WINDOW TO THE WORLD: AN ETHEREAL AESTHETIC The series’ cinematographers discuss creating a coherent, exciting, and contrasting visual schema to capture this unique world
C inematographers on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power tended to do double duty as a type of medium for the director’s visual desires. Referring to episode director Wayne Che Yip, Cinematographer Aaron Morton says, “It’s my job to come up with ways to get what’s in his brain out, down, and through the lens.” On an aesthetic level, the series reaches for both the impossible and the spectacular. “I don’t like saying no,” adds Morton. One key challenge of the shoot is locating “the intersection of maths and creativity” required to represent characters of different stature accurately on screen. The cinematographers were schooled in math by a scale team, drew on optical filmmaking rules, and used outsize doubles in the shooting process. This was particularly pertinent in scenes between pint-sized Harfoot Nori (Markella Kavenagh) and the giant stranger (Daniel Weyman), as well as scenes with diplomatic Elf Elrond and his Dwarven counterparts. “It’s a bit of a magic trick. The fun part about it was figuring out which trick to use,” Cinematographer Alex Disenhof shares. And for Yip, “One of my fondest memories is of Daniel instructing his double. These two people look exactly the same. One’s just bigger than the other.” The distinctive, glowing, luxuriant look of the series came from placing the cinematographers into surroundings that instantly got their creative juices flowing. Disenhof describes his idyllic first shooting day after two months of prep: “We were helicoptered to the top of Mt. Kidd on the South Island. It’s an incredibly beautiful mountain top— you just couldn’t get more epic. It was like, “Okay,
here we are on the top of this mountain, shooting these beautiful people in beautiful costumes in a beautiful location. Anywhere you’d point the camera, it was just incredible.” Yet the staggering beauty of the series later gives way to a resurgence of fire and brimstone. On Disenhof’s to-do list were capturing battles, ensuring all creatures great and small appear to scale, and creating a fire storm on a mountain. “Their world is burning and doom has come,” he says. His team used red lighting, tobacco filters, tweaked the color science in camera, and even played God by using sky panels. “We spent a week or two shooting this apocalyptic look. We were in the middle of it,” he says. Devastating visuals translated on the level of character, too. “Our heroes escape and lick their wounds. This
becomes a very personal episode for a lot of characters dealing with loss and with the fact that their world has changed.” There is a unique and ethereal glow to The Rings of Power , and this is largely down to a real focus on making sure the lighting was right, whatever the cost. Morton loved the mix of set-based and location shooting, and reveled in the challenge of perfecting light in unique environments. “I like being in the studio,” says Morton, “because the sun will stay where I put it. No one sees anything in the studio unless I point a light at it. That said, when we were on location, it was almost as if we were in the studio anyway. There was just so much stuff to control the light.” Even Yip was astonished with the breadth of the production. “I’d never seen anything like it,” he adds.
“We tried to keep it as experiential as possible…Almost every day I had a moment of ‘wow.’”
— Alex Disenhof, Cinematographer
Top Left: New Zealand’s amazing vistas, including the top of Mt. Kidd, provided a great canvas for the series cinematographers. Bottom Left: Red lighting, special filters, and sky panels helped Cinematographer Alex Disenhof achieve an apocalyptic look for the aftermath of the volcanic eruption.
Above: Optical filmmaking rules, a scale team, and outsize doubles were some of the resources implemented to accurately represent characters of different stature on screen.
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