Night scenes are one of the problems of contemporary cinema and television: sometimes they nothing is visible. The authors of the series «The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power» told us how they managed to avoid this.
Director Charlotte Brendström talks about the preparation of the shooting of the epic battle for Eregion. The scenes were calibrated to the smallest detail.
«We worked with our incredible production designer, who hasn’t been mentioned enough, Christian Milsted. He had plans and designs for it, we knew what Eregion was supposed to look like. We created a lot of miniatures so that we could actually discuss in my office when we read the script, discuss the fight and move the little figures around and see where they stand. And then little by little it came to life, and Alex made sure that the set was in the right direction for the sun as much as possible».
The scale of the Eregion, both during the peaceful scenes and its destruction, required a sense of space even beyond what was captured on screen. The film crew did a lot of logistical work and movements with equipment. Many things had to be taken into account, including even environmental issues such as protecting birds, river banks, etc.
«It was important for us to create interesting moments from the characters, because action cannot be interesting if it is not character-oriented. This meant breaking it down into small pieces. Because when you read it on the page, it can certainly get overwhelming. You only read one line of the script, and it’s actually dozens of shots and three days of filming,» says Brandström about the battle climax.
However, all these efforts will be in vain if the audience cannot see anything in the dark. Most of the siege of Eregion takes place at night, when Elrond’s troops are trying to hold out until dawn waiting for arrival support from the gnomes.
«It all starts with understanding the viewpoint of the characters and where the camera is going to be, as well as the direction they should be moving. We have to do this to let the audience know where they are in relation to each other — that’s our first goal», — says cinematographer Alex Diesenhoff about the nighttime shoot.
But the «Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power» team had a very simple tool to keep everything visible. During the assault Adar’s troops set fire to most of the Eregion:
«In terms of lighting, we had the advantage of having [the orcs] bombard the city with fireballs. So there was a lot of fire, a lot of real fire, but we could also use that as a tool. If I needed a little more light on an actor, I could always just tell the special effects department: «Hey, can you light a fire over there, six feet away?». And they could! We had really big overhead lights that created a moonlight atmosphere. But mostly it was achieved by the light of the fires, which allowed us to keep everything dark, moody, stiff, but ultimately so you could see what was going on,» Diesenhoff continued.
Charlotte Brandström sometimes asked for torches to be lit only because she could not see what she was doing. So the darkness and lighting in the shot seems real, and we now know why the orcs used so much fire.
Source: Gizmodo