“Having done the first film,” notes Boyes , “we went into film two knowing more about the likes and dislikes of the director: his way of working, his preferences and knowing what kind of stylistic approach he likes to take for certain scenes. For instance, we have a number of scenes where music is used to let the audience experience the events in a more detached, less visceral way. In these scenes, effects are treated in such a way that they take on a ghostly, echo-y quality — weaving in and out of the music as if they were swimming in the air around us. We used this approach on film one in Boromir's death, along with slow, dreamy visuals to stretch out time and space. We returned to this style in film two; but this time, it also served as a way of taking the audience out of the head-on intensity of the battle for moments of time. In this way, it allowed us to shift the drama from individual events to a more massive global event and, at the same time, give the audience a rest sonically.
“The success of the first film had everything to do with the way the second one went,” Boyes adds. “It was a vote of confidence in us as a team that he was willing to let us start the final mix in his absence. When we started final mixing, he was still trying to finish [recording] Howard Shore's score in London, so we set up a ‘polycom’: We had a TV monitor and a camera pointed at us, and he would have the same thing pointed at him in his hotel room in London. We would send a computer file via a fat pipe — an ultra-wideband Internet connection — and then he would sit at a Pro Tools system with Genelecs and a video monitor and listen to our pass at the final mix for any given reel. Then he would send us back his ideas. It wasn't a perfect situation, but better to have that than flying blind or getting typewritten notes and not being able to see him describe what he wants. Of course, in the end, he came home and did his final pass with us on the dub stage.
“Peter's notes tended to be really clear and direct: ‘I want this scene to start really quiet and subtle and then build. I want it to have this structure to it — we're going somewhere with it,’” Boyes continues. “For instance, there's a scene where the Uruk-hai are marching on Helm's Deep, this fortress built up against a huge rock cliff, and they're marching from afar, but there are so many of them that they set up this incredible rhythmic pulse as they're marching. There were certain desires on the editorial team to have that really be big and be felt and have this huge pulsing mass coming at you. And [Peter] came back and said, ‘No, this needs to be subtle — so subtle that you feel the pulse, but you also hear the breath of the warriors waiting for this oncoming army.’ It was a really poetic way to take it, and also, since that scene progresses into absolute chaos and mayhem, it was a great way to start because you've got something to build with.”
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