CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: A NEW AGE — 6
A GLOBAL SYMPHONY: MUSIC AND SCORE — 34
CHARACTER GUIDE — 10
ANATOMY OF A SCENE — 38
SETTING SAIL: BOAT DESIGN — 18
IN THE FAMILY: DIRECTING — 40
ANATOMY OF A SCENE — 20
DIGITAL DREAMS: REVOLUTIONARY VFX — 44
FIRE AND STONE: SCULPTING KHAZAD-DÛM — 22
IMMERSIVE MYTHOLOGIES: CULTURE-BUILDING IN MIDDLE-EARTH — 46
BACK TO NATURE: CREATING THE HARFOOT WORLD — 24
ANATOMY OF A SCENE — 48
ANATOMY OF A SCENE — 26
BEST DEFENSE: COSTUMES AND ARMOR — 50
FROM HEAD TO FOOT: EPIC PROSTHETICS — 28
ANATOMY OF A SCENE — 52
ANATOMY OF A SCENE — 30
WINDOW TO THE WORLD: AN ETHEREAL AESTHETIC — 54
BONE DEEP: HAIR AND MAKEUP — 32
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F rom the snow-capped peaks of the Misty Mountains to the deepest chasms of the Mines of Khazad-dûm, from the ancient forests by the banks of the River Anduin to the ashen deserts of Mordor, no imaginary world is as rich and familiar as Middle-earth. Created by English author and scholar John Ronald Reuel Tolkien in his books The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , this sprawling fantasy landscape has captivated readers for generations and has been extensively explored in books, songs, paintings, games, and films. Now, for the first time on screen, audiences are being transported to the Second Age of Middle-earth in Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power . “Very few writers can say they created an entire genre,” says Patrick McKay, one of two showrunners on the series. “Tolkien did that, and a lot more.” For McKay and fellow showrunner J.D. Payne, creating The Rings of Power was the ultimate labor of love—and the ultimate privilege. “We came to the project as enormous fans of Tolkien,” McKay enthuses. “But one of the joys of the job was that we had to become experts, too. We had to really go in depth into these texts that were this man’s entire life’s work. That was an enormous joy that we got to experience every day.” A SECRET HISTORY The creation of Middle-earth and the vast Legendarium of its myths and tales started out as the daydreams of a British soldier preparing to fight in the First World War and culminated
INTRODUCTION:
in several of the best-loved books of the 20th century. In the early years, Tolkien’s imaginary world was just a private hobby, existing only as maps and invented languages, as notes and scraps of stories. But as they developed, these scattered ideas grew more complex, ultimately weaving into a huge historical tapestry. So while modern-day audiences may be more familiar with the Third Age of Middle-earth, they may have only experienced tantalizing glimpses of the huge backstory behind it: names like Gil-galad, Isildur and the island of Númenor. These hinted-at histories were first laid out in the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings in 1955. Here, Tolkien offered family trees and character biographies, pronunciation guides, and chronologies, all there to enrich the reader’s experience. Perhaps most fascinating, he also included an account of Middle-earth’s Second Age: The founding of the Kingdom of Gondor, the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron, and the forging of the Great Rings. These are the stories that The Rings of Power brings to light. GATHERING THE FELLOWSHIP “The Second Age is the great untold story in Tolkien’s Legendarium ,” says McKay. “We felt that it was a story that deserved to be told, on the biggest scale possible.” “But every good quest needs a fellowship,” says Payne. “From the beginning we knew that we couldn’t do this alone. We knew we were going to need people we trusted, people who were excellent at what they did.”
Among the first to come on board was Executive Producer Lindsey Weber, a lifelong Tolkien enthusiast who leapt at the chance to explore Middle-earth for herself. “I can’t remember a time when Tolkien wasn’t in my life,” Weber says. “And J.D. and Patrick were so inventive with the ways they wove the stories together, and so surprising in the telling of the story, that I just knew it would be special. I also knew that they needed help mounting this massive production, and I wanted to be part of it.” TAKING THE HELM Next the team needed a director—someone with the experience and vision necessary to bring color and dynamism to this vast canvas. Enter Spanish filmmaker J.A. Bayona, whose filmography spans from the intimate horror of The Orphanage to the magic realism of A Monster Calls to the science-fiction thrills of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom . “We needed someone who could do great character work but also big world building,” Payne explains. “J.A. had proved himself to be amazing at both of those things.” For the director himself, it was an easy decision. “I always preferred fantasy to reality,” Bayona admits. “When you think about Tolkien, you always think about big subjects. Big ideas that resonate with the audience, good and evil, light and darkness. Great themes.” Bayona would be joined by Swedish-French director Charlotte Brändström and British Chinese filmmaker Wayne Che Yip, each of whom would direct key episodes in the first season. “I love fantasy worlds,” Brändström
says. “But with Tolkien, it’s very much about real humans in a fantasy setting. You believe in the characters.” Yip agrees. “It’s such a dense and rich world. But from the first moment I met Patrick and J.D., I knew that Tolkien’s work was going to be in good hands. Their enthusiasm was just captivating.” ELVES, DWARVES, AND MEN Once the creative fellowship was assembled, it was time to begin the process of casting. “We did an extensive multi-year search of hundreds, probably thousands of actors to find the people who were absolutely best for each role,” says McKay. “We weren’t interested in big names or marquee stars. We have 22 regular characters and every one of them was like finding a needle in a haystack. So when I think about our cast, I feel enormously proud. Every single one of them belongs in Middle-earth.” For the actors, however, landing their part was only the beginning. “We did a lot to transform them into these mythical beings,” Weber recalls. “Prosthetics, dialect coaching, movement coaching. Some of them had to learn very specialized skills like swordplay and rock climbing, others had to learn to ride horses.” And of course, their appearance had to be just right. It fell to Costume Designer Kate Hawley to envision the countless costumes that the production required, from grand royal robes to shimmering suits of Elven armor. “Kate did a fantastic job re-creating each culture and telling the story of each character through costume,” Bayona enthuses. “She’s a real artist.”
