Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1480624
making this set look ancient and settled, nothing can beat the hand of Mother Nature. There was even moss growing on the real stone masonry Darren Cox and his team set and carved. Another surprise of shooting in NZ: its forests. For the Second Age elvish kingdom of Lindon, the production wanted a young, bright forest. Kate Hawley, the genius costume designer, had remarkably inspiring look-boards for each of the cultures, and her elvish board held an image of a pathway through a golden aspen forest that looked like both nature and architecture, and shimmered with a Golden Age beauty. Working with the Illustrator Rob Fernández Castro, I developed a series of illustrations with that as our guiding idea. There were a dozen or more sets to place in that forest. One would think that finding a forest to shoot in would be a snap. Alas, for a very green country, New Zealand has almost no usable forests—they are either pine plantations, or they are subtropical bush, or both nestled together. Everywhere one looks, there are punga, giant tree ferns, or nikaus, short, spindly palm trees that didn't feel like Middle Earth. The lovely beech forests of the South Island were too far away and too hard to access. The series needed to build our forest. Originally, I had hoped to build it outside on a backlot, but, being a very green country, it rains—a LOT—in New Zealand. To stage it went. Jill Cormack and I worked with Set Designers in both LA and NZ to come up with a set where we could rearrange platforms and shift trees to create multiple locations. The greens team, led by Simon Lowe, built one hundred twenty-five aspen trees entirely from scratch on metal frames with cast bark skins, artificial leaves and realistic bends to their trunks. The Great Tree and its rock were sculpted and bedecked with over 14,700 handmade tri-lobe leaves. Simon's team also cut and painted literally hundreds of thousands of leaves, some with metallic gold edging, to cover the ground of the sound stage- filling set. There were thousands of saplings, ferns and white flowers to complete the environment. And a flowing stream, which became a waterfall in the VFX extension. The Art Department worked with the multiple assistant directors and producers to figure out a timeline to allow for all the changeovers. For one set, it was important to me to show the elves creating, not just elegantly lounging about, so, to also tell an important visual story of Valinor, a tapestry was designed that elves could be weaving on camera. This design came late in prep, so the 24-foot by 24-foot piece could not be hand woven, but set decorator Megan Vertelle had a secret weapon up her sleeve, two remarkable soft-goods experts, Jillian Chitty and Sarah Bailey Harper. They found a legacy weaver in France who could machine loom it in time. (Time after time, in sets as diverse as an orc tunnel, a magnificent sailing ship or a dying king's bedroom, they came up with similar magic.) Then a scenic team worked with dyes, paint and metal leaf to soften the machined look. A. THE GREAT COURT OF LINDON (ELVISH KINGDOM) CONCEPT ART BY ROBERTO FERNÁNDEZ CASTRO. THE FIRST PIECE OF ART PRESENTED TO THE SHOW RUNNERS, IT SET THE TONE FOR HOW MIDDLE EARTH WOULD BE APPROACHED. B. THE UNDYING LANDS TAPESTRY IN THE HALLS OF THE COURT OF LINDON (ELVISH). PRODUCTION STILL. C. HALL OF MEMORIAL TREES, LINDON (ELVISH) HAND SKETCH ENHANCED IN PHOTOSHOP BY JOHN HOWE AND CLAY MAQUETTE BY NEIL LAFFOLEY. D. GALADRIEL HONORING HER BROTHER FINROD, IN THE HALL OF MEMORIAL TREES, LINDON (ELVISH). PRODUCTION STILL. A B