What frameworks and tools help map the Shire leitmotif to LOTR narrative beats?

[Sophia.G]

I'm a music student writing my thesis on leitmotif development in modern film scores, and I'm currently doing a deep film score analysis of Howard Shore's work for The Lord of the Rings trilogy, specifically tracing the evolution of the "Shire" theme from its pastoral beginnings to its fragmented, somber iterations in the later films. While I can identify the melodic transformations, I'm struggling to articulate a rigorous methodology for linking specific musical variations to precise narrative beats and character psychology beyond subjective interpretation. For academics, composers, or sound editors, what analytical frameworks or software tools do you use to systematically deconstruct and annotate a score's relationship to the picture? How do you move from describing what you hear to constructing a defensible argument about the composer's narrative intent, especially when dealing with a score as densely thematic as Shore's?