Exclusive The Rings Of Power S Damian Del Borrello Talks The Sounds Of Middle Earth

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Lord of the Rings Inspired His Career in Sound Editing

Just because he didn’t feel any extra pressure while working on The Rings of Power, of course, doesn’t mean Del Borrello wasn’t unaware of the magnitude of what he was helping to create. In fact, Lord of the Rings is a franchise that the New Zealand-based sound editor holds dearly and with the utmost regard. “The original films were a motivating factor in [my desire to] go to film school and pursue sound design and sound mixing as a career,” he says. “They were quite seminal for me, and part of the reason why I moved to Wellington [in New Zealand] was to work with some of the people who worked on those original films.”

On Creating the Sounds of Middle-earth in The Rings of Power

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“It’s one of the trickiest things to do, in terms of any creative part of films or shows: having an established world, and then creating something that exists within the universe, but is different,” Del Borrello says when asked about tying The Rings of Power’s soundscape to the original Lord of the Rings trilogy while also carving out the distinction. “It’s probably trickier than starting from scratch, especially because those first movies were so good. They really were a touchstone moment in sound. And for me, personally, knowing a lot of the guys who worked on those films, the expectations that I put on myself and that I knew other people would be putting on us were pretty huge.”

Del Borrello describes the “aesthetic for those original films” as “like documentary, but fantasy, so it’s really realistic sort of sounds, natural and organic sounds, but still with lots and lots of detail.” He credits this achievement to the “interaction between the Foley and the sound effects, and making them as close and tight and in tuned and complementary as possible.” As a result, when it came to creating his overall sound team for The Rings of Power, the Foley artists were key players. “They really brought their A-game,” he says. “Our team is fantastic on this show. We were so fortunate to have been given the time to actually fully explore all of the different aspects of the soundtrack that we needed to.”

Whether it involved referencing the sounds in Lord of the Rings, leaning on the online encyclopedia Tolkien Gateway (“I basically had that open on a tab in a web browser for nearly two years.”), or discovering and creating something new with his team, Del Borrello ultimately delved deeply into Middle-earth. Indeed, one of the biggest things that he and his supervising partner Robert Stambler discussed throughout their work on The Rings of Power was “being able to close your eyes and just listen to the background, the actual ambiances, and know exactly where you are.” It’s nothing short of extraordinary what he and his entire sound team were able to achieve, and only solidifies showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne’s previous comments about the series being a labor of love. “Middle-earth is so loved. To do that justice, not only for the fans but also for some of my colleagues who were part of those original films, was really important to me.”

The Rings of Power is now streaming exclusively on Prime Video.