Hi it's Tod of Tod's Workshop here and I'm back with Nick Jeffries the Master Armourer
of Netflix's the Witcher. We're talking about the weapons, the swords, the daggers,
that came through the armoury department for series one on the Witcher. A lot of stuff
never really properly gets seen because it's made and it just ends up in the background
or you see the front face, but not the back face, and so really we're just here to talk a little bit
about that today; the unseen elements and really we've called this our favourite props. So these
are just some of the favourite things. So Nick pick one up start talking. Okay well I think I
might as well start with the one that's nearest me Tod which is Remus the Witcher that we see killed.
His sword was a sword we didn't have to replicate in rubber, we only see the metal,
we don't see any action with it, we just basically see him carrying it and then we see him die,
so it's just one hero, yeah exactly. So again, I had to think of my own backstory with it and
it amused me to make the back story up that he's a little bit, doesn't like spending the money, so
he has a meteorite sword it's an ordinary sword with a piece of meteorite hammer welded
onto the front of it. Now this really to me epitomizes that little bit of detail that we do
that no one ever notices, really no one ever sees, if they do they don't really realize, but it all
to me makes the world more real. Well, that I mean that is part of the story of all of these pieces,
the things that didn't need to be there or we were never asked for but we put it in anyway,
partly because they might be seen and partly because it makes you feel good or you can run
off in your little fantasy direction there, you know whatever, so I have really in my own mind
created what Remus was to me you know. I've read the script, gone away and thought about what it
says about him and then come back at it and gone "right he's a little bit tight; a bit do
make do and mend kind of thing" and he's just gone to the armourer "how much is that sword? I'm not
paying that! Just hammer a bit of meteor right on the end." And that's exactly what he's got here.
Yeah it's nice. So I mean you know when I made that it's all polished up until the joint, a
little bit of texture, a little bit of roughness, yeah and then I etched the hell out of it. Exactly
Exactly. So we've got that joint as you say it isn't, but it looks like it's a hammer weld,
perfect. It is a fully functional proper sword, blunted yes a little bit, absolutely I mean as
you can see it's a safe edge sword, it has a little bit more to it than just being a sword.
We could have just given him a sword but then you lose something, it's got no life to it anymore,
no spirit to it, so I think it's nice to have things like that. All right, well I'm going to
trade you on this one, so I'll do the next one here. So can I nick that off you. So you know
historically swords are not made by blacksmiths; blacksmiths make ploughs, they make hinges for
boxes, that's what blacksmiths do, they don't make swords. These were made by armourers yes,
but you came to me and you said I've got a couple of 'thuggy' guys for the dragon hunt
and I want them to have swords made by blacksmiths, so they weren't,
you know, this is a good 14th century sword, late 14th century sword,
not made by a blacksmith. So I thought well you know what, thuggy guys, I want to give them,
falchions work well, yeah that's it wants to be, a little bit different because this is Witcher,
so we just got the rubbers now because the originals of these have been repurposed.
All the detail on this is a little bit rough yes, it's ropey about the edges,
it's rushed. The grain on the wood has been pushed through. If a blacksmith made a sword,
he might have made one a bit like this and I like that kind of thinking that that goes into these
pieces, but as I said to you, these guys, these are Reivers. So the Reiver is an opportunist,
he's a thug, he just wants to get the job done and it appears falcions appealed to me. I can see
them being someone who just hacks somebody with a sword, they're not into any massive swordplay,
they're not into fighting someone with a sword, they're up to creeping up behind people at two
o'clock in the morning and hitting them over the head with their sword. Falchion is the perfect
weapon for that, as you know, falchion's original aim is they're a cloth, anti-cloth type armour,
anti-leather armour rather than steel plate. Who do brigands attack? Well they attack peasants,
they attack merchants on the road, they don't have a stand-up fight with a with a proper
knight because they'd lose. So yeah. I really enjoyed making them and I enjoyed looking at
them and they're just nice pieces, yeah exactly. Right Nick your turn again. Okay well I think
my absolute favourite of everything in the house is this.
the dragon hunt was a fun episode anyway there's so much thought I put into these
based on what I knew about the people so Tea and Tea carry identical swords.
