Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2!
Finally tired of being forced underground, the Uruk went to war The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2, with Barrie Gower leading the charge in bringing them to life. Gower is a five-time Emmy-winning prosthetic designer, best known for his work on HBO Game of ThronesHaving designed the Night King’s appearance, Stranger things Season 4, with designed the practical suit for the terrifying Vecna ​​and HBO The last of usBeing part of designing the cordyceps-infected population. The designer shares his company with his wife, fellow Emmy winner and VFX producer Sarah Gower.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2 is ​​​​Gowers’ first proper outing on the Prime Video prequel to JRR Tolkien’s beloved novel, having previously provided some assistance with creating the Uruk masks in season 1 and working closely with Weta Workshop for it. In the story of Season 2, the Uruk gain greater focus when Sam Hazeldine’s Adar begins planning to wage war on the elven land of Eregion in his quest to allow all orcs to walk on the surface. The season also follows Adar in his quest to kill Sauron for good after the opening execution flashback.
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In addition to the Uruk, Gower and his team were closely involved in expanding The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2’s Middle-earth creatures and characters. Some of these include the Barrow-Wights, the haunting wraith-like figures in the Old Forest near Mordor that Morfydd Clark’s Galadriel and her elven band of soldiers encounter while traveling to Eregion to investigate her vision of Celebrimbor. s death. The Gowers also worked on Sauron’s transformation into his elven form Annatar, which introduces itself as a means to manipulate Celebrimbor into forming the Rings of Power.
A few weeks before the finale of the show, Screen Rant Interviewed Barrie Gower to discuss The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2, as he and his team took over as the primary prosthetic designer for the Tolkien-based show, the intricate nature of expanding the Uruk population for the new season, getting to create the Barrow-wights, working on Annatar’s transformation and offering a Stranger things Season 5 update.
Gover was “Super excited“To come aboard for Rings of power Season 2
“…I think that something could not prepare us…”
Screen Rant: I’ve just loved this show since it started, and Rings of power Season 2 just continues to be such a bold vision of Tolkien’s work. As far as I can tell, you weren’t involved in season 1, so how does it feel to come onto the team this season?
Barrie Gower: I was super excited to get the call to join. And I think we joined before the first season earned. We were actually quite involved in season 1 where we did some live casts and head casts from some of the performers here in the UK and we shipped them to Weta Workshop in New Zealand. So we had a little preview of who some of the cast are, but yeah, we weren’t involved in Season 1, but we were aware of, potentially, what the scale of the show could be.
When we started getting acquainted with the scripts, the story was outstanding and the snippets were fed about what season 1 entails slowly, during the pre-production, my wife Sarah and I, we run our company together, we started to be More and more aware. Of how huge this show was. And it was interesting because we really thought, coming from a background of doing things like Game of Thrones and The Last of Us, we had spice with The Last of Us, which was a huge prosthetic number. We thought we were pretty good with numbers and scale, but I don’t think anything could have prepared us for what we were about to walk into with Season 2 of The Rings of Power.
We are usually involved with projects where we will have key characters who would play for a number of days. We’d make guest appearances on set, and we’d shoot with one or two characters here and there, and something like Thrones years ago, we’d start with various characters throughout the shoot, and eventually, we’d end up with this Huge climax and huge battle sequence where this is where we would put all our effort into Rings of Power. Our first week on set, we had 60 performers in full prosthetic makeup, and that was unprecedented for us. It was in the deep end, straight away, an incredible challenge, but so rewarding in the end.
Expanding the Uruk required some of the Gowers’ greatest work to date
his team”Started inventing a technique“To help
So, I also wanted to ask, then, when you came on the show, you said that you and Sarah were getting ideas of what season 1 was going to involve, but what was it like coming to the prosthetics, in particular, and making Your stamp on them while still adhering to what the team in season 1 did?
Barrie Gower: That’s a really good question. I think, always, for a new team and a new production base to join a show that’s already established, there’s a fine line between, obviously, from our point of view, we’d be very interested in putting our own stamp on it. It’s something we would like to do, something completely fresh, but we have to stick to the rules and the continuity of season 1, and make sure that there is continuity when it’s already established. Fortunately for us, we have a very good relationship with Weta Workshop.
I worked for them a few years ago on a couple of projects, and I know a lot of the guys there. I know Richard Taylor quite well, and a lot of the artists I’m friends with. So, I think the big thing for us was that we inherited all the information, and all the images and footage from season 1 that we could use as a template and a springboard for what we’re going to continue to do in season 2. The showrunners, JD and Patrick, were very keen for us to put our own stamp on it, so we couldn’t go completely left field and do something completely away from what was already established. But we worked very closely with visual effects supervisor Jason Smith, who is a big advocate and big fan of practical effects.
