Ring*Con is a Fantasy convention which takes place in Germany every October. It started out as a Lord of the Rings event but has since expanded to include other franchise like Harry Potter, Pirates and Twilight. Born of Hope has been a part of the event for the last 3 years and this year previewed the film with a fantastic response.

Comments made at Ring*Con 2009 after the test screening:

"A perfect companion to the Trilogy"

"I didn’t expect such quality for such a low budget"

"Awesomely Entertaining!"

Here is an excerpt from an article in Word Press regarding Born of Hope at Ring*Con 2009. For the full article click here.http://shigekuni.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/conventional-ringcon-2/
"This convention was, to a huge extent, about fun. There were a few people selling things, a man tattooing customers, the usual assortment of commercial offers, but also two men who built a huge table with small painted figurines, thousands of them, to depict Sauron’s vast armies from the last volume of the Lord of the Rings. There were makeup artists for hire, but dozens of people came with incredible costumes, incredibly elaborate and colorful makeup. There were all kinds of movies for sale but there was also a group of amazingly talented people presenting a movie based on one of Tolkien’s myths, screening it for free and they will also put it up for free on December 1st.
The movie’s called Born of Hope and Kate Madison, director, producer and actress should be congratulated for the amazing work she did on a tiny budget. In fact, that movie was the best part of the whole weekend. It tells the story of Arathorn, LotR’s Aragorn’s father. Their screenplay is based on a tiny note in the appendices to J.R.R. Tolkien’s conservative canter through myth and (old English) language and sundry areas. The language of it is a nice pastiche of Tolkien’s own style, with all the flaws and benefits this implies. In the movie there is great acting, absolutely great editing and surprisingly great visual effects. The whole movie was shot over several years and with a budget of roughly 25.000 pounds. Here is the page where you can access the project, where you can support them and where they will put up the movie come December 1st. Go there, support them, and read about them. Their energy and patience is inspiring. Don’t miss out."

This was our third trip to Ring*Con and we had decided at last year’s Con to show the film this year. Originally we wanted to do the world premiere there but the film was not finished ready for release in time so we decided to preview the film and use Ring*Con attendees as a test audience. It was a bit of a gamble to make to show the film in it’s unfinished form to hundreds of strangers.

However, it seems to have been a risk well worth taking. Not only did it give us a good idea of how the audience would react to various scenes but the guys at Ring*Con were very open and honest with us regarding how they felt about the film. Many people filled in our feedback forms or came up and spoke to us after the screenings. They not only lavished us with compliments but also any moments where the pace dragged a little or a moment in the story was not completely clear were explained to us and we have now been able to use many of these comments to do little tweaks to the edit ready for the internet release on 1st December. Thanks Everyone!!

To find out more about Ring*Con please visit their website here.

Special Thanks to Cordesh at morthond.de for the photos. For more follow this link:
http://www.morthond.de/coppermine/thumbnails.php?album=28&page=1

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