In a way I think you can think of them as
symbiont twins or whatever, you want to think of it, they could be the same person,
they're just not. So they think of the same thing roughly at the same time and fight as a pair, each
one of them knows the other ones move before they make that move. They're also very quick to anger,
so my thoughts were let the sword reflect that. So the sword has a peaceful side which is the dragon
with its mouth closed and the human and the neutral mouth closed. It also has a rage
side, so the rage shows a snarling dragon. It shows a screaming person, so it's two halves
of the same person as it were. It has a leaf pattern blade, so it's built to cut and slash,
the scabbard is an open-sided scabbard that you can draw straight out. So my thoughts were
if someone upset you, it's got to be that on that instant you can draw your sword and you
could basically decapitate them, kill them, strike them with the weapon in the instant
and it's that instant flare of anger, so I built that into the swords. Also they have dragons on
their swords because they hunt dragons, but it actually turns out they're there to protect it,
so they have a dragon on their sword because their job is to protect dragons. This sword sums up
the personality of the people carrying it. So I just love this sword, it's fantastic. I must say
I love the blade shape on it, absolutely and I love the copper detail at the top and leaf
blades are often quite difficult to make and make them look nice and you know I think we absolutely
nailed the form on that. You know that that's what makes it a better object, a more believable object
if the only things you've built in was the absolute things that you needed in the script
then it would be quite boring, you have to embellish your thoughts to what it's going to be.
All right, well i'll trade you on the next one. Okay and we've got a pair of shields here
which they sum up an awful lot about me and the work that we do on the show actually. These were
seen in the fight in Blaviken for a flash, for a moment, they're barely in it, but they're there
so what you've got here is a planked shield, it's properly constructed, it's not made of plywood.
We've got a steel boss here which has got some dents, some impact damage, some fire damage
where it's actually melted the steel, you know of course they did that with an oxy/acetylene.
No! Didn't a real monster bleed on it? Well yeah, we had that just go we had that discussion. Yes a
monster bled on the boss at this point, the planks have split apart and I've stapled them together
with little metal staples here that go through on both sides, very medieval thing. Why throw it away
if you can mend it? Absolutely and I think the key thing about these guys is they are brigands,
they found these shields, found them on a battlefield, stole them from somebody,
but they never went and paid money to have these built. It's kind of nice because it
has a back story, but we don't know what the back story is, it's deliberately it's hidden.
But a lot of effort has been made to make the inside of the shield just as good as the outside,
so all the leather rim is nailed on, we have a sheepskin pad here which is genuinely sheepskin,
it's been greased up because the guy's got a greasy arm or whatever, you know. It's
been harnessed so it can be used. None of this is pretend and the same is done on this other shield
here, so again we've got a burnt out section here, the front is covered with parchment.
Everything about this is a real shield and the thing is it's seen for probably half a second,
but when you make a prop like this you don't know what's going to happen, it might end up on
the edit room floor, the director might love it and say can you bring that front and center. He
might hate it and get it buried under a hay bale; you don't know. The fact that they were there for
half a second absolutely shows that, that a lot of it got cut. A lot of their action got cut, but
the back of the shield needs to stand up as much as the front of the shield, it does and and also
that's what makes this sort of thing rewarding for me because years ago I used to work in Special
Effects and I was making a lot of stuff out of mdf and you know fiber board and filler and stuff like
that and that's fine, it has a role, but actually it doesn't satisfy my soul. As soon as you start
putting me with with wood and leather and iron and parchment, I become happy. If we can do it
properly for real, why would we not do that? If we can use real wood, why would we use mdf?
We've used real components in a real way because we can and you get a result which is real, and you
get a result that's real. Yeah that's one of the fun bits about what we do. I think Nick next one.
So for my next choice, I'm going to take this. So the first thing I have to do is apologize Tod this
is not one of yours. I'm very lucky that I have a team of really good craftsmen who work for me
such as yourself. The gentleman who made this, Joe does a wonderful job for me and makes many of my
items, this is a bit of sculpture in steel that he's done for me. So this is Filavandrels dagger,
the first elf or elven weapon that we see, this has a dragon head fork tongue, it's old so it's
been rusty and cleaned back a few times, the blade is very, oh it's khukri-esque so this is
one of my favorite daggers, simply because it's so different, it's such a statement piece. It also I
think fits the person who carries it very well, it's a good statement about him and his people.
So that's my next choice, what I find interesting about that I mean, it is great work by Joe,
there's a signature to it, there is a style that is different from one maker to another,
so you know I've made these, the rest of the pieces on the table here and
there is a very distinct style to those and then there becomes a different style to that and that
all comes in and it works very well and whether you make guitars or cars or houses or whatever it
is you do, other people who work in that area will recognize the work, but amongst knife makers there
is a complete language there. Everything I come up with, I read the script, I break it down starting
to design the weapons, put down the the basics of the weapon, but when I've got more hook on the
idea of what it is I think that this would be the perfect job for such and such, whether it be
a sword, whether it be leather work or anything. I have a few makers in the same field and they are
different people and their style is different and their style might suit different things better.
