Interview: Cinematographer Alex Disenhof Discusses Season Two of ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’

Season two of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is much darker than the first season, which built the foundation of what Middle-earth would look like in Prime Video’s television series. Naturally, in adapting to the storytelling changes of the series, the visual language also has to evolve. This was one of cinematographer Alex Disenhof‘s primary tasks in developing how this season would aesthetically differentiate from the last one, as he explains below, in an interview with Awards Radar.

We also discussed how he wanted to expand upon the different worlds that were created in the first season and give them a different perspective, the challenges of shooting some of its larger action setpieces, and how he brought to life some of the episode’s most potent visual moments, such as King Durin sacrificing his life while directly confronting the Balrog, or Celebrimbor breaking free from his illusion.

You can listen to the full interview below:

You can also read a transcription of the interview below, which has been edited for length and clarity

Season one developed the visual language of what Middle-earth would look like and how the numerous kingdoms of the show visited had their own specific characteristics. When going into the second season, as a cinematographer, what were your primary objectives to build upon the language that was established in the first season, especially now that Sauron’s power and influence over Middle-earth is growing and darkness is taking hold of the kingdoms?

As you said, darkness has started to creep its way into all corners of Middle-earth and has affected all of our characters. I was part of the season one team and am pretty well-versed in how we approached it. Going into season two, I wanted the visuals to reflect the turn that the story was taking. In doing this, I developed a new color space for the show’s color science to shoot in for the camera to see and interpret color. We conducted numerous tests using a different lookup table than the one we had in Season One. Season one was a bit brighter and flatter.

In season two, we added contrast. We added deeper blacks and a little bit more green. It feels like a subtle difference, but it makes quite a big difference when you compare the two seasons side by side. The first approach was changing how the camera saw colors. What does Mordor look like now after the explosion? I was really inspired by black and white photographs. When I filmed the explosion in season one, I drew on my own experience near wildfires and that quality of air to create that orange hellscape, for lack of a better term. This season, it became apparent that it’s not where we wanted to be for the whole series. Time had passed, so we bleached a lot of the color out of our sets, costumes, and even the camera itself, resulting in a 30% desaturation of color. Each kingdom still has its separate palette, in collaboration with production design, costume design, and lighting, so they remain distinct in season two, albeit a bit grimier and darker than in season one. 

I assume it was also important for the first episode of the show to reflect that darkness was taking hold in Middle-earth, especially when Adar kills Sauron’s previous form, and we slowly observe his spirit enduring and slowly forming a new body.

Yes, it was. I loved the first 20 minutes of episode one, because I felt like we were almost making an art film on a big budget production, because it’s so strange, right? You’re following some organic mass through caves, time, eating rats, centipedes, and, eventually, coming out as a new form. I like that we were able to take our time visually and, with no dialogues at all, tell a story over the course of ten minutes or so. I really enjoyed that challenge. 

When it comes to visually expanding upon the worlds that we explored in the first season, such as Númenor and Khazad-dûm, how do you ensure that the cinematography responds to what the characters are experiencing and what these worlds are facing as the show gets darker?

Overall, my approach to cinematography and Charlotte Brandström’s approach to directing are both centered on perspective. When we’re reading a script, when we’re breaking down the scenes, we’re always thinking about whose perspective we’re in, and whose story we’re telling in that moment. We then let that guide us in determining where to place the camera.  Do we position it close to the actor, using a wide-angle lens, or place it farther away with a longer lens? There are distinct differences in those choices. Same with lighting and palette. We are always aware of where we are in the story, where the character is in their journey, and we try to make technical and creative decisions to reflect that. 

This season is also significantly larger in scope, particularly in some of the action sequences, such as the seventh episode. Were there any specific challenges that arose in shooting these, very large-scale action set pieces like the one in the seventh episode?

Season two features some enormous action set pieces with hundreds of background elements, enormous sets and lighting at night. The biggest challenge of it all, I think, was the coordination of it and the planning of how to break it down. I’ll never forget when the showrunners first presented us the season, before we even had the finished scripts. We all sat in this conference room, and they were talking about it, and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. Our jaws were on the floor. By the end of it, we went, “Oh, my god.”

When you look at it holistically, it’s nerve-wracking. How are we going to determine this? We had to break it up into very small pieces and take one piece at a time, understanding what we need from each piece to inform what we need from locations, especially where we’re going to build our large curtain wall for the city. I have to figure out the orientation of that, based on the light, on the tree line that’s across the way, where we’re going to be putting trebuchets, two of which were real, 70 feet tall and could swing their arms. It was amazing. Then we broke it up into sections, figuring out what the first unit would shoot. We shot a lot of the footage with the main characters, and then the second unit would shoot pieces that didn’t necessarily feature the main characters, mainly focusing on the general battle. It’s a giant puzzle. Working out how we wanted horses on this muddy field right in front of the curtain wall, you can’t just run a horse through mud like that. The mud went up to our knees in some places. Knowing that, we had to lay steel deck underneath the ground and put mud on top of it, but we couldn’t do that for all of it, because we needed certain sections that didn’t have any decking underneath for various stunts. We were extraordinarily precise in our planning, as these decisions informed the set build, which took months. 