Accept this invitation to revisit the wondrous and expansive world of J.R.R. Tolkien in Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. A NEW AGE
“The Second Age is the great untold story in Tolkien’s Legendarium ... We felt that it was a story that deserved to be told, on the biggest scale possible.”
— Patrick McKay, Showrunner
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BUILDING A WORLD
“These are Tolkien’s characters, and we take our cues from him...Every single decision we made goes back to the text. We just wanted this show to be true to Tolkien.”
it was the best landscape possible to shoot this story. But at the same time, we could see how difficult things were in the rest of the world.” Nevertheless, shooting commenced across the two islands of New Zealand, alongside a painstaking post-production process. “They set up an incredible facility with editors, with VFX, with sound, with music, all in New Zealand,” Charlotte Brändström remembers. “Even while we were shooting we would go and look at scenes cut together and see what worked and what didn’t, and discuss it.” This allowed the production to keep to its targets, despite the real-world disruption. “We met every deadline,” Lindsey Weber reveals. “I’m really proud of that because it was not easy.” TRUE TO TOLKIEN For Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne, it was all about respecting the source material. “We don’t own these characters,” McKay stresses. “These are Tolkien’s characters, and we take our cues from him.” Payne agrees wholeheartedly. “Every single decision we made goes back to the text. We just wanted this show to be true to Tolkien.” Following an epic journey of creation and myth- making, The Rings of Power was finally ready to be shown to the world. Weber, for one, is thrilled by what the team achieved. “You’ve got love stories and friendships and heartbreak and horror,” she says, “and some of the best action that you’ve ever seen. I think it’s really special.”
With any show set in a fantasy world, the figures on screen are only part of the magic. “We had to ask ourselves, what does this world feel like?” Weber remembers. “What are the colors? What’s the smell? Then you not only have to dream it and imagine it, you have to build it.” That was the job of Production Designer Ramsey Avery, who relished the chance to create an entire visual world for the series. “The amount of work that falls to the production designer on a show like this is almost impossible to communicate,” Weber says. “But Ramsey is another huge Tolkien fan, so for him this was a childhood dream. You could see it—when the cast and crew walked onto one of his sets, it felt magical. It was inspiring to all of us.” For J.A. Bayona, physical things like sets, props, and costumes weren’t just part of the background, they were a central element of the story. “Beauty is one of the main subjects of this story,” he explains. “The Elves are trying to fight the forces of evil through beauty. So every single detail, every single object, every single costume needs to reflect that.” A MYTHICAL LANDSCAPE To shoot the series, the cast and crew headed for New Zealand, a land famed for its spectacular landscapes and world-class filmmaking facilities. But they’d barely started work when the global pandemic struck. “It was kind of bittersweet,” Bayona recalls. “New Zealand did an amazing job of managing the situation with coronavirus, and
— J.D. Payne, Showrunner
“Nothing is evil in the beginning. There was a time when the world was so young. There had not yet been a sunrise. But even then, there was light.”
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CHARACTER GUIDE
Morfydd Clark as Galadriel
Ismael Cruz Córdova as Arondir
Owain Arthur as Prince Durin IV
Sophia Nomvete as Princess Disa
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Cynthia Addai-Robinson as Queen Regent Míriel
Robert Aramayo as Elrond
Maxim Baldry as Isildur
Markella Kavenagh as Elanor “Nori” Brandyfoot
Tyroe Muhafidin as Theo
Peter Mullan as King Durin III
Nazanin Boniadi as Bronwyn
Charles Edwards as Lord Celebrimbor
Sir Lenny Henry as Sadoc Burrows
Megan Richards as Poppy Proudfellow
Charlie Vickers as Halbrand
Daniel Weyman as The Stranger
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Lloyd Owen as Elendil
Dylan Smith as Largo Brandyfoot
Alex Tarrant as Valandil
Benjamin Walker as High King Gil-galad
Sara Zwangobani as Marigold Brandyfoot
Thusitha Jayasundera as Malva
Trystan Gravelle as Pharazôn
Anthony Crum as Ontamo
Maxine Cunliffe as Vilma
Ema Horvath as Eärien
Leon Wadham as Kemen
Geoff Morrell as Waldreg
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Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) adds to the collection of helmets of Elven warriors who perished during the war with Morgoth.
