An aspiring actress and Lord of the Rings fan has spent £25,000 self-funding her own prequel to the Peter Jackson movies.

Kate Madison enjoyed the blockbuster trilogy so much that she wrote a prequel based on material from the original JRR Tolkien books.

She out her £8,000 life saving into the 'Born Of Hope' project and started raising money by appealing to other Lord of the Rings fans.

After uploading a trailer for the movie to YouTube the 31-year-old from Cambridge raised £17,000 in donations and set about making 'Born Of Hope' into a 60 minute movie.

After getting 400 cast and crew to donate their time the movie started shooting at locations around England… the budget didn't stretch to flying everyone to New Zealand.

The resulting film is awe-inspiring and has already been viewed by more than 500,000 people online.

Makers Actors At Work Productions say they have avoided copyright and licensing issues because actors didn't get paid and no-one will profit from the movie.

As a non-commercial production made purely for entertainment purposes there is no copyright or trademark infringement.