The last thing you want is to have all the props and go why does his sword resemble his sword,
when it was made 400 years earlier in a country 3 000 miles away? It starts to not make sense
you know? It's another thing about detail you know. Well I'll trade you Joe's dagger for another
one of mine. So this was the Doppelganger's dagger and it's the Durer dagger. Durer being
an artist that really did exist in the late 15th and 16th century. Artists then obviously had a
job making a living as they do now, and so in his off time or whatever, he had a catalogue
of designs, of knife designs. You could go and buy a design off him, take it to the
cutler who would then make you a dagger to suit. So this is based on drawings out of his book,
it's a lovely piece. I've always loved it, completely over the top, ostentatious.
It just suits the Doppelganger, it just, it just feels right you know? When something you
go do you know what this is an opportunity for that this is the piece. I can't say exactly why,
but you know when something just seems a perfect fit that, seems perfect. Maybe it is because he's
got the same face on both sides, so maybe it was as simple as that, yeah it could be
all. Lovely, so the last one on the table is the Mages' dagger, last but no means least,
is the roaming Mage. Yes, I think a favourite of both of us. That's a definite favourite. I really
like this dagger, again I mean I don't actually own anything really, of real stuff, but I do
have an Indian dagger from about the 1750s, a very similar style, which I have to admit I based
this heavily on. This point is made as you know, to separate chain maille. But it just
looks fantastic, but it's ridiculously reinforced as it is, that's 5 8 of an inch/15 mm wide,
it's just a massive chunk of steel on there. It is, so we gave it the ear type of grip so you can
put your thumb on it when you stab down and we made it a little bit bigger and we straightened
it out a little bit from the Indian style. The Indian is much more of a curve really.
This is a fantastic item for him, this implies travel, this implies that he's travelled
to lands outside of where he lives and he has seen something and this is his dagger, because
he liked it. He liked the style and he had this built. It just to me, gives the whole extra story
and a whole extra background and meaning to the roaming Mage. Now we don't see it that much on no
it's another one of those in and out. I don't think we even ever see the scabbard. I'm not
even sure if that's even caught, but we do see the dagger flying through the air
which is in fact about the final shot we did with this and this dagger has something built into it
which shows that. So when we've done everything else, we then drilled a hole through the dagger
and put a small threaded rod. This is what I have to put up with!. Exactly,
because tragically it has to do its job and as lovely as it is, the other thing that I always say
about this it's not original, we made it, when in fact you made it, which is funny, so if I came to
you and said make me 20 more, I'd have 20 more, so we just have to be prepared to do what we do. This
has that stud on it which is its circle point, so we could set this up on a stand and run it round
like so and film it that then morphs into the visual effects shot of it flying through the air
and that was its final shot really and it still has the stud. What I really like about this
again is it comes back to that quality of detail that's there front and back. Like you just said,
we didn't even see the scabbard, but you turn onto the back of the scabbard you know
and even the suspension fittings are, you know, they're riveted in place, bent brass,
nice bit of decoration on the front over a wooden scabbard, but then we come to the knife itself
and we've got, okay it's not actually a laminated steel blade, but we've etched it to make it look
like it was, but then all of this is gold-plated. It's gold-plated up here the studs are silver,
we've got horn handles, everything highly polished. It's a really high status
lovely piece. It's a lovely lovely piece and yet it's only seen
briefly. But that I think, is the sort of attention to detail, the sort of care
that makes these scenes really work. Yes you know, it really does and I think I'm a relative outsider
to to the Witcher production; I make the stuff off-site and and hand it over to you,
but the impression that I get is that everything about it is really being cared about and I think
that's great you know. It's really rewarding to work for that. Yeah absolutely, that's one of the
reasons why I have good and skilled people working on it, I want that craftsmanship to show through
into the finished item. So i think that's probably it, so once again thank you very much Nick. So
Nick and Tod's favourite pieces that weren't seen massively from Netflix's the Witcher series one,
but ones that we love and like nonetheless. Absolutely and I would add to that,
that I think these bits are worth looking out for, I would say why not go and re-watch it
and look for these bits, because you'll see it in there somewhere, yeah they are there,
they are there, but anyway thank you very much and there'll be more to come.