Damian Del Borrello (‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ sound editor) on epic battles and volcanic eruptions [Exclusive Video Interview]
“I think these episodes are so big that there’s no one thing that we can point to that makes it great,” admits Damian Del Borrello of the epic scale on “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.” He served as supervising sound editor on the Amazon series and recently earned his first career Emmy nomination for Episode 6, “Ud?n.” “It’s such a team effort,” admits Del Borrello, “and that’s sort of the story of the whole season.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.
“Ud?n” is packed with action scenes and emotional beats that showcase the intricacies of Del Borrello’s sound design. One striking sequence sees a ragtag army of humans suddenly besieged by orc archers. There is a muffled distortion to the audio as arrows whisk through the sky in slow motion, piercing bodies with a startling crack. “It’s like we are in the aural POV of the humans,” explains Del Borrello, “so it’s a moment of shock, moment of fear where the world kind of dissolves away and it’s like an internal headspace.”
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The overall concept for this horrifying moment was pitched by the series’ editorial team, but the collaborative nature of this production gave Del Borrello the unique opportunity to build the sound design with them in real time. “Because we were on each episode so early in the process, we were able to jump in and present sounds and give that back to the picture editor, the editorial team, and they were actually able to build that with our sounds,” he notes. On many shows, the sound team patiently waits to work on a locked edit during post-production, but thanks to the holistic creative process on “The Rings of Power,” the sound can help inform the initial edit.
That level of integration was necessary to fine tune the many complex battle sequences in this episode. One of the most impressive of these moments is when the Numenorean army charges into the fray on horseback to fight off the orc army. “If you are always following the action to the letter with those scenes, it can get really confusing because visually you’re not really quite clocking what’s going on,” explains Del Borrello. Instead, the sound begins with a triumphant musical cue as the Numenoreans enter the fray. The music drops out as a series of quick, but specific sounds accompany the rapidly cut shots of war. This gives the audience a sonic perspective on the chaos occurring on the battlefield and allows viewers to follow the flow of the scene. “It really is about weaving in and out of the music to not only tell the practical story of what’s happening in the scene, but also the emotional story,” says Del Borrello.
Sounds of the natural world permeate the entire series, and Del Borrello is quick to point out that the team focused on “realistic recordings of nature” to capture that landscape. They never pulled from a generic library of synthetic sounds. So when Mount Doom erupts in the final moments of “Ud?n,” the sound design is grounded in true nature. The destructive moment includes sonic booms, geysers of water, and a surging ash cloud. However, Del Borrello recalls the “lava bombs,” which rain down on the Numenorean camp, as one of the most impactful aspects of the fiery sequence. “There were layers of liquid, there were small explosions in there,” he describes, “They almost sounded like giant ricochets coming in and tearing through the air.”
Throughout his career, Del Borrello has spent time learning the many various disciplines that embody sound editing. He credits this well-rounded background with coming up in the industry in Australia and New Zealand, the home of many creatives who work on Middle Earth projects. “There’s no real barrier between disciplines and between these types of roles,” he explains. It has certainly prepared him for a collaborative production like “The Rings of Power” where many disciplines and departments are working together simultaneously from day one. “That process of learning all of the elements, dialogue, editing, recording ADR, foley sound effects, mixing music…they all feed in to developing a broader vision for a soundtrack,” says Del Borrello. “But then also being able to communicate and understand when issues come up, how to solve them.”
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