SETTING SAIL: BOAT DESIGN Production Designer Ramsey Avery on the intricate work that went into each unique vessel we see in the series
The production’s other major seafaring build, Elendil’s Númenórean vessel, first seen in Episode 3, was three times larger than the elegant swanship, and it was a similar feat of craftsmanship to design a boat that felt powerful, yet dated from antiquity. The elegance of ancient Venetian boats with scorpion tails provided the basis for the ship’s body, while the double masts of Chinese junk ships inspired the design of the sails. “That ship’s just a spectacular bit of carpentry. There’s no straight line on that ship, everything has a slight cant or curve to it,” says Avery. However, designing a boat is one thing; actually building it is another. The engineering process took 10 months, and Avery credits the high quality of the resulting creations to the local talent: “New Zealand is a great country for building boats. There’s a skill set, a knowledge base. The work here is just amazing.”
T o carry Galadriel and her cohort to the Undying Lands of Valinor, the craftspeople behind The Rings of Power had to build a vessel familiar from several of Tolkien’s tales: an Elven swanship. “It’s a very specific Tolkien thing,” explains Production Designer Ramsey Avery. “It has the prow and shape of a swan...but when you try to draw that, it looks like an afternoon-in-the- park kind of thing. It’s hard to make that feel dramatic.” As a result, the team enacted a design process that married Tolkien’s concepts with the team’s vision for more organic Elven design principles: “We had this idea of Elven architecture always coming from nature. So it’s not a swan; it’s a swan that’s built out of vines.”
“New Zealand is a great country for building boats. There’s a skill set, a knowledge base. The work here is just amazing.”
— Ramsey Avery, Production Designer
Above: Filming of the Elven swanship transporting Galadriel and her company to Valinor.
Above Top: Construction of Elendil’s Númenórean ship on set. Above Bottom: The Númenórean ship as seen on screen.
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GREENMASTERY It was the task of Greens Supervisor
Simon Lowe and Greens Leading Hand Alison Todd to source 126 aspen trees for this sequence. Aspen trees do not grow in New Zealand, so trees had to be made using a special molding process and elements from other trees.
PRODUCTION DESIGN From an architectural perspective,
Production Designer Ramsey Avery treated the forest setting as if it were a building, with a corridor of trees leading to a main atrium.
CHOREOGRAPHY Supervising Movement Coach Lara Fischel-Chisholm drew on each realm’s natural surroundings to sculpt the acting performances: “To have that architecture reflected in the body.”
High King Gil-galad and the Elves of Lindon honor Galadriel and her company on their return from a centuries-long search for Sauron.
FIRE AND
T he Rings of Power travels through the uncharted territory of the Second Age of Middle-earth, home to a host of species as they existed thousands of years before their Third Age counterparts. “Tolkien created languages and created cultures. We really respected that when we created the worlds for the series; every piece of furniture was a symbol in that language,” explains Set Decorator Megan Vertelle. “There’s no Tolkien IKEA, so we have to go back to that place where as children we read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , and dig into our imagination. It’s almost like a form of psychology, because you have to channel all that character, and channel that world.” For Production Designer Ramsey Avery, the look and feel of each individual species’ environment had to address the “emotional characteristics” of each culture. When it came to the Dwarves, the proud and industrious cave-dwellers who wrought kingdoms out of mountains, that starting point was their relationship with stone. “At one point, in one of the scripts, one of the characters used to say: ‘The gods created the Dwarves out of stone and flame,’ and to me that was the touchstone of what Khazad-dûm should be—this sense that it’s alive.” Avery and his team sought to bring life into the stone walls of Khazad-dûm by focusing on three key elements: light, water, and greenery: “It’s kind of the opposite of everything we’ve ever seen with the Dwarves before, so it was critical to find the answers of how you represent life under the rock.” The Lindon tree, gifted to Prince Durin by Elrond, that stands resplendent in his chambers,
makes it clear that this is a subterranean world, teeming with life and light. This was an aspect also reflected throughout the entire set. “Of course, they’re mining and bringing things out of the ground,” says Vertelle. “And so, how can we best show that in the furniture? We looked at heavy, Byzantine forms, chunky gems; raw materials; chunks of gold. All things that have a real presence.” The team drew inspiration from the rough-hewn, angular figures of Tolkien’s Dwarf language in the design and shape of the furniture, such as the striking chairs in Durin and Disa’s dining room, which are studded with gold-ore settings. And there, surrounding it all, is stone. But how do you make stone feel “alive”? “We made sure the architecture always grew out of the stone,” explains Avery. “The rooms are actually almost just bare, rock walls, so that lets the rock always be present, and the stone always be a part of their world.” The Dwarves of the Second Age live in communion with their geological surroundings, with an ever-present personal touch: “It wasn’t that they were building blocks into the stone or they were hacking the stone out to make huge architecture. The rock is always there, the veins of the rock are there. There are cracks in the rock, corners chipped off because to the Dwarves, that’s what’s important. They live in the rock.” The choice of building material isn’t the only point of difference between the Dwarves and their fellow Middle-earth dwellers: The very lines that define their language and architecture are unique. “One of the things that differentiates the Dwarf world is angles,” explains Avery. In acute
STONE: SCULPTING KHAZAD-DÛM Drawing on the elements, memory, and lore to bring this teeming land to life
“One of the characters used to say: ‘The gods created the Dwarves out of stone and flame,’ and to me that was the touchstone of what Khazad-dûm should be—this sense that it’s alive.”
contrast to the square forms of the human world Númenor, the elegant verticality and cursive strokes of the Elven realm, or the natural, circular shapes of the Harfoot clan, Dwarven architecture is filled with triangles and diamonds that recall not just the precious jewels mined from deep inside the mountain, but also what Avery calls the “characteristics of construction”: “They literally found the shape within the rock, bit by bit, by bit.” These shapes strike to the heart of Dwarven character: They may be strong and sharp, but they’re crafted with care.
