There's nothing on television that showcases the incredible power of visual effects
quite like Game of Thrones.
The goal of VFX in any context is to aim for realism.
[The best compliment that we can receive
in visual effects is to be invisible].
And invisibility is all the more important in Game of Thrones
because the show prides itself on feeling more grounded in reality,
more quasi-historical than your average epic fantasy story.
One of the show's superpowers is the way it blends fantasy and realism
so artfully that we kind of feel this all
could be real history.
So let's look at how Game of Thrones uses visual effects
to build a lifelike world we can believe in.
[They can live in my new world or they can die in their old one]
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When the show began, it had the challenge of
bringing to life a world that was naturally going to be far more believable
in a reader's imagination
[Of course everyone who's a fan of the book has in their mind's eye
what Dragonstone looks like and what Pyke looks like
and what Harrenhal looks like.]
And when you think of a TV show about dragons, you probably expect it to look cheesy and
silly.
But because the VFX is so detailed and thoughtfully created,
the dragons in Game of Thrones flow believably out of the story
without making us question what we're seeing.
It can even be jarring to watch behind-the-scenes shots
of Emilia Clarke filming those dragon scenes
[It's one thing to act in a room with somebody and to draw on your considerable resources
as an actor.
It's another thing to have a situation that's supposed to incorporate
the same level of emotion but you're in the most artificial environment
you can possibly imagine.
It's the opposite of walking in costume through Iceland].
The secret to the show's believability is that it combines those over-the-top parts
with realistic elements.
[The visual effects industry has become very computer reliant
and technological.
But one of the things we like to rely on is shooting organic elements].
So that means doing things like showing real horses
but drastically changing their appearances.
[The white walker is sitting on a horse.
We had a perfectly alive, healthy horse and we put some tracking markers on the horse
so that we can add CG wounds to the horse.]
The dragons' anatomy is largely based on real flying animals,
like eagles and bats.
[We don't make up hardly anything, you know.
We always draw from the real world.
We do a lot of reference by looking at how birds of prey behave
and how certain lizards and reptiles behave.]
Sven Martin at VFX studio Pixomondo has said that the reference point changes
as the dragons grow up.
In season two the dragon babies partly took after chickens and does.
Then as they grew, the VFX team was basing them more
on dogs and wolves.
And by season seven, the reference point wasn't even an animal anymore,
but a massive Boeing 747.
Martin also said he had his animators experiment with frozen chicken wings
to get a feel for how the dragons' wings should move
and how the muscles work.
And even if the dragons aren't real, often the fire they're breathing is.
[Whenever the dragons need to breathe fire we have a flamethrower mounted on
a robotically controlled camera that blasts fire.
And how the air behaves, and the smoke that moves through the air,
all of that goes a long way to helping to sell the other parts of the
frame
that may not be captured by real photography.]
Using real-world elements as a springboard for VFX
is key for other creatures, too.
Like the shadow creature Melisandre gives birth to in season two.
[For the way it should move or the material it was made of,
we would use ink in water as a reference.
The way that ink spreads in water.]
We all know what ink looks like in water.
So even if we're not consciously thinking of that
when we watch this scene,
the visual is playing on something familiar to us.
The direwolves on the show are real wolves,
but the actors aren't actually acting alongside them.
The wight skeletons in season four were played by real stunt men.
So the VFX kept that lifelike movement But added a skeletal form.
The VFX team doesn't have to do too much with the white walkers.
But they do give them those ice blue eyes to make us think, of course, of winter.
So whenever effects create a creature we've never seen before,
they're subtly calling on associations with things we know and recognize.
And that familiar reference point makes us believe.
Much of Game of Thrones is shot on location
[If it was all VFX we would be in Studio City right now.
We're on the Mediterranean coast of Spain.
Because we need this, we need it in our skin,
we need the sun and ancient castles that the Moors built.
This is Spanish dirt underneath my fingernails.
You can't get that in the studio.]
So VFX often isn't creating places from scratch, but transforming them from impressive
into truly out-of-this-world.
If the team is working with a smaller location or a smaller set,
CG set extensions allow them to build something epic in scale
from that starting point.
[We'll call them set extensions, and the term really applies to
whether we're extending a practical built set,
or a location --
a building or a city or some part of a city,
if we're extending it into a much larger city,
or a landscape].
Loads of locations on Game of Thrones have been expanded and embellished like this
The courtyard of Winterfell is a larger version of Castle Ward
in northern Ireland.
The visuals of Pyke started from Northern Irish rock formations.
In The Watchers on the Wall, the green screen wall
was up against a forest near Belfast.
