
The only way that Peter Jackson could see to create the sheer volume and quantity of sound needed for the siege on Helms Deep, was to go to the local New Zealand cricket arena, and involve the rowdy crowd. The mixing team wanted the noise it produces to represent this, which led to scraping huge concrete cinder blocks across wooden floors to create that sound of grinding stone that the Balrog is famous for as it drags Gandalf from the bridge to fall with it into the chasm below, before he is sent back to middle earth as Gandalf the White.ĭuring the Two Towers, the sounds had to stretch to include a greater volume of creatures at once, as the Uruk-hai army, more fierce than other orcs, and the trees of Fangorn Forest were incorporated into the trilogy. This is a creature entirely made of rock and fire. Then the fellowship encounters the Balrog of Khazad-dur. The sounds of their grunts were created using bottle caps, which the team ran through and shuffled around to create the skin-crawling effect. The cave troll only acts on the behest of the Moria orcs who control it, and their sound is that of cockroaches, scurrying in large numbers throughout the caverns.

RELATED: How Are Denathor And Theoden Different, And How Are They The Same? But when Legolas manages to finally shoot the creature in the head, there is a moment of clarity in which the cave-troll realizes its own mortality, and its sound-scape switches to a deepened walrus groan, which makes the audience sympathize with its death in its final moments. In order to make the troll seem as hostile and violent as possible, the team used the sound of some of planet Earth’s own fiercest creatures - a tiger for the creatures inhale and a Canadian lynx for the exhale. The Cave troll, a big, aggressive creature, thrashes around in the mine threatening to crush the fellowship. When the fellowship is underground during the first film, they are attacked by a cave troll, a band of orcs, and a Balrog.


One of the scenes in which the audience can experience a plethora of creative sound solutions for a vast range of beasts is in the Mines of Moria. Peter Jackson and the sound-scape team did a phenomenal job of bringing these unusual beings to life throughout the film adaptations of the famous trilogy, through the use of some very clever techniques, including recorded sound, physical props, and foley. Undoubtedly one of the most amazing and alluring aspects of the Lord of the Rings films is the host of weird and wonderful creatures that exist within Middle Earth.
