Bakshi began developing the script himself. Learning of the project, Chris Conkling got an interview with Bakshi but was initially hired to "do research, to say what the costumes should look like or what the characters would be doing at any given time". Together, they first decided how to break the films down. When they started, they contemplated a three-film structure, but "we didn't know how that middle film would work" without a beginning and an end. Conkling even started writing a treatment for one long, three-and-a-half hour feature of the entire work, but eventually settled on scripts for two 150-minute films, the first of which was titled ""The Lord of the Rings, Part One: The Fellowship"".