— Megan Vertelle, Set Decorator
Above: The entrance to Khazad-dûm displays the diamond and angular “characteristics of construction” found in Dwarven architecture.
Color contrasts within the Dwarves’ royal chambers. Top: The interior light that provides the source of life to Durin’s Lindon tree, gifted by Elrond. Bottom: The warmth of Durin and Disa’s dining area.
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BACK TO
NATURE:
CREATING THE HARFOOT WORLD
These itinerant proto-Hobbits required a cultural backdrop that was always ready to hit the road
L ong before the Hobbits of the Shire, there were the Harfoots. These humble halflings play a key role in the narrative of The Rings of Power, but their habitat couldn’t be more differentiated from the sprawling settlements of the rest of Middle-earth’s inhabitants. “They are small people in a dangerous world,” Production Designer Ramsey Avery explains. “They don’t have towns, they don’t have villages. But then how do you create that sense of community?” The answer was to create a nomadic neighborhood that appears to have blossomed out of their natural surroundings. “The textile department had a field day,” recalls Set Decorator Megan Vertelle. “They built up this really beautiful palette of greens and washed-out pinks
and oranges. So when you opened up the cart and set up for camp, they would reveal these amazing, joyful colors.” The Harfoots’ furniture was created to be collapsible, as if ready to be bundled up into carts at a moment’s notice, and was unified by a handcrafted, hand-carved, and hand-woven aesthetic. Capturing this called for expert technique, provided by Fabrication Weaver Mike Lillian, who taught the crew the dying art of French basket weaving, albeit with a local twist: Lillian’s willow material was intertwined with supplejack, a vine native to New Zealand. “The half-and-half carts are my favorite,” says Vertelle. “It’s the combination of really structured weaving—the old technique—with a wild, raw, roguish kind of style. It’s really incredible.”
“The half-and-half carts are my favorite... It’s the combination of really structured weaving—the old technique—with a wild, raw, roguish kind of style. It’s really incredible.”
— Megan Vertelle, Set Decorator
Above: The Brandyfoots and Poppy Proudfellow transport their carts, which will expand to form their homes when they reach their destination.
Above: The Harfoots’ nomadic neighborhood, built to blend in with the natural environment surrounding them.
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VFX This raft sequence was shot in a tank that held approximately two million liters of water. Around the tank there were five 14-ton diggers with paddles to produce the waves.
VFX Visual Effects Producer Ron Ames says, “We created a small patch of ocean, but then everything else is computer generated: It’s impossible to tell where the line is.”
VFX One of the inspirations for the sea creature that attacks the survivors, says VFX Supervisor Jason Smith, came from “what Tolkien would have called a worm, but with the aggression of a shark.”
Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) finds fleeting safety with humans on the wreckage of their boat in the Sundering Seas.
FROM HEAD TO FOOT: EPIC PROSTHETICS On the logistical marvel of bringing fresh, tactile fantasy makeup to the screen
“Y ou use a pair of ears, you throw them away. You use an Orc face, you throw it away. You use it one time and then it’s in the bin,” explains Prosthetics Off-Set Supervisor Dan Perry who, along with Prosthetics Production Manager Jamie Wilson, headed the prosthetic and makeup department for The Rings of Power . Turning a cast of hundreds into fantasy creatures that look impressive on 4K cameras—so powerful that you can see foundation on an actor’s face—required a daily pipeline of new production orders. The department used silicone prosthetics sourced from Wellington-based special effects and prop company, Wētā Workshop, for everything from Elf ears to Harfoot feet to the many gory layers of an Orc’s face. Refrigerated trucks full of creaturely body parts were constantly arriving on set. “They have to stay at a cooler temperature because it makes them last,” says Perry, with Wilson adding, “It’s not like you can just pop it in a courier box and send it up.” The duo offer illuminating insider knowledge on the different durabilities of ears and feet. “We’d get multiple uses out of the feet, but the ears were definitely one time only,” says Perry. For the duration of the shoot, their lives were colored by staying ahead of the foot and ear production cycle. “An ear you can make in a couple of days. A pair of feet you need three weeks to make,” says Wilson. “There are boundaries as to what can be achieved in time and how long they last. It was a constant juggle to make sure we had everything that was needed.”
Inevitably, they had the most fun crafting the villains of the story. “They’re the cool creatures of this show,” says Perry of the Orcs whose screen presence immediately brings a feeling of tension and foreboding. These Second Age Orcs predate later Third Age Orcs and Uruk-hai by thousands of years, leading to a different aesthetic. “They’re not so used to the sun, therefore that’s where the low tones came from, the lightest base skin,” says Wilson. Creating an Orc on top of a patient actor took from two to seven hours with the earliest call time being 1:45 am. The process began with cleansing the face, slicking back hair, and gluing on a bald cap. Then came the “interlocking- appliances” stage, which meant assembling “little pieces that go together like a jigsaw puzzle,” says Perry. Final touches were a wig, dentures, and contact lenses. While it might have been easier to rely on CG for eye color instead of practical tactics, there is no comparison. Says Perry, “As painful as the lens can be to apply, there’s nothing like having them there on the day to finish the makeup off and give it some life.”
“An ear you can make in a couple of days. A pair of feet you need three weeks to make.”
