The Rings of Power title video was made with practical effects

This week, Amazon unveiled the title of its hugely anticipated Lord of the Rings prequel series with a spiffy new title video: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which we shall henceforth just refer to as The Rings of Power, because that whole title is too cumbersome for my fingers to bear writing out over and over.

The Rings of Power is set during the Second Age of Middle-Earth, when Elves dwelt peacefully on the distant continent of Valinor, humanity’s great island kingdom of Númenor rose and fell, and Sauron was fleecing everyone with the fine print for his new Etsy jewelry shop. A lot happened in the Second Age, and while we don’t yet know what the show will cover, there’s no shortage of possible plot points for Amazon Studios to explore.

For now though, we’re still ogling the beautiful title reveal video. As it turns out, a lot of it was made with practical effects, which is pretty cool in today’s digital age.

The Rings of Power title reveal was created using practical effects

“I always try to find an organic — or analog — solution instead of the knee-jerk reaction to use computer graphics,” special effects advisor Douglas Trumbull told IGN. “The reason for this is: every time I try this, I get some delightful result that is, in some respects, unexpected. There are magical things that happen in nature — gravity, fluids, lighting — that one couldn’t really design using computer graphics.”

Yes, that beautifully layered landscape that transformed into The Rings of Power title was all done with practical effects. The title was carved into a sustainably sourced slab of redwood, with several different types of molten metal poured over it to get the ring-forging effect as well as the wash of “water” at the end.

“There was a desire in shooting this title reveal to have a wash of water come through, which I thought was a very beautiful idea,” Trumbull explained. “The question was ‘well, would it be water, or would it be something else?’ to give the ‘burbling’ effect. That’s a very difficult thing to do with computer graphics because it’s in the realm of fluid dynamics which are very hard to calculate. They’re some of the most challenging elements of computer graphics to execute and you can wait days and days for some frames to render. Whereas, if you’re on a set and you have REAL hot, molten metals and super cold water interacting with this, you’re almost CERTAINLY going to get some surprising visual effect which — on camera — will look really great, particularly if it’s shot at 5000 frames a second.”

The sequence was filmed using a Phantom Flex 4k camera, which allowed the team to get ultra high definition slow motion shots of the metal creeping along the outlined letters. “We wanted to capture something that was not visible with the human eye,” director Klaus Obermeyer said. “The molten metal, and its characteristics, are made exceptionally fascinating when you shoot ultra-slow motion which enables you to see the swelling, cooling, and undulation and energy of the molten metal in a way that you could never experience with normal human perception. The only camera that was capable of shooting a high enough frame rate to enable that outcome was the Phantom Flex 4k.”

As you might guess, pouring molten metal onto a slab of wood meant that doing multiple shots presented a unique challenge. The crew used extra slabs of compressed sand to get those additional shots, and did pours with both aluminum and bronze for their different visuals and properties. For many of the special effects, like the mist over the lettering and some of the sparkling debris, they experimented with a variety of different substances like sparkler dust, argon pours, and liquid hydrogen.

Landon Ryan, the metal fabrication expert who owns the foundry where the sequence was filmed, talked a bit about the way that the film crew’s gear was able to reveal the unique properties of the metals. “This is the first time I’ve ever worked on a production,” he said. “I’ve never seen molten metal like this. I’ve always been acutely aware of how metal functions. But this is another level. It’s a deeper understanding. I’ve never been able to slow down physics. At this juncture it was a way to view a world that is impossible to see with the naked eye.”

Jeff Bezos poses with The Lord of the Rings logo

The results of all that hard work speak for themselves, as does this photo of Jeff Bezos posing with the end result:

That picture might say more than enough, actually.

The Rings of Power title sequences teases what’s to come

Lastly, IGN notes that the shift from silver to gold on the title lettering holds some sort of significance for the show. What spoilery things they may be privy to, we do not know. But we’d wager that the silver could represent the rings that Sauron goes around gifting to some of the other races, and of course we know that his own ring (the one that binds them all) is gold.

Given the astronomical amount of money that Amazon has spent on this show, it should come as no surprise that they’re pulling out all the stops to try and make it as amazing as possible, right down to the attention to detail in the title sequence.

The Rings of Power begins airing September 2 on Prime Video.

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