‘The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power’: J.D. Payne & Patrick McKay Achieve The Impossible, But It’s Not What You Think

The Playlist: One of the things I loved about the first two episodes is the look and the feel of the show is definitely its own thing. And it feels fresh in a way that’s new, but it also does feel like it works with everything else that we’ve seen, whether it’s the Peter Jackson films or art from the books. What were those discussions about, whether it was with the production designers or with JA or whoever?

J.D. Payne: So, we always try to work from certain principles to sort of help guide us and lead our decisions. And really the principle that was applicable here is different but familiar. As we said, if this is everything that people have seen before in prior adaptations, then our show would be this. Where it would have the things that you sort of like expected when you came to Middle-earth but it would also have all kinds of things. And when we first pitched to Amazon, part of our pitch was we drew a map of Arda, which is not just Middle-earth, but also Valinor and all the other parts of Tolkien’s world. And we said, “All right, here’s the places you’ve gone before. Here’s the Shire, here’s Mordor, that all takes place in this, Middle-earth. The entirety of Arda is this big. We’re going to take you to all of it.” And so really that was the case also across our design as well. I mean, we were very fortunate to work with people who were alums of the Jackson films. Being down in New Zealand, it was inevitable. And they brought a lot of institutional knowledge and experience. And we were also able to sort of use them as sounding boards where we could say “Yeah, what do we feel like really worked really well? What do we feel like there are opportunities to expand and try something a little bit different?” And we were fortunate to work with artists who love Tolkien as much as we do, and who would sometimes weep openly in meetings in a good way because it’s just so important to me to get this right. I want to make sure it’s beautiful. And they would bring their designs. We’d say, “Oh my gosh, it’s amazing.” They would inspire us and inspire each other. And it was a sort of big Tolkien love fest.

The Playlist: The word is that you’re going to shoot season two in the UK or in mostly Scotland, Granted, I’ve only seen the first two episodes. I don’t know where the rest of the season goes, how are you going to keep some of the aesthetic that came from being in New Zealand while you’re shooting in the UK?

Patrick McKay: I think if we answered in too much detail, we’d spoil where the journey is going in future episodes. Suffice to say in the story, in Tolkien’s world, journeys to other lands are a major recurring theme. And so I think that’s a thing to think about. The other thing I would say is Tolkien was writing about the British Isles. He was writing about his own backyard and his description of the nature and the air here and the light here and the grass here is a huge part of those books. And I think the opportunity to kind of bring the property home feels like one that’s pregnant with possibilities.

The Playlist: Going down that road, we assume the series goes five seasons. Is the goal for it to all look the same, or in the second season, because you’re going to this other land, do you want the show to maybe have a different style than say J.A. would’ve directed it?

Patrick McKay: Well, I would, first of all, I would love to just talk a little bit about J.A. Bayona, we were incredibly lucky to work with him on this. We’re huge fans of his pictures. And we feel he did a beautiful job with those first two episodes. And what is special about J.A. as a filmmaker is he has a love of imaginative worlds and genre, whether it’s a horror film, or “A Monster Calls,” which is sort of Spielberg-y in a way, but he also really [spends time with] performance. And he’s a very emotional filmmaker, a very warm filmmaker. And he has a love of the epic. “The Impossible” is a movie we had a great enamoration for, but also he did a Jurassic World movie, which is this huge scope tent pole with incredible set pieces and creatures and we felt that was a skill set that we needed. So we were incredibly lucky to work with him and really work with him very closely in thinking about what the tone of this story is and what these worlds look like and feel like. And there’s an incredible amount of that I think you’re going to see straight through.

The Playlist: When you’re watching the dailies, you’re getting the visual effects back, without spoiling too much, was there one scene or one shot that you each saw that went, “Yes. O.K.. we can breathe easy. We pulled this off. People are going to be happy.”

J.D. Payne: If there’s one thing that kept me up at night along the process, it was Numenor, because Numenor just has such a high bar. It’s never been shown on film before. And it’s this legendary kingdom of men, that was the pinnacle of what human society ever achieved in Middle-earth. And people are still pining for it and talking about it thousands of years after it’s gone. And so it just has to be the coolest, most amazing thing ever. And so our production designer would bring us [designs] and we’d be like, “No bigger, more impressive.” And he’d be like, “O.K, cool,” go away for a couple of weeks, bring it back. “No, bigger, more impressive.” And so we sent poor Ramsey Avery back to the drawing board so many times, then finally it started to feel good, but then we eventually saw some of the shots for which now I think you may have seen it, some trailers where a ship sails into Numenor, and we see it sort of like open up under a bridge and you see the statue of Erendiel kind of beckoning you in. And then there’s a sort of ultra-wide shot and then a mega wide shot where you see all of Numenor. And when we saw it, it’s like, “O.K., finally, this really feels like the thing we’ve been trying to get to.”

The Playlist: What about you Patrick?

Patrick McKay: Oh, gosh. I thought he covered me here. Let me think for a second. You know, actually, that’s a good one. You’ve seen the first episode, so there’s, the show starts in its own way, quite intimately, actually, with the young Galadriel. And that was a conscious choice to kind of go underneath, hopefully, expectations for the material, which is this vast and incredible epic in everything Tolkien writes. And we wanted to start with a place of emotional connection. And it’s a little girl and her brother, and they’re just talking under a tree. We shot that at sunset in a beautiful place in New Zealand. And then her brother walks away. And the little girl sort of a little piece of innocence sort of seems to be going away from her, right? As he walks up the hill, the camera cranes up. And you know, that’s not a real city that you see, that is a city that was drawn and designed and that many amazingly talented visual effects artists labored over to make it feel real and tangible. And that’s the first, for us as viewers, the moment that we really opened the scope and the music comes in, Bear McCreary‘s incredible score. And there is Tyrion, a city in Valinor. And that was a shot that was one of the earliest visual effects shots we worked on and the way these shots work, you’re looking at them again and again and again, and again and again, and again and again, over a period of months and you hope it gets to the feeling you want, you hope it gets to the feeling you want. And then in the end when we saw it, we thought it was pretty spectacular. And that’s part of the reason that it became the first image people saw from the show a little more than a year ago.

“The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” debuts on Amazon Prime Video on September 2.