Damian Del Borrello, MPSE, is a New Zealand-based sound designer with more than 15 years of experience crafting soundscapes for TV and film. Most recently, he served as the supervising sound editor of Amazon Studios’ The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a prequel to the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film franchises.
Del Borrello received his first Emmy nomination for sound editing on the episode, “Udûn.” We reached out to him to find out more.
Damian Del Borrello
What direction were you given for the soundtrack of the series?
The word that kept coming up in conversation was “cinematic.” The producers really wanted us to treat Rings of Power like a series of feature films, rather than a TV show. There was a real desire by the showrunners to bring something new to Tolkien’s Middle Earth, which was very exciting but also quite daunting. The original films were touchstone moments in cinema and redefined what fantasy sounded like on the big screen. Personally, I had been working in Wellington with some of the sound editors who worked on those original films, so the sense of responsibility was immense.
How would you describe the show’s sound?
The original LOTR films are often described as “fantasy documentary style” sound, which I think means “realistic.” Even though there are fantastical creatures and worlds, the level of detail is very high, and the quality of the sounds themselves is organic. We didn’t use synthetic sources for things like magic and creatures, almost everything came from real word recordings. The result was an organic sounding, yet highly detailed track.
The sound team
Can you describe your workflow on the series?
Robby [Robert Stambler, MPSE, co-supervising sound editor] and I were brought on at the start of principal photography and began building our libraries straight away. Picture editorial were cutting as soon as the first rushes came from location. For the first year or so, we would receive sequence cuts from editorial, which we would then flesh out and export stems for the editors to lay into the timeline – this meant they could work with high quality sounds as the cuts continued to evolve.
As we moved into the second year, full episodes started taking shape, and we would then assemble our sequence sessions into master sessions – each episode was split into four reels.
The last six months of the schedule had us mixing in Auckland New Zealand, which involved Lindsey Alvarez and Beau Borders, who both did an amazing job.
Any particular scene stand out as challenging and if so, why?
One of my favorite scenes is the orc battle in episode 6 ‘Udun’. The way in which music, sound effects and dialogue all weave in through the chaotic action is so satisfying. We never miss an emotional beat, sword slash, or pained scream – the clarity in the sonic storytelling is just awesome!
How closely did you work with the re-recording mixers on this one? How did that relationship work?
I was constantly on and off the mix stage, reviewing one episode with the sound team, reviewing another episode remotely with the showrunners and prepping new episodes to start on the stage at a later time. Supervisor/re-recording mixer collaboration is crucial in achieving a great soundtrack and also in having fun while at work — my relationship with Lindsey and Beau was fantastic; we all became close friends and would spend most weekends hanging out as well!
What tools did you call on for this show?
All sound editorial, both effects and dialogue, was done in Pro Tools. With the constantly evolving cut, it was important for us to be able to update our editing and premixing within a single session so all the details could be carried forward to the mix.
A key workflow tool was Matchbox by Cargo Cult. The ability to compare two AAFs/QuickTime video files/audio guide tracks and accurately find matches/differences meant everything. Our first assistant sound editor, Andrew Moore, was the co-developer of Matchbox. His ability to build detailed change notes and reconform files was amazing and kept us all on track when updates across multiple episodes came up.
Why do you think this particular episode was worthy of a nomination?
One word – “scale.” In my opinion, this is one of the most cinematic episodes on a streaming platform to date. The sheer volume of work to create the sounds for all the action, VFX and environmental components in the episode is monumental. Then, to have quiet, subjective moments as well as crystal-clear action sequences with massive amounts of spectacle and impact, makes this episode particularly special.