— Jamie Wilson, Prosthetics Production Manager
The series prioritized the use of practical effects as exemplified by the silicone prosthetics used for the Harfoot feet (Above Top) and Elven ears (Above Bottom).
Above: Jamie Wilson and Dan Perry’s prosthetics work, as seen on the ultra-detailed face of a scowling Orc.
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PROPS Weapons Master Joe Dunckley made sure the weapons used by the soldiers of Númenor were like fine jewelry with gold inlay. The pieces feature iconography that reflects their history.
DIALECTS Supervising Dialect Coach Leith McPherson worked closely with extras in crowd scenes like this to make sure dialogue and dialect were always on point. Sometimes, directors and showrunners were updating scripts and setups the night before the shoot.
PRODUCTION DESIGN Unit Production Manager Pip Gillings was stunned by the bespoke sets built for Númenor: “I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I actually got lost in there when I was trying to find the set a couple of times because it really feels like you’re in this environment, this town, this village, this space.”
Attention to detail—from the production design of Númenor to the costumes of the extras and the dialects heard in the utterances of the crowd—in this scene, where Elendil (Lloyd Owen) seeks volunteers for the expedition to Middle-earth.
BONE DEEP:
T he on-set alarm clock would usually ring between 2 am and 4 am, and that’s when Vinnie Ashton and Jane O’Kane’s day would start. Their sizable crew of hair and makeup designers—pulled in from such points as Kazakhstan, Ireland, and Germany—assembled on set and began their “builds”—with main characters having to sit in the chair for the better part of three hours. The pair explain that organization is as important as creativity when there is a vast sea of extras. “We can’t possibly wig everybody,” says O’Kane. “When you’re on a TV schedule, it just comes down to what you’ve got time for.”
Elsewhere, hair and makeup ideas derived directly from asking questions about social settings and levels of comfort and deprivation. Ashton says, “We had a lot of psoriasis-y, pustule stuff on the Southlanders because they’ve got no vitamins. They’ve got skin disorders, scabs, and that sort of thing.” The days spent working on the Dwarves in the Khazad-dûm setting proved to be the most challenging for Ashton and O’Kane. “The beards were much the same,” says O’Kane. “We tried to cast people with some beards of their own, so that all we had to do was attach an under-beard which could touch the floor. We had all sorts of design challenges in the beginning, but we managed with our amazing team.” When it came to actor Owain Arthur, who plays Prince Durin IV in the series, the transformation he underwent to become his character was extraordinary. “The first time he got his nose put on in prosthetics, I hadn’t seen the process,” says O’Kane, “and I was outside and he literally just jumped out at me, and I honestly didn’t recognize him.”
HAIR AND
MAKEUP Vinnie Ashton and Jane O’Kane explain how their department developed and applied rules to make every actor look perfect for the camera
The results on screen would suggest the opposite.
The pair’s work began by delineating the unique aspects and aesthetics of the different realms, creating a style sheet that could be applied across all characters. “We gave the Elves a higher hairline,” says O’Kane. “We made them have no body hair and we made them flawless. Obviously they’re very healthy. We tried to give everybody their own identity, aesthetically and genetically.”
Above Left: Owain Arthur, completely unrecognizable when made up for his role as Prince Durin IV. Above Right: Living and social conditions, including vitamin deficiency, informed the makeup approach for Waldreg (Geoff Morrell) and other Southlanders.
Mohair wigs were crafted to provide the nature-inspired look that informed the realization of the Harfoot characters, including Sadoc (Sir Lenny Henry) and Nori (Markella Kavenagh).
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A GLOBAL SYMPHONY: MUSIC
A s gold dust swirls into shapes, rings, and trees, a new theme emerges from a familiar musical realm. The title theme for The Rings of Power comes from the creativity of Canadian composer Howard Shore, the man who created the aural atmosphere of Middle-earth in the Third Age. Taking up the baton and turning back the fantastical clock for the series’ episodic score is Bear McCreary, American composer whose work has spanned film, television, and video games. While the main theme of the series was composed by Shore independently of McCreary’s music, the iconic nature and distinctive sound of Shore’s past work allowed the pair to work seamlessly together and build on solid foundations. Reflecting on the difference between their music, McCreary says that Shore’s work “is so bold, and takes you on that journey, leading you emotionally every step of the way. With television, we have a different opportunity. We get to explore these amazing new cultures gradually. We get to meet each of these characters and watch their stories unfold over hours of storytelling.” The result is a musical journey of its own—nine hours of original music written over eight months for the first season alone. McCreary’s work lends an operatic feel to every element in The Rings of Power. Each character, location, and object has its own Wagnerian leitmotif, a theme which announces its presence in the world and brings the elements of the series together into a sonoric tapestry. Ethereal voices and choir singing Sindarin and Quenya, the Elvish languages, herald the Elves, while a bass chorus in Khuzdul, the secret language of the Dwarves, announces
the presence of the isolation-seeking mining species, to identify two of the 15 new themes. As McCreary reflects, “We have the time and space to pull you into each of these cultures with the music, and evolve our character themes so that you feel their emotions as they take you with them on this journey.” For every episode, McCreary’s score was recorded over four days with a symphonic orchestra at Abbey Road Studios and AIR Studios in London. Concurrently with the orchestral recording, vocals were recorded over three to four days by a 40-person choir at Synchron Stage Vienna, along with solo instrumentalists in different locations over seven days. He was determined to write something unique and unexpected for this soundtrack. This included being intentional in choosing specific instruments and sounds for the different realms: ethereal voices for the Elves; for Dwarves, the metronomic clanging of anvils; hammered dulcimers and a Nordic instrument called a nyckelharpa for the Southlanders; penny whistles and Irish uilleann pipes for Harfoots; for the Númenóreans, a Turkish instrument called the yaylı tambur that produces a distinctive metallic sound; and for the Orcs, a flute made out of human bones. “Every cue is recorded with a massive orchestra and choir. It’s very thematic. But unlike a movie, there’s more opportunities for you to get to know everybody, for you to hear themes and get to know themes.” In its totality, McCreary’s soundtrack celebrates a Middle-earth as it was in the Second Age, vibrant and in its prime.
