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Lighting the White City
The story behind the light kit for the LEGO® Icons The Lord of the Rings™: Minas Tirith set, and why white turned out to be the hardest colour we've ever had to make.
By Will Elks, Light My Bricks™
Some sets you look at and you already know roughly how the lighting is going to go. Minas Tirith was not one of those sets.
When the LEGO® Icons The Lord of the Rings™: Minas Tirith set was announced, all 8,278 pieces of it, we knew straight away this was going to be the hardest kit we'd ever planned. We said exactly that before we'd even got our hands on it. We'd already lit Barad-dûr, Rivendell and the Shire, and those three set a pretty high bar. The White City had to stand beside them. No pressure.
So we did what we always do. We went back to the films. I watched the scene where Gandalf and Pippin first ride up to the city more times than I should probably admit, and the same thing kept jumping out: the colour. Minas Tirith isn't warm. It isn't cool. It's white. Properly white, gleaming like a spike of pearl and silver, the way Boromir described it.
And there was the problem. At the time, we only had two whites to work with, warm white and cool white. Both of them gave the stone a temperature, and any temperature felt wrong against that crystal-white city. So we did something we'd never done for a kit before. We made a brand new light. A pure white, developed specifically for this set. The White City deserved actual white light. Took us long enough.
While we waited for the new lights to arrive, Jack started mapping out the placement with our standard black cabling, and this is where we got a pleasant surprise. Going in, we'd assumed black cables on a white city would be a problem. Mostly, they weren't. Our cables are flat, so they tuck down into the channels between the bricks and all but vanish, and Jack tucked the docks away inside the castle as he went. Across most of the build, the black cabling concealed itself better than we'd expected.
Where it actually mattered was the exposed sections. The open front tier at the base of the city sits right out in the open, cables and docks on full display, and against that white stone, black would have stuck out like Gandalf at a hobbit party. So those areas got a custom treatment of their own. We made white cables, and white docks, specifically for this set. Drop them into that front section and the whole tier reads as clean white stone, exactly as it should.
When the new white lights finally turned up, we dropped them into one side of the city and left the warm white on the other, just to see them next to each other. It wasn't close. The custom white nailed that daytime moment when the city first comes into view, all clean stone and morning light. The warm white made it look like the place was lit by candles. Lovely in its own right, but not Minas Tirith.
A city with seven tiers
The thing about Minas Tirith is the sheer scale of it. Seven tiers, climbing up the side of the mountain. We wanted the lighting to carry that. So the outer walls and lower levels run on our larger white lights, and as you climb, we switch to the smaller ones. It's subtle, but it gives the whole city a gradient: bolder and brighter at the base, finer and more refined toward the summit. Stand back from it and it reads exactly like those wide shots from the film, tier upon tier, all the way up.
Then there was the firelight. One flame effect would have been the quiet way out, and Minas Tirith doesn't really do quiet. So there are three. Big dramatic braziers along the outer walls in flickering orange. Smaller, warmer torches for the soldiers on patrol. And lanterns sitting somewhere between the two. All of them flickering, all of them working together against the cool white stone. That contrast, warm fire against pale walls, is the whole look in a nutshell.
Pull it apart, put it back
Here's the bit I'm quietly proud of. This set has loads of removable sections. Chunks of wall at the back, a front section that turns around to reveal the detail inside. Normally that's a headache for lighting, because every time you lift a piece off you're unplugging a cable. So we built wireless connectors into those sections. You pull a piece away, look inside, pop it back into place, and it lights straight back up. No reconnecting, no fishing for cables. It's the kind of thing you only ever notice when it isn't there, which is exactly why we did it.
Inside the City of Kings
The throne room is lit in stark white, centred on the throne itself. Empty, of course. Still waiting on a certain ranger from the North to come and take his seat. The candelabras through the throne room, the study and the bedroom all flicker warm, so the inside feels lived in against the cold grandeur of the stone.
There's a torch kept lit by the wood stores, too, in case anyone needs timber for a signal fire. Or a funeral pyre. We won't dwell on that one.
Above all of it sits the Palantír, lit in deep orange from directly above, with the Eye of Sauron peering through the window just behind it. We'd recommend not staring at it for too long. We've all seen how that tends to go for a curious hobbit.
The one real splash of colour in an almost entirely white kit is down at the base of the White Tree, where there's a single light blue in the pool. Full disclosure: that pool isn't actually lit in the film. But without it, the summit washed out and went flat, and the White Tree of Gondor deserves better than flat. So Jack added a touch of blue, like sunlight catching the surface of the water. Every now and then, film accuracy and a good-looking model have to sit down and negotiate. This was one of those times, and we think the city is better for it.
Over to Dan
Once the kit was finished, Dan took it in front of the camera for the full product walkthrough, and honestly, you should just go and watch it. He opens with Boromir's pearl-and-silver line, works in Denethor and his infamous tomato, points out that Pippin is present and has been informed he is expected to sing, and then, reader, Dan sings. The Edge of Night, no less. We did not ask him to. We did not stop him, either.
The beacons are lit
8,278 pieces. A brand new white light, white cables and white docks, three flame effects, wireless connectors, and one quietly rebellious splash of blue. It's the most involved kit we've ever put together, and it sits right where it belongs, beside Barad-dûr, Rivendell and the Shire.
The beacons of Minas Tirith are lit. Gondor calls for aid. Or, at the very least, it calls for you to come and see the White City switched on for the first time.