And the Fist of the First Men builds on a real setting in Iceland.
So all these examples came out of practically built sets
or existing locations with beautiful starting textures.
And the VFX team expanded and grew what was already in front of the camera.
The same holds for adding people to a scene.
VFX is used to duplicate real extras, creating huge crowds
while still maintaining the feeling that there are actual people in the scene,
because there are.
We see this in the Battle of Winterfell.
The Battle of the Bastards.
Or in the scene where the wights fall through the ice
in Beyond the Wall.
Then again, sometimes VFX is creating something
that's not there.
And they pull that off through attention to detail.
In Season 7, winter had finally come.
[Winter is here.]
But episodes were shot in many locations that weren't in the middle of winter.
So the VFX team had to do matte paintings over naturally green landscapes.
Crucially, Game of Thrones uses visual effects
more sparingly than you might think.
Most often the really awe-inspiring VFX is saved for pivotal moments,
at the end of episodes, or towards the ends of seasons.
The build-up before those moments Lets the VFX in these memorable episodes
Really pay off.
[Where the Wall meets the sea There's a castle there.]
In The Watchers on the Wall, the VFX team built the whole episode
around a green screen.
Which at the time was the biggest green screen in Europe.
[We didn't have a space that was nearly big enough
or nearly enough people to execute this episode long sequence.
We needed a green screen that was bigger than anything
that had ever been built.
30 feet high and 400 feet long.]
This was the second to last episode in season four,
so the season built up to the huge display of VFX.
And as we've seen, the penultimate episode of a season
does tend to give us a climax in both the narrative and VFX.
An episode like Watchers on the Wall feels especially believable
because the show generally avoids overusing CGI.
So we don't get in the habit of questioning what's before our eyes.
The next season in The Dance of Dragons, Drogon arrives in the fighting pit
and breathes fire on the Sons of the Harpy.
This was the moment that showcased the dragon's strength
in a way we hadn't seen before.
It was also the first time we saw Dany ride a dragon
an event that could have very easily felt off
if not done right.
So the wait for this moment, plus the over-the-top power
when the dragons' strength is finally expressed, led to an intense dramatic pay-off.
In the climactic penultimate episode of season 6,
Battle of the Bastards,
The VFX became crucial to convey the frenzy and horror of battle
[There's a shot in the Battle of the Bastards that we affectionately call the oner,
where Jon Snow is left in the middle of this battle looking like
a guy who just got dropped in the middle of the highway dodging cars.
When they actually hit each other and go flying
and impale horses, which obviously you can't do,
and so we relied on CG up close and personal in a way that I beforehand
didn't think we could pull off.]
In modern times we find it hard to envision the gritty, hands-on,
face-to-face battles of history.
So the horrifying, in-your-face visuals communicate just how intimate and personal
fighting used to be, and is in the Game of Thrones world.
In season seven episode four, The Spoils of War,
again a lot of set-up before the battle
which happens later in the episode,
[Yes, I'm sure Queen Cersei's reign will be quiet and peaceful.]
[Stranger things have happened.]
[Like what?]
gives us a phenomenal emotional effect.
It's the first time we see Drogon actually take down a well-trained army in
battle.
So we get to understand what the dragons can do
as weapons of war.
And this spectacle is combined with interpersonal drama.
We're strongly pulling for characters on both sides.
So the mass destruction of the dragons is all the more persuasive
because the narrative reminds us these aren't faceless casualties.
Real people we like could die.
In the second to last episode of season seven, Beyond the Wall,
perhaps the biggest loss of the season comes when Viserion dies and becomes a wight dragon.
Visual effects producer Steve Kullback has said that the scene was a rare moment
where the whole emotional content of the scene concentrated on VFX.
It's a shocking moment because the dragons have seemed almost infallible
up to this point,
and the mother-child relationship between Dany and her dragons
has made us invest in these creatures.
In that frightening shot when Viserion opens his eye,
the VFX tells the story with narrative efficiency.
That image of the piercing blue eye tells us how much worse the situation
has suddenly become.
Game of Thrones' visual effects have gotten much bigger and more sophisticated
since the show started.
[To give an idea, in season six, which was our biggest season up to that point,
we had 11 shots that featured Emilia riding the dragon.
In the Loot Train we have over 80.]
But even as the effects get more and more daring and elaborate,
their power comes from adhering to the same guidelines,
playing on what we know,
waiting for key moments to maximize the intensity of important scenes,
and featuring an impressive amount of detail that makes everything feel so convincing
you can almost touch it.
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