AND SCORE
On the integral part that music plays in enhancing the emotions of Middle-earth
“We have the time and space to pull you into each of these cultures with the music, and evolve our character themes so that you feel their emotions as they take you with them on this journey.”
— Bear McCreary, Music Composer
Above: Bear McCreary conducting a symphonic orchestra at AIR Studios, London, as part of nine hours of original music he composed for the first season.
Above: Princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete) leads a choir in resonating with the mountain, pleading for the safe return of trapped Dwarven miners.
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Clockwise from Top Left: Elrond (Robert Aramayo) looks on and overhears the secret Durin IV is keeping from him. Durin IV (Owain Arthur) reveals mithril, the new ore discovered by the Dwarves. Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) places her hand on the palantíri to understand the prophecy haunting Queen Regent Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson).
EDITING “This show was a massive undertaking on a very tight schedule. On any given day, we could get footage that spread across four episodes. It was a lot to stay on top of,” reflected editors Stefan Grube and Cheryl Potter. “Thankfully, we had the best post team ever assembled to support us as the show came together.” STORY Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay envisioned the early episodes of the series to be based on the tensions and maneuvers— psychological and physical—that come before swordplay. “We talked about wanting to set up a situation where it’s not about action,” says McKay. “It’s about tactics. It’s a chess game.” CHOREOGRAPHY For the ethereal, immortal Elves, the style of movement was inspired by their relationship with nature and time. Supervising Movement Coach Lara Fischel-Chisholm observes: “In some ways, they transcend [time]…They move beautifully because beauty itself is of great importance to their culture.”
SOUND On creating a “death song” for Galadriel’s dagger, Co-Supervising Sound Editor Damian Del Borrello said: “There’s a very simple sound, and it’s a shimmery metallic sound that we created using metal shims and hits, with a bit of processing to elongate it, so then we could pitch it and almost use it like music. We recognized that was an important element to emphasize…to have a sound that we could use throughout the whole series and be able to manipulate and change depending on the emotional context of how it’s used. That sequence with the dagger at the end with the creation of the rings was its death song. There are all of those metallic-y elements that are almost slightly wailing, slightly crying. There are all these almost pained, metallic sounds, especially through that melting phase.”
STUNTS Supervising Stunt Coordinator Glenn Suter was astonished by Morfydd Clark’s dexterity as a swordsperson. “We talk about fight beats, in which a single physical move is a beat. I think there’s over 60 beats for her. She’s very hard on herself. She’s tough. She’s a perfectionist.”
Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) instructs the Númenórean recruits in sword training through a choreographed sequence comprised of more than 60 beats.
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“Whenever I start a scene, whether it’s action or drama, for me the first thing is to film emotion.” — Charlotte Brändström, Director “As a director, it’s about the language. If I have a good understanding of the story and the characters, I know where to place the camera. And there’s only one possible position for the camera in order to reflect the psychology of the characters and the moment you are portraying.” — J.A. Bayona, Director IN THE FAMILY: DIRECTING On-set camaraderie was an essential component in making The Rings of Power
J .A. Bayona, Charlotte Brändström, and Wayne Che Yip were hand-picked to bring Middle- earth to life, each tasked with helming multiple episodes in the first season of The Rings of Power. Each had to navigate a mix of location shoots, studio sets, and virtual sets, and make the episodes feel visually and tonally coherent—and all under strict COVID-19 hygiene restrictions. Yip says the job of directing on a show as expansive as this one required the right mix of wide-eyed ambition, but also attention to detail and working closely with the cast. “As a director, you’re not there to teach people how to act. You’re there to find those moments that help actors to go in directions that their instincts are taking them.” He also says that his role was made easier by the quality of the collaborators on set. There was an almost magical synergy between the New Zealand-based crew and those who had arrived
from overseas. And working at the complete beck and call of hundreds of extras and technicians— and still maintaining total control—was a strange but satisfying feeling. “You feel that you have an ability to control time,” says Yip. For Brändström, she saw her job as a keeper of the flame in terms of stylistic continuity. “Whenever I start a scene, whether it’s action or drama, for me the first thing is to film emotion,” she says, “You can’t film only the action, because if you do, the action becomes a beer commercial. You want to tell a story with the action.” Bayona, too, was very mindful of all the things that Tolkien does that makes his words so timeless. “When you read Tolkien, the landscape is impossible to separate from the storytelling,” he says. “He created a whole geography, not only characters and a story. So landscape, language, character, story are the basis of this world.”
