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Daniel Reeve

New Zealand artist, calligrapher and cartographer who created the maps, scripts and calligraphy for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films.

Oct 27, 2026

19:22
Can you tell us a little bit more about these kind of quite other things? significant props the red book is the thing this is the bit at the beginning right i want to say yeah the red book is
19:33
very significant um from a storytelling point of view it provides to the audience a a visual access to to what's going on so accompanied with a voiceover by um ian holm We have Bilbo writing and speaking as he writes his memoirs.
19:58
That way provide an introduction to the audience about what's going on in Middle Earth.
20:06
Who are the hobbits? What's their life like? What do they do? And in the case of the hobbit, who's Smaug? Why don't the dwarves like the elves? All these sort of things.
20:16
And speaking of the hobbit, there were moments Let's rewind a little bit.
20:23
I needed to write in the Lord of the Rings to first establish the Shire lettering, the alphabet of the hobbits.
20:35
So we came up with an alphabet in which is kind of quirky and has accent marks on particular vowels.

19 MINS LATER

39:36
Can you tell us a little bit more just very quickly about the style guide? Because it covers so many different styles of lettering.

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