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Stuck in Middle-earth with Lou

Stuck in Middle-earth with Lou

By Michael Pickard
August 28, 2024

The Director’s Chair

Director Louise Hooper returns from Middle-earth to tell DQ about making season two of Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, after the series moved from New Zealand to film in the UK for the first time.

With directing credits on epic fantasy shows such as The Witcher and The Sandman, it’s no surprise Louise Hooper has learned a few things about playing with genre. And for her latest job, working on season two of Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, she certainly put them into practice.

Across the four episodes she directed (episodes two to five), Hooper sought to transform scenes between elven smith Lord Celebrimbor and the mysterious Halbrand into an intense psychological drama, shoot electrifying battles between elves and orcs and help to introduce undead creatures known as the Barrow-wights who will wreak havoc on the heroes of Middle-earth.

“The first thing I’d say is don’t play it safe,” she tells DQ. “You’ve got this amazing scope of people, experience, equipment and sets, so if you’re not really trying to push it, that would be a shame. You don’t want to just go in there and make sure it works – you want to have flourish and spectacle.

“If you’re going to work on these great, heightened fantasy shows, come with a heightened fantasy director’s vision, because you will have people around you excited to make that happen with you.”

Debuting on Prime Video in 2022, The Rings of Power follows in the footsteps of Peter Jackson’s hit The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film trilogies by taking inspiration from the literary work of JRR Tolkien.

The series is set thousands of years before the events of those two sagas, focusing on the rise to power of the Dark Lord Sauron with a story featuring elven warrior Galadriel (Morfydd Clark), elven politician Elrond (Robert Aramayo), Silvan elf Arondir (Ismael Cruz Cordova), dwarf prince Durin (Owain Arthur), Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards), Queen Regent Míriel (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), a community of harfoots, and Halbrand (Charlie Vickers) – who at the end of season one was revealed to be Sauron hiding in human form.

Season two, which debuts with its first three episodes tomorrow, finds Middle-earth in the throes of discord, with alliances forged and friendships tested, as the war against Sauron begins to build. Cast out by Galadriel, without an army or ally, the rising Dark Lord must now rely on his own cunning to rebuild his strength and oversee the creation of the Rings of Power, which will allow him to bind all the peoples of Middle-earth to his sinister will.

Hooper was already a huge fan of Tolkien’s work, and Jackson’s films, when she was invited to meet The Rings of Power showrunners JD Payne and Patrick McKay and was offered the opportunity to direct season two alongside lead director Charlotte Brändström and Sanaa Hamri.

Morfydd Clark as Galadriel in Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

“They are obviously super passionate about the work and know everything about it, but in terms of filmmakers, they asked me, ‘What are your values? How do you want to work? How do you want to run your set?’ From day one, they were really open and supportive. It was really liberating,” she says.

That might not be the approach a director would expect of “the biggest TV show ever made,” as Hooper describes it. “You’d think it was full of difficulty and control and people being worried about schedule and budget,” she says. “But it was the opposite. It was actually one of the most free and supportive arenas to play in. I’ve done tiny-budget things like Inside No. 9, which was glorious, and now you’re working on this massive set with a huge crew, loads of actors, loads of orcs, loads of horses… It’s a really fun and exciting playground for me as a director.”

While The Lord of the Rings has become synonymous with New Zealand – Jackson’s films and The Rings of Power S1 were filmed there – Hooper found her commute to set much more manageable after production for season two was moved to the UK. The series is based at Bray Studios in Berkshire, where Númenor- and Eregion-set scenes were shot, while filming also took place at Bovingdon Studios in Hertfordshire, where Celebrimbor’s forge and Khazad-dûm were built.

In addition, Great Windsor Park and Frensham Common proved to be the perfect battlegrounds for some night scenes or shots featuring wide landscapes, while sections featuring the newly introduced Tom Bombadil (played by Rory Kinnear) were shot in Tenerife.

Production on season two moved from New Zealand to the UK

“Each day you’re going about your normal life, feeding the dogs and putting the bins out, and then you literally are going into Middle-earth,” Hooper says. “You’d be inside the mountain of Khazad-dûm, and then you walk across the muddy gravel, open a door and you’re in the forge of Celebrimbor, a cathedral to industry that’s got this almost Gothic/Romanesque architecture to it.

“Obviously no expense has been spared, but also no imagination expense was spared. They really just go for it, and from day one, Kristian [Milsted, production designer] and I were talking about the sets. With the scripts I had, I got a lot of close psychological work, which is all nuance and essence, and then I got these big, epic set pieces, which is about how to choreograph a battle. As a director, you get all facets. It was glorious.”

