**How The Lord of the Rings voice-over was used to craft the world of Middle Earth**

Crafting an entirely made-up world might not be as complex as you think.

How do you craft a world? In screenwriting and publishing terms, ‘world-building’ is the idea of creating a fictional location and making it seem real with specific techniques. Social structures, designing landscapes and visual differences from those on Earth build a rich history full of lore. Creating non-human races, the languages they speak, other-worldly creatures and fictional monarchies are world-building techniques of the fantasy genre specifically – breathing life into the idea of a world.

Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings has set the gold-standard for world-building in film. Sound and audio are incredible ways to access a world in a new sensory dimension; there are few movies with renowned narration and voice-over as LotR. Today we’re diving deep into how The Lord of the Rings’ conveyed and built on the incredibly fantastic world of Tolkien’s Middle Earth through outstanding voice-over for film and set the bar for storytelling.

Languages & Accents

Elves that have lived for thousands of years, talking trees and giants. Creative creatures and fantastical races, packed with lore, inhabit the world of Middle Earth. Part of their in-depth creation was to build the languages they speak, the accents they speak with and the way their voices sound when compared to the languages we know.

Tolkien’s languages are analogous to real-world languages, in both inspiration and comparison. As the classy, well-educated, and most graceful race in the land, the Elves of Middle Earth speak with an eloquent tongue. Finnish, Welsh, and Old-English can be most associated with their language using elocution - the distinct pronunciation and articulation of each word. However, they have complete languages of their own. Dwarves, as usual, are represented with Scottish accents. Scottish and Dwarven stereotypes of gruff men with beards, a sense of humour, and alcohol naturally pair up the relationship.

On the other hand, some Middle Earth races benefit from their lack of earth-related sounds. The Orcs in Lord of the Rings do have multiple languages and dialects but speak mostly in Westron (that’s English to us) so they can understand each other. Their voices are exceptionally rough, sometimes deep and grizzled but other times high-pitched and squealing. They sound somewhere between a voice and a growl, between a person and a beast.

The expansive story-verse of Middle Earth is easy to understand when using real languages as an analogue. The inhabitants have varied languages, accents, dialects, and voices, just like in our world.

Telling Tales

Context is key. The Lord of the Rings voice-over gives additional information to the differences between Earth and Middle Earth. Firstly, they provide insight into the varied characters themselves. Secondly, they give clues as to how the world works that differ from our own.

The Lord of the Rings voice-over is used to provide context from the jump. Cate Blanchett and her exceptionally ethereal voice explain the back-story needed to understand the prologue. Middle Earth is introduced, its relevant history explained and now the audience is briefed to begin the story.

Sauron’s voice-overs in Lord of the Rings are there to provide a threat, raising the stakes for the protagonists. With gargles, screeches and demonic sounds making their way through the ether, his voice sounds like it was recorded in hell itself. This voice-over depicts the character as the evilest of all and provides the context that physics are different in this world. His character doesn’t have a physical form but is a disembodied presence, a difficult aspect to show but not to allude to with voice-over.

Lord of the Rings is no short film. To save time, voice-overs are used to reduce the number of scenes needed. Rather than showing one scene of Arwen being told to leave and another of her deciding not to, they simply overlay the dialogue of one scene over the footage of the other.

Voice-over benefits filmmaking and was used to fill the audience in on the context required to follow the plot. Without the Lord of the Rings voice-over, the world would have to be built by showing every detail of the extensive lore. This is time-consuming and costly from a production perspective. Not to mention, it probably would have bored general audiences!

Crafting Creatures

Non-human creatures are one of the main differences between Earth and Middle Earth. These creatures also talk as this is a fantasy story. The irregularity of what they are means their voices need to be different to what we hear on Earth too, to seem real in the context of the world being built.

Ents are walking talking trees. Creating these characters involved designing a voice that’s believable but what does a tree sound like?

They are old and the passage of time is no threat to them, so their voices are aged and slow. As large creatures, their voices are deep, and they creak like a tree does in the wind. Combining the characteristics of a tree with the characteristics of a voice builds a believable voice-over for a tree-like character.

Gollum’s name is based on the way he sounds. Described by Tolkien as “gulping swallows”, it was Andy Serkis who brought what that means to life. Serkis explained that this voice came from watching a cat cough up a furball. Gollum may seem gross to look at and listen to, but his voice and visuals are context to what the one ring’s possession does to a person: a subtle form of world-building.

Creatures’ voice-overs develop the world of Middle Earth but voice-over in reference to the creatures does too. Cate Blanchett’s voice-over is again used for exposition. When Frodo is being attacked by Shelob the giant spider, her voice is used to offer him a solution. Her words represent Frodo’s realisation that he has the answer in his pocket. This reveals Shelob’s weakness, develops the aspects of the creature and in turn, further explains the world and its supernatural threats.

Middle Earth benefitted from the development of its creatures with voice-over. In part, they are exceptional examples of creative characters. More importantly, they allude to a greater annotation of the world around these characters, offering exposition and lore.

Conclusion

The Lord of the Rings voice-over proved to be a great tool in terms of world-building. Ethereal voices didn’t just portray a race, but they gave the audience information about Middle Earth. Context is expensive to film and time-consuming for storytelling, but voice-over can achieve the same effect with exceptional performances and writing.

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