Sauron? (Which you’re absolutely correct about…it just feels strange to lump him in with the (more or less) good guys)
Was Sauron ever in Valinor? He was one of Melkor’s lackeys from the Music, wasn’t he? Didn’t he refuse to go to Valinor and humble himself?
Actually, he started out as one of Aule’s maiar, so I assume he was actually in Arda after the Music. I don’t know if he went over to Melkor before the Ainur established Valinor and the Trees or not. I don’t think he really shows up in the Sil until the Lay of Luthien, when he’s Melkor’s lieutenant at Minas Tirith (the original one) and kills Finrod in an arcane duel. That’s fairly late in the First Age.
The refusing to go to Valinor and humble himself was after the Battle of the Powers.
Can we see this new ten minute trailer anywhere online?
Knowing PJ’s history of releasing teasers and info to keep people from trying to sneak around on set or get illicit information, I’m going to guess yes, but it will probably be a delay so that the people at CinemaCon don’t feel gypped of their "cool we got it first"ness.
That is unless the internet fallout over the 48 FPS stuff doesn’t force his hand to reveal what it really is like, rather than what the hype is saying it is like (either for or against - both are getting a little frenzied).
If the new 48fps thing takes a bit of looking at to get used to, I’d like to be used to it before I go to see the movie proper.
However, the online version, since it will have to be converted to video, is likely to distort the 48fps factor and not give you a valid comparison.
Um, it already is video. It comes off the camera as video. It’s just really really large format video.
Having said that, yes: watching it on Vimeo or whatever at even HD size @ 48hz won’t give you the full impact. Nobody has a 5k monitor at home. But it may give you a taste.
No.
So are the theaters going to show it as video, or will it be transferred to film? And if it was originally recorded as video, what’s the big deal about 48fps? Video is routinely recorded at higher rates than that, and I don’t hear anyone complaining.
Sauron went into Arda with the rest of the Ainur. The timetable of when he was fully suborned by Melkor isn’t really know, but he was certainly allied with him before the attack on the Lamps. It was only after the Lamps were cast down and Almaren destroyed that the Valar went off to create Valinor.
So I don’t believe Sauron ever dwelt there.
Somehow I knew Qadgop would know! 
I must admit my speculation may be incorrect here. Sauron was Melkor’s undercover agent before the assault on the Lamps, and JRRT dropped hints here and there that he remained undercover for a time afterwards, too. JRRT described Sauron as “a Being of Valinor” in Letter #131 in Letters from JRRT. Now perhaps he just meant that he was one of the Ainur, but perhaps not.
Perhaps Sauron did relocate to Valinor, and even help to build it, after the Lamps fell.
My impression is that theaters use digital projection (aka video) routinely these days, but that said, I can’t say I’m up on the current penetration of digital projectors in the market. Perhaps some theaters in smaller markets still take film transfers, I’m not sure. If so, I’d guess movie companies would push those markets pretty hard to get digital equipment, as it costs them $$$ to create & transfer film all over place.
Doesn’t “video” refer to something you see, as “audio” refers to something you hear?
Colloquially it’s taken on the meaning of “visual stuff shot on videotape” vs “visual stuff shot on film”. The implication is that videotape is a lesser medium than film, which was quite true. With videotape starting to be (or is already) obsolete, that meaning is becoming an anachronism, but it’s still in common usage. Digital formats stored on tape or on digital media like flash memory has blurred or destroyed the distinction in these last few years.
The Hobbit is being shot on ‘video’ in the sense that there’s no analog + chemistry format like many films. It is entirely digital, shot on a digital camera, edited digitally. So in that sense, it’s not film, which means it must be ‘video’. Which is admittedly a weird distinction, but the technology has outraced common usage of these terms.
So let’s call it “digital”.
It makes no more sense to call it specifically “video” than to call it “film”.
Well, sure. But the problem is that the ‘video’ vs ‘film’ was a quality distinction. ‘Digital’ covers everything from mpeg4 crap cell-phone quality video to YouTube video to HD high-bitrate blu-ray/other video to beyond-HD 5k to 28k film-rez video. So ‘digital’ isn’t a good enough distinction. All those examples are ‘digital’, but there’s no ranking where you know that they’re crap video or awesome video by saying the word ‘digital’. With ‘film’ vs ‘video (tape)’ you did, because there were only two qualities: crap television and awesome film rez.
The other way this has been done lately is to specify HD quality: 720p, 1080whatever, etc. These are all better than SD 576/480 (old school broadcast quality), but less than film quality. These distinctions are also ‘digital’ but more specific. But less than the 5k RED that Jackson shoots, which is also ‘digital’.
Anyway, the terminology has broken down a bit, because there’s no good, one word “Now In Cinerama” noun that describes digital’s differences well.
That’s the bunny. And Saruman was already listed.
The quote I was going by was this, in Wikipedia:
“in Valinor he had dwelt among the people of the gods, but there Morgoth had drawn him to evil and to his service” which comes from “The War of the Jewels”, one of the Christopher Tolkien pasteups I don’t own.