The fascinating sounds of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ Uruk-hai
Creating a soundscape for an epic fantasy trilogy that had never been brought to live-action before was a daunting task but a challenge the sound design team behind The Lord of the Rings trilogy were more than prepared for.
Of course, Hollywood has a long and bizarre history of using unexpected methods to capture the desired audio, whether it’s a can of dog food being turned upside-down mimicking Robert Patrick’s T-1000 squeezing through metal bars in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Fight Club battering slabs of meat to perfect the sound of fisticuffs, or tortoises having sex becoming iconic as the calls of the velociraptors in Jurassic Park.
Fantasy presents its own set of challenges, though, something The Lord of the Rings crew managed to work around in an ingeniously inventive fashion. In the Mines of Moria scene from The Fellowship of the Ring, Legolas planting an arrow directly into the heat of a cave troll saw the groan of a walrus used to convey the creature’s dying breath, with the scuttling feet of the orc horde necessitating the sound team to run around on floor covered with bottle caps.
The Ents moving through their home turf of Fangorn Forest was a cow slowed down and deepened, the fell-beasts ridden by the Nazgûl are braying donkeys that fly to the sound of a cheese grater on a string being whirled around the recording studio, and the deafening echo caused by the skulls erupting from around the King of the Dead when he’s confronted by Aragorn in The Return of the King is a combination of coconuts being launched down a flight of stairs and walnuts being propelled along a concrete ramp.
There’s a fair amount of ingenuity involved, to put it lightly, but when Peter Jackson was seeking the perfect recreation of an Uruk-hai army chanting ahead of battle, the best option on the table was to gather tens of thousands of voices chanting in unison, with a jam-packed sports arena proving the easiest – and smartest – available option.
When The Two Towers presents its 10,000-strong force, Jackson descended upon Wellington’s Westpac Trust stadium in February 2002 for a cricket match between England and New Zealand for inspiration. During an innings break, the filmmaker took to the pitch and acted as a conductor of sorts, leading the 25,000 in attendance in chants, roars, and growls that would eventually become a pivotal part of the middle chapter.
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Black Speech, the throngs are chanting “Gu kibum kelkum-ishi, burzum-ishi. Akha-gum-ishi ashi gurum”, which for those unfamiliar with the author’s meticulously crafted and curated in-universe language, was handily translated as something approximating “No life in coldness, in darkness. Here in void, only death”, which is suitably foreboding.
Not only did the cricket fans get to catch the big game, but they also ended up becoming a part of cinematic history along the way, which isn’t too shabby as far as a day out goes.