He wanted as much as possible in camera, which was great news for us. But he would tell us a lot of the scenarios from season 1, where there would be some hero orc make-ups, for example, with people in bespoke silicone make-ups. And the majority of camera characters that are mid-to-background would be silicone masks drawn over the head. He was quite keen to see if we could extend that and do many more mid-to-hero make-ups that we shot quite close. So, we started devising a technique, which is similar to what we did before for big mass days, where we sculpted about 10, 15, 20 different orcs, different shapes and sizes over different human head casts, and we split all the make -Up in a puzzle of pieces, but they all have forehead, face with nose, chin, a balaclava with ears.
We could take a forehead from it and a nose from it, and bake from it, and build like a lot of different makeup, but it would all be foam latex rubber appliances that we could stick with medical adhesive on people’s faces. Faces. They all have bespoke contact lenses, bespoke dentures. But on any given day, they might throw a different amount of extras or supporting artists or stuntmen at us, and we might give them 20, 40, 60 makeups each time. So, it was giving the directors more freedom in season 2, like yes, they had characters like Glug, who is a henchman played by Robert Strange, and he had an awful lot of dialogue in the season, but they were also able to Bring many of the other characters right up close and shoot drooling and growling in front, and can just pan across and have those glorious close-ups.
And you’d still have letters behind them, 2, 3, 4 guys back that were in the kind of beautiful makeup, but it just gave them the opportunity to get a lot more bang for their buck and be able to turn the letters and Get a lot more detail on them. So for us, that was probably one of the biggest challenges, was hitting the numbers and balance and to keep that constant throughout the season. On top of all the races we have.
We have our elves and our dwarves and our Harfouts and our barrow-wits. It was fascinating working on a production where every day of the shoot, we had someone in some form of prosthetics. We’ve never worked on a show where we have two main prosthetics on different units, and we usually have 6-8 main cast in some form of prosthetics every day. So, it was unprecedented for us, really.
Sauron’s opening coronation flashback required the most work from Gower’s team
“…I think it was, in a sadistic, weird way, thrown really well into the deep end right at the start of the shoot…”
Since we’re seeing a lot more of the Uruk this season, which scene really demands the most for them? There’s obviously the opening scene with Sauron’s initial defeat, where there’s this huge horde of them, but then, there’s something big that comes up in the last couple of episodes that involves a lot of them.
Barrie Gower: I think as far as hero make up, possibly that coronation at the beginning with Sauron. That was our first couple of weeks on set. I think we had 60 performers in makeup, and they were in the same kind of makeup over 5-10 days, and they just rotated them and brought more front and center. We also had guys in pull-on silicone masks, in a way that was a really good testing ground to see what we could achieve in a certain amount of time. And then, with the sequences that come in the next episodes, you can plan and plan quite well.
We knew when we got to later episodes, obviously, as you mentioned, without spoilers, huge sequences that we knew we were going to get a mass number of characters, you know, 100, 150, 200 plus or whatever, what a big Item may be VFX. And we could have shopping plates with various amounts of characters that Jason and the team could duplicate, but on any given day, we averaged about 20-40 people in prosthetic makeup, about 70 guys with pull-over masks. And then we have the deep background guys, who have what we call party masks, and they’re almost like plastic masks, but they can be very deep, 100 feet away, and they look like orcs.
So, on any given day, we could generate a huge number of characters to be there, present on the screen. And then, at the same time, we were filming sequences with elves, sequences with dwarves, sequences with Harfoots in the Grand Canary Island. So, yes, weight was the challenge, really, but I think it was, in a sadistic, weird way, really good to be thrown in the deep end right at the beginning of the shoot, so we could then preempt,” How are we going to make the numbers up for the bigger, bigger scenes?”
Gower was surprised at how practical the development of barrow-wheat turned out to be
“… a great example of the perfect marriage between practical and digital …”
You mentioned the Barrow jokes a minute ago, and I really wanted to ask about them, because they’re such a haunting design. You, of course, are no strangers to creating haunting designs, either The last of us Or Stranger things‘ Vekna, but this is the first time we’ve seen them on the show, and I love how they feel practical and have a layer of VFX to them. What was designing them, especially for this fight sequence?
Barrie Gower: It was a really fun process. It’s something, originally, when we read the script, we thought, “These are going to be great characters to work on,” and then, as we had our meetings, it was hit across the table, and it sounded like it would be . Predominantly visual effects, and we couldn’t even provide anything. And then Jason Smith from VFX came to us and said, “Sure, we could do with as much in-camera as possible, and we should design these guys together.”
They had loose sketches, some concept art, originally, that they pitched to JD and Patrick, the showrunners, but Jason was like, “We should work on these together. I’m not going to lie that it might end up being predominantly visual.” .effects and digital, but I want a performance that we can also use on the evening. So, we both worked on images for a few weeks, we sculpted And did a make-up test on one of the performers, and they were able to shoot a bit of that and start figuring out the sequence themselves. And we ended up with full prosthetic make-ups, head and shoulders, arms, some chest pieces for five characters In the end.