Bottom Left: Director J.A. Bayona with Daniel Weyman (as The Stranger). Bottom Right: Director Charlotte Brändström on location at the top of Mt. Kidd.
Above: Director Wayne Che Yip discussing the scene with Cynthia Addai-Robinson (as Queen Regent Míriel).
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Three Númenórean ships set sail for Middle-earth to restore the true king of the Southlands.
DIGITAL DREAMS:
P roducer/VFX Producer Ron Ames saw his role on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power as “bridging the gap between story and technique.” It was the task of his team to understand what the showrunners wanted to see on the screen and facilitate that. “I’m proud that we were able to create eight hours of feature- quality material and stay true to the Tolkien ideal. What we discussed in the writers’ room three years ago, and what’s now on the screen, is part of a process that started there and ends here, and it’s all one unique cohesion of storytelling.” VFX Supervisor Jason Smith praises Ames as a collaborator. “He can untie the spaghetti and make neat little piles and put them on the calendar. My job becomes showing up and being pointed in the correct directions,” he says, giving an example of being ferried from a conversation with creature designers to one with the lighting crew about a window shadow that has to match digital extensions. Smith’s priority on his first day was to visually color-code different realms in line with the work being undertaken by all the other teams. That sometimes meant taking the natural colors of a real landscape and tuning them up or down to meet those tonal needs. “The Southlanders are fighting to survive in a land that’s an arid, rocky landscape—they have wrung the life out of it,” Smith explains. “Even though it’s filmed in New Zealand in a beautiful green countryside, we’ve shot it and lit it, we’ve added visual effects and color, we’ve pulled that into a world that’s a little bit more brown and gray. The greens are there, but they’re not allowed to cheer us up too much.”
REVOLUTIONARY VFX
VFX Supervisor Jason Smith on serving the story through visual flights of fancy
“Tolkien really did lay out a groundwork for modern fantasy. He was insanely visual and left breadcrumbs for us to follow.”
The VFX team could have had all the expensive toys they wanted, but were careful to exercise judgment over the use of computer graphics. “Nowadays, everything is possible. The question needs to become, ‘Is that serving the story? Is it worthy of time and money?’” says Smith. One of the many new and exciting creatures in the show are the wolves, as seen in Episode 5. Smith describes the process for creating these VFX characters: “We went back to the way that Tolkien did things. He drew a lot from mythology, but he would also draw a lot from the real world.”
Tolkien was extremely visual as a writer, but he was also a skilled illustrator. Smith was particularly excited by his description of the Balrog, creatures he describes as being “a creation of shadow and flame.” He continues, “There’s an amazing creativity there, and we dug into all of that.” It may sound funny to talk about “realism” as the bedrock for the creation of fantasy; however, we have to be able to suspend disbelief to be transported into a vision. “Tolkien really did lay out a groundwork for modern fantasy. He was insanely visual and left breadcrumbs for us to follow,” says Smith.
— Jason Smith, VFX Supervisor
Above: An Elven legend tells of a battle between an Elven warrior and a Balrog that takes place on the peaks of the Misty Mountains.
Above Left: The VFX team muted New Zealand’s natural green countryside by adding browns and grays to depict the arid realm of the Southlands. Bottom Left: The VFX team followed Tolkien’s lead in drawing from both mythology and the real world to create the wolves that attack the Harfoots.
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IMMERSIVE MYTHOLOGIES: CULTURE- BUILDING IN MIDDLE-EARTH
T he works of J.R.R. Tolkien are rich with intricate maps, laying out an expansive geography of the Middle-earth he built for his epic cast of characters. For those familiar with the Third Age of The Lord of the Rings books, The Rings of Power and its Second Age-setting pushes the boundaries of what we know as Middle-earth into the east. Doing so creates new territory for stories and histories to develop, allowing the various departments working on the series to extrapolate original designs of how those cultures would look and feel. As the map expands, there are new horizons to be explored. Supervising Dialect Coach Leith McPherson characterized the regionality of the maps designed for The Rings of Power through an array of accents. She began by assigning different characteristics to the voices found in the various locations of Middle-earth, choosing where the many species in the series sat in terms of accent and dialect.
“The Dwarves have a Scottish base. The Harfoots have an Irish base. The Southlanders have a Northern English base that’s kind of fun. The Elves were a bit prescribed. They have a more heightened, standard English accent. Then it became about creating an accent that really wasn’t from our world, creating a dialect that was specific to a fantastical world.” Tolkien was a philologist, a language expert, who parlayed that knowledge into creating his own languages. There is little point to building languages without also building a map in which those languages could be used, designing the borders of Middle-earth around the languages he formulated. As Producer/VFX Producer Ron Ames observes, “Tolkien drew the worlds. He would draw maps. He imagined it so fully and so richly, yet at the same time he was telling the story of humanity. He created this world from scratch.” It is those original designs—
the illustration and script in Tolkien’s own hand—upon which the maps of The Rings of Power were based. Joining the ranks of Tolkien experts on the show was Daniel Reeve, who has made a career out of specializing in Tolkien-inspired calligraphy and cartography. His presence symbolizes the breadth of the world-building in the series, and even the maps he helped to create chart lands that transcend mere physical space. One of the key props for the Harfoots is The Star Book , and Reeve was tasked with creating the content for the book, including a written Harfoot language. The Star Book is owned by Sadoc Burrows (played by Sir Lenny Henry), the trail finder and constellation expert of his tribe, and is referenced throughout the series. Reeve looked at ancient runes, drew pictograms, formulated calculations, and crafted family trees to fill the pages of the book. One of the other Tolkien specialists working on the series, Loremaster Griff Jones, worked in the capacity of a historical adviser on a real-world project, treating the canon of The Lord of the Rings with the same academic diligence. He compares the books’ extensive “Appendices,” upon which The Rings of Power is based, to “a history textbook” out of which narratives and stories could be told. The maps found in the books are held in similar regard, moving from quasi-academic text to something visually compelling.
