Soundtrack for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug to be released on vinyl!

OCTOBER 20, 2013 at 3:18 AM BY DEMOSTHENES -
desolation-of-smaug If you’re a bit of a vinyl fan (confession: I am), you’ll find this news about The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug soundtrack quite exciting. Apparently it’s going to be released on good old-fashioned vinyl on December 3.

4. The Desolation of Smaug features the barrel sequence that most of the dwarves considered the most fun and harrowing of the entire shoot. The set was built on a river in Trentham, New Zealand, and the actors were put into barrels that "you could go over Niagara Falls and still be safe [in]," according to Jed Brophy (Nori). Richard Armitage (Thorin Oakenshield) described the day as being "in an unsinkable barrel getting dumped on with tons of water. It was just relentless, and kind of frustrating, but fun at the same time. And I was like, 'We will never have another day like that on a film set.'' [Author's note: While we were on the set, he was shooting pickups for that scene in front of a green screen, getting spun around and hit with green jousting sticks that would later be animated as tree branches. He spent a good two hours in there.]

Their leader, Thorin Oakenshield himself Richard Armitage, says: "We've created such a bond with each other because we've been together for eighteen months now and we know each other's best points and worst points. It's a great group of people and there are no arseholes, if you'll excuse the expression. So it works. It ticks over really well. I don't think we'll get a tattoo. We're trying to think of something else."

Co-star Armitage agrees: "You just find stamina that you never thought you had. And when you work with Peter, he pushes you harder and harder and harder and you think that's the last take and he'll always ask you for another one … he's detailed, and he's succinct with his notes, and his imagination is way beyond anything that I could ever perceive … and he thinks big, which encourages you to think big and to be more."

That has lead to the actors pushing themselves to be better than they thought they could be. Armitage adds: "I think my creative mind has been opened more on this job than anything else, so you come to work with loads of ideas in your head and he'll listen to everything ... So it has surpassed my expectations in terms of what I'm capable of. And I think it's surpassed his expectation of what he can ask you for. So everyone is going further than they ever believed they could.