Lord of the Rings director gives fans glimpse of forest night shoot

Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings show is one of the company’s highest-profile projects, but we still know very little about it. We know it’s set during the Second Age of Middle-earth, back when Saruon was still forging the Rings of Power and the Númenóreans — Aragorn’s ancestors — were still hanging out on their special island, trying not to become corrupted by the shadow and doom themselves. We’ll see how that goes.

But the Second Age lasts a long time and has a lot going on, and we don’t know what part of it the show will focus on, or who will be involved. We’ll take any tiny hint we can get, and that’s exactly what director J.A. Bayona — who’s directing the first two episodes — is giving us.

Just the other day, Bayona posted this striking shot to his Instagram:

"The light from our set accidentally cast on top of a tree and it made it look like a strange cloud from a Miyazaki movie. #nightshoot."

First of all, yeah, the tree does kind of look like something out of a Miyazaki movie. Cool. Second, it looks like Bayona was shooting a scene in a forest at night, a sight most Lord of the Rings fans are familiar with. Remember when the Black Rider was chasing Frodo and company through the woods ont he way to Bucklebury Ferry?

This dovetails with a recent report from fansite TheOneRing.net, whose on-set sources saw “

ooded figures seen in the dense forest under cover of night.” If we didn’t know better, it almost sounds like Bayona and company were filming the Bucklebury Ferry rush all over again. Only they’re not, right? Are the reports about the show being set in the Second Age an elaborate smokescreen? Are they just adapting

The Lord of the Rings

?

We’re letting our imaginations run away with us; obviously there are lots of circumstances where you might want to film hooded guys in the woods at night. The woods feel like a very Tolkien-y place in general; the author set a lot of important scenes in forests. For J.R.R. Tolkien, they seem to represent nature, mystery and age.

Anyway, we hope Bayona posts more behind-the-scenes images as filming goes on. He’s done a tiny little bit, but not much. The team over on Amazon’s The Wheel of Time series is way looser with the pictures.

We also haven’t seen much of anything from the show’s rather large cast, so I have to guess that Amazon has their phones on lockdown.

We’ll get something. Amazon can’t keep Middle-earth hidden from the internet.

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