Exploring the lore, design, and language, inspired by Tolkien and invented anew to add deeper layers of immersion
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DIRECTION Episode director Charlotte Brändström used long lenses to capture these panoramic scenes because she wanted to fill the frame all the time. “I wanted to show the craziness and the madness, so we were often using telephoto, 100mm or 135 lenses. Those were the best shots.”
STUNTS Second Unit Director Vic Armstrong is a veteran of filming battle sequences. His key to getting it right: “You have to find the right visual location. You have to go to the right physical location for the horses— hopefully with a slight upslope so it’s easier for the riders to control their horse.”
PREPARATION A year and a half of pre-visualization work went into preparing the climactic battle sequence, and First Assistant Director Luke Robinson says that planning continued until just a week before the shoot.
The production team brought in Horsemaster Adrian Stent. His team consisted of a 30-person crew, including wranglers, coordinators, and trainers, as well as a number of expert stunt riders—with 45 horses in stock, 28 of which were on set for the biggest riding day.
BEST DEFENSE: COSTUMES AND ARMOR How Kate Hawley and the costume department channeled rich mythologies into their battle garments
T he Rings of Power costume department immersed themselves in the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as his broad range of influences from Scandinavian mythology to the art of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Costume Designer Kate Hawley says the huge moodboards they created from these foundations “became anchors for us about how to interpret the costuming in this world and to try and create the mood and spirit.” Just as Tolkien did, the armor of the series was developed from real-world historical research, from the Crusades, which inspired the Elven penchant for chainmail, to Napoleon’s army on the Russian front, and American soldiers in Vietnam. The designs needed to be grounded in our world, but twisted to create something fantastical. Each of the regions of Middle-earth required unique custom armor, calling for Hawley and her team to equip multiple types of soldiers. The costume department on The Rings of Power quickly expanded, developing an in-house armor and props department, as well as more traditional departments like cutting and barding. Everything had to be crafted specifically for the series as the cultures themselves needed to be built from the ground up. Hawley feels that, “There was a lot that we could refer to, but we had to make it our own and make it work in our world.” The armor of Arondir and the Wood-Elves illustrates this approach beautifully. The Elves are a species who not only live in the trees but become a part of them. For their costumes, Hawley says that, “Me and my costume team responded in an organic way to everything.
We had the idea of doing a woodgrain chest plate. We had amazing technicians, props people, and a beautiful sculptor who spent ages sculpting these chest plates to look like real wood.” Into these bark-like designs, Hawley wanted to carve a design founded in real-world pagan mythology, which fascinated Tolkien. “I looked at classical images of the Green Man and that world of pagan worship. The Elves’ home is the land, so we came up with a classical armor with the face of the Green Man on it with leaves, which we brought together with designs by the Pre-Raphaelite William Morris.” The standard Númenor armor, like that of the Wood-Elves, reflects the landscape in which their civilization lies. The architecture is akin to a Mediterranean coastal city, designed by Production Designer Ramsey Avery with intricate street sets and a huge wharf by the water. “There is a lot of Atlantis in Númenor. We used imagery of the sea and Hippocampus, the seahorse. While the Elves have stars and moons, the Númenóreans have the sun. It reminds me of Icarus flying too close to the sun and the mortality these people face.” The different armor designs create a visual form of conflict, one clearly established through rich, contrasting mythologies. One of the first costumes Hawley had to design was the armor worn by Galadriel on her thousand-year hunt for vengeance. “It’s almost like the Crusades,” she says, referring to her historical touchstones. “We also looked at Tolkien’s very specific descriptions of armor. He described the Elves as wearing a lot of chainmail,
“Me and my costume team responded in an organic way to everything…We had amazing technicians, props people, and a beautiful sculptor…”
so we went to that rather than plate armor.” As always with her work on the series, the task was to find the framework and then take things to the next level, even if that meant making things harder. “There’s a lot of imagery in the chainmail, and it was all labor-intensive, hand-linked work. We chose a certain weight that made things more of a challenge, but it had a movement and a drape to it that suggested an Elven quality.”
For the radiant sun armor of Queen Regent Míriel, Hawley “tried to echo what I call the ‘Second Age silhouette and simplicity’ while also incorporating the materiality and richness of Númenor in it. A sense of the old world, with the coral armor and the shell as a decorative element. Then there’s the secret elements of jewelry, pins, and rings, gifts given between kings and daughters.”
— Kate Hawley, Costume Designer
Left: Costume Designer Kate Hawley’s team was inspired by pagan mythology and the Elves’ respect for nature for the bark-like design of the Green Man on Arondir’s (Ismael Cruz Córdova) chest plate.
Top Left: Costumers relied on Tolkien’s description of Elves wearing chainmail in their design process for Galadriel’s (Morfydd Clark) armor. Top Right: Númenórean armor design reflects the landscape in which they live.
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