Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1480624
schedule challenges. How was I to proceed? Well, not by myself of course. The show runners, JD Payne and Patrick McKay, have a deep passion for Tolkien and a clear story they want to tell. To get me going, they laid out five guideposts: -It had to feel "real"—they did not want high fantasy make-believe. They wanted the audience to believe that this is truly how and where elves, dwarves, Harfoots, orcs, and two very different sorts of men lived, worked and loved. -They wanted the sets to be as practical as possible, using VFX only when absolutely necessary. -The audience should be able to clearly identify a culture should they be dropped into the middle of a scene, from any single still frame. -It had to fit into the budget and schedule Amazon was willing to expend. -Most importantly, it had to feel like Middle Earth. It had to be true to Tolkien's words. JA Bayona, the director of the first two episodes, landed in New Zealand the same time I did. He had a very exciting—and very expansive—vision for the series, equal to the breadth of the words in the scripts and the audiences' expectations of Tolkien's world. To get to the heart of that, he wanted at least one piece of fully developed key art for every scene in those episodes: about one hundred fifty pieces of key art in a very short time. As daunting as that appeared, it created a path to answer many questions right up front about so many issues, helping to set the tone for the whole series. But in addition to those keyframes, work had to continue on specific designs that needed to start being built almost immediately, along with design work on the other six episodes. Fortunately, I discovered the production had an amazing crew of local Kiwi and international talent, with a strong Art Department still in LA. Adapting crew to the workload required meant that over the next twenty- three months, the series had Art Departments working on up to five continents and two islands. Literally, the sun never set on our Art Department; there was always somebody working somewhere in the world. To sort out what all those people needed to do, I first sat down with New Zealand Supervising Art Director Jules Cook, and we figured out what we could quickly feed Phil Chitty's remarkable construction teams. To create the design-build- install-shoot-strike work plan, and to wrestle the budget, we brought in Supervising Art Director Don Macaulay from Vancouver. To oversee the US team, and to specifically guide the concept design process in LA, we added Iain McFadyen as the US Art Director. This led—not always in the smoothest of paths!—to a process where Jules and the NZ teams, concentrated on the human southlands and the Harfoot elements that could be adjusted later while I worked out concept designs with director JA through the development of the key frames. Another NZ Art A. SAURON'S FORGE. SECTION VIEWS DRAWN IN RHINO BY ED SYMON. B. SAURON'S FORGE. SCALE MODEL, AMANDA PIEARCEY, LEAD MODEL MAKER. C. THE HUMAN VILLAGE OF TIRHARAD, SOUTHLANDS. PRODUCTION STILL. D. THE VILLAGE OF TIRHARAD, SOUTHLANDS. ILLUSTRATION IN PHOTOSHOP OVER DIGITIAL MODEL PLACED INTO A LOCATION PHOTO BY JULIEN GAUTHIER. E. THE VILLAGE OF TIRHARAD, SOUTHLANDS. PRODUCTION STILL. F. BRONWYN PREPARES MEDICINES IN HER COTTAGE IN THE VILLAGE OF TIRHARAD. PRODUCTION STILL. A B