't understand exactly HOW MUCH work goes into a second of animation like that. I liked it if only because that's pretty much the embodiment of the kind of acceptance speech I wanted to see when I was in my teens (okay, and 20s).

BTW, space coyote, that mirror link tells me its by invitation only. drabbit.
posted by Busithoth at 1:59 PM on June 8, 2003

Busithoth: that's weird, I just tried it and it works (no invitation or nothin.. ) *shrug*. It's all over bittorrent and kazaa anyway. Plus MTV re-runs the awards show about 20 times so it's not hard to find :)
posted by Space Coyote at 2:38 PM on June 8, 2003

He says more than "fuck," of course. "Pixel-pushing pin-dicks" was what made me fall out of my chair.
posted by kittyb at 2:41 PM on June 8, 2003

I liked the "Steve Jackson is a hack" comment.

Space Coyote - what Bittorrent sites are you looking at? I'm new to it, and am curious as to where to scour.
posted by jonson at 3:23 PM on June 8, 2003

I found the torrent here thanks to Slashdot.

jonson, it's a bit of a trick finding .torrent sites right now; much of the stuff that's being sent over bittorrent is of questionable provenance and the sites keep getting shut down.
posted by Nelson at 3:44 PM on June 8, 2003

Well, this was a hell of a lot better than Yoda's acceptance speech.
posted by dogwelder at 3:53 PM on June 8, 2003

bittorrent sites are disappearing because they keep getting posted on slashdot, etc and can't handle the resulting traffic, not because of any legal intervention (in my experience thus far). all the good bt sites I know of are closed to the public, and I hope they'll stay that way. nothing personal.
posted by bizwank at 4:29 PM on June 8, 2003

torrents are the new gnutella. In other words, not really very great at all.

On topic : does as much grinding effort per second of screen time go into Gollum as some less recent technologies? I'm curious - I was under the impression that more elegant tools and methods had been developed, and brute-force computation was increasingly a thing of the past.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:38 PM on June 8, 2003

If anybody still hasn't seen it, I mirrored it here, 8MB quicktime video. (self-link, eh)
posted by MiG at 6:41 PM on June 8, 2003

On my machine (which is plenty fast *lovingly pats hood*) it looks like Gollum's mouth is running at 8fps, or at best it's glitching a little bit behind the voice. I wonder what kind of processing structure goes into such high-burn rendering... and if it's enough to meet the needs of the application. Good fun, in any case.
posted by squirrel at 6:44 PM on June 8, 2003

bizwank - wouldn't "closed to the public" defeat the nature of bittorrent in the first place? I thought the value was greater distribution led to faster download times for all. So far all I've found (from the few sites I've seen linked) have been very very slow d/l's, so much so that I've never successfully waited through a complete file.
posted by jonson at 6:51 PM on June 8, 2003

jonson: I'm quietly confident he was referring to Peter Jackson (the director of the LotR films), rather than Steve Jackson, although I agree with that particular sentiment more than the actual one
<wry smile />
posted by John Shaft at 1:53 AM on June 9, 2003

not really related, but i think One Ring To Rule Them All 2 is hella funny.
posted by donth at 6:09 AM on June 9, 2003

Thanks for the torrent link, BIT TORRENT GOOD.
posted by tomplus2 at 8:47 AM on June 9, 2003

That kinda ruins the magic of Gollum for me . . . almost.

I'm gonna be hella pissed if he starts hawking Pepsi.

I just wish they would've waited until RotK was out so I could suspend my disbelief a little longer . . .

*sniffles*

I seriously almost cried the first time I saw the 'argument' scene. So perfectly perfect and tragic.
posted by cinderful at 10:15 AM on June 9, 2003

torrents are the new gnutella.

The best thing about torrents, is the browser friendly link, which makes them the new AudioGalaxy, IMHO.

The 'significant non-infringing uses' helps as well. I've gotten quite a few large-yet-legal files using it. Game demos mostly.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 10:19 AM on June 9, 2003

btw - at the end you can see Elijah mouth "That was fucking awesome"
posted by cinderful at 10:20 AM on June 9, 2003

You're right about Elijah, cinderful. Nice touch.
posted by squirrel at 2:57 PM on June 9, 2003

he can come entertain at my parties anyday.
posted by mrplab at 3:13 PM on June 9, 2003