by Hammond Peek
Originally published in the November 2003 Currents

With great effort Aragorn removes his hand from above Eowyn’s fevered brow, as slowly her breathing becomes less dire. Glancing across at a worried Eomer, Aragorn – now thoroughly spent – slowly rises and leaves. Eomer’s thankful eyes flick back to his sister’s frail and beautiful form, laid out on a simple stretcher in the Houses of Healing.

The two movie cameras continue gently whirring as I reach for the stop button of my Dat recorder – but the anticipated ‘cut’ command doesn’t come. I look up to see Peter (Jackson) creep out from behind his monitors, favourite 3D stills camera in hand, soundlessly position himself beside the dolly to get the perfect framing of Eomer and Eowyn foreground, 30 odd wounded soldiers and tending nurses background in a beautifully crafted set – “click”, he captures the perfect moment – “and... CUT!”

Pick-up shooting for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the third and final instalment of the Rings Trilogy is well underway. I am again in Wellington, NZ, where we are all beavering away fine tuning scenes and shooting visual effects the likes of which will blow your mind come December.

Walking onto the Stone Street Studio lot is like entering a theme park. Over here is a bit of Minas Tirith courtyard, further on a section of the stables at Edoras, to my right the tented encampment at Dunharrow Plateau set against formidable cliffs, and finally a massive dead Mumak lying resplendent on a section of the Pelennor Fields bounded on three sides by a mammoth blue screen. Inside the studios, partial sets include Osgiliath, Rivendell, Shelob’s Lair and the magnificent Golden Hall of Edoras.

I wend my way through horses being led by Rohan riders, some of whom look suspiciously like young blonde girls with beards, to jostle at the breakfast table amongst uruks, orcs, Gondorian soldiers, Easterlings, Corsairs, grips, gaffers and the ever roving ADs (Assistant Directors). An unrecognisable orc nudges my shoulder with a cheerful “hi” – my son Ferand. He attended the Film School in Wellington and has been getting “extra” work along with some of his classmates. He wants to be a director, not a sound recordist; funny lad – I can’t understand why.

The very talented Dan and Chris Hennah are munching on their porridge – grand creators of these magnificent sets. Double Oscar winner Richard Taylor smiles his wide grin as he chats endlessly into his cell phone – marshalling his team of dedicated Weta Physical artists, while simultaneously trying to work out how he can make several hundred skulls within a week. Andrew Lesnie our irrepressibly cheerful Aussie DOP (Director of Photography), is chatting with director Peter Jackson, campaign strategist 1st AD Caro Cunningham and unflappable producer Barrie Osborne – planning another day on the epic I feel such a privilege to be part of. Peter wants to make this film the best of the three, and is pulling out all stops to make it so.

We start with Orlando Bloom (Legolas) who takes a few days out from his commitment as Paris in Troy to slash and arrow his way through various Harradrim and Corsairs, before being farewelled by all of us in an emotional post-wrap ceremony. I realise that this is the first of many such goodbyes we will have – with tears, sweet sadness and joy. Liv Tyler (Arwen) dazzles the guys for an all too short final time. Hugo Weaving (“Agent” Elrond), Theoden, Saruman, the Hobbits, Gandalf, Eowyn, Eomer, Gimli, Faramir, Gollum and Aragorn all return for a final, brief toss of the dice before each being royally farewelled. Miranda Otto (Eowyn) is honoured with a rousing haka from her bare chested New Zealand stunt team who then envelop her in a warm group hug. An emotional Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) thanks his respectful and admiring stunt team by giving his own variation of a hongi – gently head butting each stuntman in turn.

“This is the best and most important film I have ever worked on in my life,” says an eloquently aged Christopher Lee (Saruman, 200+ movies to his credit), the only person on the shoot to have ever met J.R.R. Tolkien.

My own small contribution is to record the production sound on the main unit, while Ken Saville, then Malcolm Crombie, record on our 2nd unit. Thanks to the talents of my trusty boom op Corrin Ellingford I get to listen clearly to Elijah Wood, Sir Ian McKellen, John Rhys Davies and the booming, resonant Christopher Lee for one last time. Recording dialogue with planes flying overhead, with Miramar traffic and industrial noise wafting gently across our exterior sets means a lot of dialogue post syncing (replacement). And when we are inside, fans to create breeze and wind don’t help my “useable sound” percentage.

Our Dat sound tapes go to the wizards of audio post production headed by Oscar award winners Mike Hopkins, Ethan Van der Ryn and Howard Shore who begin weaving their creative sound magic – to be mixed eventually by maestros Michael Semanick, Christopher Boyes and Mike Hedges – and, voilá! – a final sound track that will excite, move you emotionally, and blow your socks off.

Each day as I look back over the four years since I started working on this epic I marvel at the sheer scale of this unique production: hundreds of crew (mostly kiwis) and more gear, props, sets, and extras than I have ever worked with before, or are likely to see assembled all in one place ever again, in my career.

Finally the last official day of the main unit shoot comes, as we all knew it would. We are filming in Osgiliath, wrap is called, and we all gather for an emotional goodbye. This time Peter Jackson is the special person being honoured – by us the crew. We give Peter some presents including a “4D” stills camera, and Spotty (our grip) wheels in the very dolly used on the Thunderbirds TV series. Peter uses this as a grand podium from which to thank all the crew – as always he is generous, honest and magnanimous in his praise. I look around at the emotion etched on individual faces and realise that this truly is the end of a fantastic journey.

I feel great pride in being able to play my own small part in helping create this masterpiece of cinema history – a trilogy of films that will continue to excite, entertain and move audiences for decades to come. I give a huge thank you to all my talented colleagues who worked with me on the production sound and to those who are still working valiantly in post-production on the final sound track.

With The Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson has irreversibly raised the profile of New Zealand crews and New Zealand as a viable place to make picturesque, exciting, technically challenging and cutting edge movies technologically. He has brought Hollywood to New Zealand, and on his terms. And with the success of the Trilogy he is investing his money back into building our NZ film industry. A remake of the classic King Kong, his next project, is due to begin shooting here in the middle of 2004. All this augurs well for folk like me working here in New Zealand, in this weird and wonderful industry.

I am now looking forward to the world premiere of The Return of the King on December 1st in Wellington, NZ. I’m also planning to toast Peter when he finally wins his much-deserved Best Director and Best Picture Oscars this time round.

And for me – will I get a third nomination for the Sound Oscar? As I look into my “seeing stone” there is only visible a hazy, hard-to-read blur. So, I think I’ll just wait and see. But hey, what a fantastic ride so far. I have great friendships, wonderful experiences and memories, and as some people say, “good things come in threes”.

Hammond Peek is a colleague of club member Osanna V's who lives in Christchurch, NZ. Knowing Osanna is a LOTR fan and editor of a website, he sent her this article adapted from one he was asked to write for a New Zealand film industry publication.