Tomorrow is the (free, online) debut of an interesting “high-quality low-budget film” project that NPR calls “Lord of the Fanvids”: The Hunt for Gollum.

I’m drawing three conclusions about it from the trailer:

1. Peter Jackson’s genius was in creating the templates used to tell the Lord of the Rings story.

2. The part where you fill in the templates was pretty well imitated by these folks doing their “prequel” ...

3. ... with one qualification: Some of these scenes, one suspects, make for evocative, Jacksonesque trailer material ... but might not work quite so well at full length.

We shall see tomorrow.

Here’s how the website explains the project:

“About—The Hunt For Gollum is an unofficial not for profit short film by a group of enthusiast filmmakers. As a Lord of the Rings Fan Film, we are not affiliated with the Tolkien Estate or New Line Cinema and are producing this project as an entirely non commercial film. As with other fan films we are making this purely for the enjoyment of the material and the experience of making a high quality low budget film.”

“Free Distribution—As a non-profit production, the entire film will be released online for FREE download only on the internet on www.hunt4gollum.com.”