We shot southwest of London in a forest over a series of about two weeks of night shooting. They had these incredible mechanisms, I think they coined one called “The Weesaw,” and it was this huge platform that a performer could be on, and they would wave him up and down, and in and out in front of the camera. It was incredibly fluid. And to see – one of which was Robert Strange – him doing the movements, it looked like CGI in a way. But they were also able to take the performances, the shots and performance against green screen, and then they layered them with visual effects over the top.
They removed the bodies of the performers from below the waist, and had this lovely kind of thong, stage costume and chains. And they created negative space of holes through the performers, as well. It wasn’t until I watched the episode a few weeks ago that I thought, “I imagine it’s going to be predominantly CGI,” but I could see the make-ups and see the performances in it. It’s a great example of the perfect marriage between practical and digital, I think. The entire season has just been a joy to work with visual effects. It’s one big umbrella, so it was a fantastic opportunity.
Sauron’s transformation into Anatar was meant to look a little different from other elves.
“… this kind of otherworldly, pious presence …“
So, you mentioned the elves, and I really wanted to ask, because one of the big elves we meet this season is obviously Annatar, Sauron’s elven form. I would love to hear about designing the character, because obviously Charlie is still playing the part, but still he looks not only very different from Halbrand, but also very different from Charlie, in a way. What is it like crafting that look in order to really exemplify the power of a man who is posing as a god, essentially, to Celebrimbor?
Barrie Gower: Absolutely, it’s transforming Charlie into another being, which looks almost perfect, in a way. His elven form, we worked very closely with the makeup and hair designers, Chrissy Blundell and Flora Moody, and it was developing down to his anatomy of his ears. The challenge for us is that we always have the canvas under what we do with prosthetics. So, we are dictated, primarily, to give someone elf ears that would suit them, but we cover their own ears basically, or extend. Luckily, Charlie has very nice ears, so we were able to give them these beautiful, slightly upturned angular ears.
We searched for the entire anatomy of the elven ears that were created in the past. But it’s creating something that would work well with his facial makeup, and complement the hairstyle, as well. He has that little widow’s peak, and the costume piece he has in his hair, too. It has a lot of elements that need to work together, and one of those things can throw everything else off. Even down to Charlie’s complexion, as well, the foundation that is used on his face that has a slight sheen to it. It is creating this kind of otherworldly, pious presence that, in a way, he is quite separate to the other elves that we have created.
We know it’s Sauron at heart, but we need to make something that almost looks perfect and beautiful. So, I wouldn’t necessarily say that he was a challenge. He was a really interesting character to develop because we had someone like Annatar, and then we had someone like Sam Hazeldine’s character, Adar, who, even though Sam was inheriting the role of Joseph Mawle from season 1, we had To create Sam’s Adar. To, again, have enough continuity from season 1. But he is, in theory, sort of a part-orc, part-elven character. So you have the two ends of the spectrum, really. It creates shapes for Sam that aren’t necessarily grotesque, but they are.
They are different in design to what we put on Charlie. So, it’s trying to tick all the boxes, from beauty to grotesque, somewhere in between. But Charlie was a dream to put his ears on, like all the cast. We have never been blessed with such a beautiful figure before. So, all the young cast are just really lovely people who are really into it, and really enthusiastic and really excited to have rubber stuck on their faces. We had never had this before, so it was a truly wonderful experience.
Gower couldn’t share much about Stranger things Season 5 (Beyond His Excitement)
“…Without giving any spoilers, it’s an incredible story.”
I see I’m almost out of time so I wanted to ask real quick. I mentioned it a moment ago, Stranger things‘Vecna ​​is a terrifying plan. We are coming up with the final season, and he is expected to come back. Are you involved with bringing him back? And if so, what can you tease about how different he might be or look this season in comparison to season 4?
Barrie Gower: We are involved and have been involved. It’s a very long shoot, I can say that, and I can’t really say anything about, obviously, the design or the look of Vecna. I can only say that it is a joy to come back. This is only the second time we’ve worked on Stranger Things. We started on season 4, but we’re huge fans of the Duffer brothers. We’re also big fans of the cast, and crew on Stranger Things. But Jamie Campbell Bower, as always, is just a pleasure to work with. So, it was lovely to get back to a character that we spent many hours working with Jamie on season 4, and it just never gets tired. All I can say is, without giving away any spoilers, it’s an incredible story. It’s an incredible season, the duffers, I think, will definitely give what the fans are after. I think it will be exciting.
About The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 2
In Season Two of The Rings of Power, Sauron has returned. Cast out by Galadriel, without 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 nations of Middle-earth to his Evil will. Building on the epic scope and ambition of Season One, the new season plunges even its most beloved and vulnerable characters into a rising tide of darkness, challenging each to find their place in a world increasingly on the brink of Disaster. Elves and dwarves, orcs and men, wizards and harefoots… As friendships are strained and kingdoms begin to crumble, the forces of good will fight ever more valiantly to hold on to what matters to them most of all… each other.
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Source: Screen Rant Plus