I think when it comes to shooting action, for me, at least, there’s also this very fine task of balancing, this incredible larger-than-life set piece, with key emotional moments in regards to character arcs. In that episode as well, Celebrimbor finally realizes he’s trapped in this illusion and unmasks Annatar for who he truly is. How do you, as a cinematographer, ensure that, visually, each moment, whether it’s an action beat or a character having this emotional progression, always maximizes that emotional investment in the series?

Yeah, it’s a great question. I think it always comes back to a matter of perspective. Audiences have witnessed incredible battles throughout the history of film, beautifully choreographed and epic in scale. Everyone is accustomed to that, which makes it very difficult to impress anyone with a battle on its own. What gets people, I think, is when you’re emotionally invested in the characters. It always comes back to being with your characters, giving them their moments, and understanding whose perspective you’re in. That’s what makes any action scene or battle scene resonant. It’s not just action for action’s sake. It’s progressing the story. In the smaller character-driven moments, my favorite storyline through the season was between the two actors who played Sauron and Celebrimbor. I think that arc is truly beautiful and tragic, and both actors did an outstanding job. It was fun playing with the illusion visually, as it broke. We have a lighting change when that happens. Everything’s normal. He goes out to the balcony and it’s revealed that the city is under attack. All of a sudden, it’s a completely different look. That was a fun challenge to choreograph and break down over several days of shooting. 

Was that also the same approach that you undertook when shooting the battle between Galadriel and Sauron, because they both have very strong and conflicted feelings over their past connection, and the battle is as equally physical as it is emotional for both of them?

So the sword fight in episode eight between Sauron and Galadriel was built around the emotional beats between them first. Then, we built in the action to connect those beats. It wasn’t the other way around. It was so important to get that because he’s playing mind games with her. We’ve all seen great sword fights. We wanted to make this different. We wanted to make it feel like it was a cat toying with a mouse, and a battle of wills between two people who actually really cared about each other. He usad that as a weapon against her. Again, it was really carefully planned, figuring out where the camera was going to be when there would be some tricky transition shots where he’s literally shape-shifting. We shot that over three days, which was really challenging due to the constantly changing weather in England. We needed the time for the stunts, but also for Charlie Vickers to change costume, makeup, and hair to play the characters he shape-shifts into. It was a tricky scene to shoot. 

I think my favorite moment of that particular episode is where King Durin sacrifices himself in the mines of Khazad-dûm as the Balrog attacks. This whole shot in slow motion of the King approaching the Balrog before the entire cave blows up was such an incredible display of visual storytelling. Can you talk about shooting that specific scene, especially employing slow motion to maximize the emotion of the sequence? 

Yeah, my favorite scene of the season was the Balrog scene. Emotionally, it really hits hard. You see this father and son relationship that’s been so strained, and, in the final moment of it, there’s a peace between them, there’s a reckoning, and a handing of the of the the baton to the next in line, with the ultimate sacrifice by a father for a son. That was an interesting sequence. It was really important to me to allow the actors to act off something real, which is a hard thing to do when the thing is a 60-foot-tall fire monster that doesn’t exist in reality. I built a 40-foot-tall tower of LED lights that could be shifted and moved depending on where we needed to be, at the end of the cavern that we were at. I programmed the lights to increase in intensity and physically travel up the length of the rig, allowing it to grow taller and brighter as the Balrog approached, and then as it dropped back down into the cavern. At one point, it goes down again, and it comes back up. We had all these lighting cues that the actors also understood. 

We rehearsed it so they understood that lightning cue number three means the Balrog is there, and they could physically see where the light was hitting. They could understand where the Balrog was, how high up it was, and they could feel the brightness on them. I think it worked. It really felt like you were feeling the heat on them. They are looking at something that they can physically see. It always helps when we’re shooting a visual effects-heavy scene to have interactive lighting that accurately represents the scene. That was a fun challenge. I was really pleased with it. For the slow-motion sequence, we wanted to capture the heroic moment. We wanted that one piece where you’re almost frozen in time. This is the last image of his father that Durin will see, and we wanted to really make it as beautiful, heroic, and tragic as we could all in one moment. If we shot it normally, I think it would be over so fast, so you wouldn’t get the effect. We shot it on the Phantom camera at around 600 or 700 frames per second – and the rest is history. 

Now that you’ve worked on seasons one and two of The Rings of Power, what would you say was the most rewarding aspect of working on such an incredible series like this one, as a cinematographer?

I think the most rewarding part of working on this show, as a fan of Middle-earth, since I was a kid, reading the books, watching the films, you feel like you’re in the world, because these sets are so beautiful. We have all these workshops with artisans who are specialists in their crafts. We have armor-making, weapons, and people making chain mail by hand. We have customers creating beautiful costumes, leather workers, bookbinders —you name it —there’s an incredible artisan creating something for our show. It all distills through my lens. I think there’s something really magical about a group of people coming together. It’’s almost like community art making. You’re all working towards this goal, and you have people from diverse backgrounds with a range of skills. When you put it on the screen, you get Middle-earth. I’ve been fortunate enough to work on a wide range of productions and diverse stories. What makes this unique is that we work on a scale unlike anything else happening right now in film, and being able to bring this world to life on camera physically. We have a lot of visual effects, but many of them are created within the camera, which is quite special. 

Season Two of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is now available to stream on Prime Video.