Hooper’s prep time amounted to around three months before filming began, working with numerous heads of department and her DOP Laurie Rose to map out what they wanted to shoot – and how. One fight sequence involving Galadriel led her to imagine “really cool” ways to kill orcs. “The script says there’s all these things, and you’re like, ‘OK, well, let’s find a way,’” she says, “so we then have that blue-sky thinking where anything’s possible.

“The joy and the fun is thinking of different ways you can have a battle and choreograph it in a way that feels really electrifying and new. Thinking about different ways to kill an orc, how you’re going to set them on fire or whatever else, and you pitch this idea in a big meeting where I’m there with my storyboards and everyone gets excited. Then it’s like, ‘Well, how are we going to achieve that?’”

A behind-the-scenes look at the Barrow-wights, undead characters that feature in S2

That’s when the wider team involving costume, hair and make-up, prosthetics, visual effects and special effects contribute their expertise to achieve Hooper’s vision. “And I love that,” she says. “It’s one of my favourite moments in prep, where you have this vision you’ve created, which is kind of bonkers and brilliant, but then you actually work with all these wonderful people to make that happen. I find that really exciting.”

For a show that is produced on the scale of The Rings of Power, in terms of both story and budget, it’s little wonder visual effects are a vital part of making the series. Yet Hooper estimates that 95% of the show is shot in-camera, with only vast landscapes and extraordinary monsters created with the support of digital artists.

“In this season, which is going much darker because the gloves are off in terms of evil, you’re either in Celebrimbor’s forge, in Khazad-dûm where it’s all darkness, or you’re in the nest of a horrible creature – I’m giving you a clue, I’m not saying what it is – or you’re in the houses of the dwarves,” Hooper says. “So what’s exciting is that you are generally doing it in the environment that you are going to see on screen. There isn’t that, ‘Pretend this green background is a waterfall.’”

For one scene, Hooper asked if the design team could create a small lake on set for a sequence where dwarf princess Disa (Sophia Nomvete) is singing and her voice creates somatic images on the water. “Then you extend it with CGI and VFX,” she notes, “but what’s great is you always have the jumping-off point actually physically around you.”

The Rings of Power has one of the biggest budgets in television history

Naturally, Hooper’s choices were always guided by what’s written in the show’s “really descriptive” scripts, and then conversations between her and the showrunners would go back and forth until they settled on an idea.

“When people have that confidence of collaboration, that’s when things really fly,” she says. “When people try to control creativity or try to manage it or micromanage it, it’s a lesser, where actually what’s really exciting is that on such a big show, there was so much childlike wonder and passion. [Senior VFX supervisor] Jason Smith is just insanely clever and excited by The Lord of the Rings, so you’d have really great conversations about the eye colour of a particular monster and really go into that detail.”

Hooper also had “complete freedom” to utilise technical equipment, such as crane shots or wirecams. One example saw her use a wirecam to fly over Galadriel and Elrond as the characters are surrounded by soldiers carrying spears and dozens of horses. “It’s just one scene, all in one shot, but it has a different pace and different height,” she says. “It’s really complicated to get right. I can’t remember how many takes we did, probably in the 20s – could that horse just nudge in a tiny bit more? Can that extra walk a bit quicker? – but I love it. It’s live Jenga.

“There are so many facets to being the director, but one of them is definitely to be a perfectionist,” Hooper laughs. “You’ve got to at least try to achieve that.”

Charlie Vickers returns as Halbrand, who was revealed to be Sauron at the end of the first season

Away from Middle-earth, the director is developing her own projects through her company Louise Hooper Films. They include Fink, a detective thriller she co-created with Natalie Margolin for Bonnie-Chance Roberts at Mark Gordon Pictures. Actor Beanie Feldstein (Booksmart) is attached. Then there’s Dirt, a thriller she also created that is written by William Nicholson (Gladiator) and produced by Gabrielle Tana at Brouhaha Entertainment (Philomena).

However, few shows can replicate the demands of making The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which is undoubtedly one of the most expensive, expansive programmes on television.

“It’s not a show to go small on,” she remarks. “You owe it to the fans and you owe it to the people around you because the exciting thing is, on these kinds of shows with this kind of expertise and these brilliant craftspeople, we can run fast together and we can share ideas. And that’s what’s brilliant, having a huge vision and ambition. It’s also a real privilege, and the more joy you put it in, the more joy emanates on your set but also on screen. I like to bring the joy.”