From detailed environments to CG characters, uncover how we helped bring the latest season of Prime Video's hit series to life.
Following our award-winning work on Season 1, we were thrilled to return to Middle-earth to help bring Season 2 of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power to life!
Contributing 936 shots across the Season's 8 episodes, our team's primary sequences included the creation of Eregion, it's destruction during the battle, and Damrod the Hill-troll, as well as large-scale FX, digi-doubles, CG prop enhancements, and crowd work.
Read on for a closer look at our Emmy-nominated work with DNEG VFX Supervisor Greg Butler!
Starting with location plates of aerial photography shot in New Zealand, our team replaced the cliff edge with the entirely CG elven city of Eregion.
When developing the city, it was important to balance the fantasy genre with reality. In an interview with Art of VFX, Greg said, "Working in the fantasy genre is always interesting when it comes to images of ‘ethereal beauty’ and other concepts that can work against realism or believability. You want to take the audience with you to a new place, but don’t want to lose them on the journey. If everything is working well – acting, writing, music, photography, etc. – you can stretch a little further into looks that go beyond what’s familiar in the real world. The best starting point is to stay within photographic reality, but push all the tools available."
The environment work done on the city from Season 1 was rebuilt bigger and better for Season 2. New features were added that came into play later on in the season, such as the defensive curtain wall around the city, Celebrimbor’s completed Artisan tower, and the integration of the live action battle set. Speaking with Art of VFX, Greg said, "Most of the build work went into upgrading the complexity and quality of the city overall. We would have hundreds of shots this time, with multiple times of day, and levels of destruction."
Discussing our approach to the city, he also explained, "Our Season 2 methodology was about maintaining a complex and robust master asset, and we avoided cheating for specific shots as much as possible."
This meant that the team avoided doing things that would require a custom version of the environment, making it possible to maintain a much more stable and predictable asset in the pipeline. Greg reflected to Art of VFX, "This paid off many times over the course of the production, especially when it came time to build destroyed versions of the city."
Speaking of...
In episode 7, the beautiful Eregion is under attack. The battle made up the majority of our work on the second season, with the VFX in the sequence being delivered entirely by our crew.
To showcase the deterioration of the city as the battle progresses, our team created various levels of destruction for the city environment, moving it from it's pristine state to the ruins you see at the end of the battle.
The Environments team did this as an additional layer within the city re-build, scattering and placing braziers and torches all around the city and within each building. Greg explained, "Inside all these torches were locators that were swapped for FX simulated fire caches at render time. For the various versions of city destruction, building damage was controlled through a Houdini setup using simple intersecting shapes to create highly art-directable damage whilst also generating broken edges with procedural scorch marks. Much like the buildings, the tree damage was also controlled in Houdini using simple shapes to ‘burn off’ leaves and smaller branches whilst also discolouring the surrounding leaves to give a realistic burnt look."
To bring the hulking character of Damrod the hill-troll to life, our Creature Animation team built the fully digital character asset, including his clothes and weapons, based on a provided 3D concept model and supporting concept art. The Animation team then worked to find the right movement and attitude for Damrod, to give him a sense of mass without slow motion.
Speaking of attitude - Greg revealed some inspirations behind Damrod's character to Art of VFX: "Jonathan Banks’ portrayal of Mike Ehrmantraut in Breaking Bad became our primary attitude reference. It became such a good fit for the character. We also looked at tall actors with a lot of screen presence, like Ron Perlman and André the Giant, for their powerful lumbering strides and balancing arm swings."
To film Damrod's scenes, the team worked off plates shot with a wide, clear area and an eyeline pole set at the appropriate pace. Greg reflects, "We spent a lot of time in shoot prep working out which would be practical interaction moments and when we’d just keep it loose and handle all the interaction in post."
He added, "When Damrod first enters the battlefield, he grabs an Orc, bites off his head and tosses him away. That’s obviously a digital double and we had the Elves and Orcs on-set fighting with a Damrod-sized hole left in their midst."
In post-production, after rough cuts of the battle sequences were put together, a bluescreen stage was used to add additional moments of Damrod's character - with the most memorable moment being when Damrod uses two Orcs as a shield against the Arondir arrow attack. Greg told Art of VFX, "The Orcs were practical and we reverse engineered the troll animation into the footage. We had to jump through some hoops in terms of their movement and lighting, but it was nice to have real stuntmen in the shot reacting to the virtual arrow hits."
