hi it's Tod of Tod's Workshop here and i'm back with Nick Jeffries the Head of Department, Master
Armorer from Netflix's The Witcher series. If you haven't seen it for goodness sake go and watch it
it is very very good so we have a thing with The Witcher it is a fantasy world and it is a world
where just like our world has different countries there are different countries different cultures
in The Witcher it's really over to you Nick we've got three examples here of different cultures
and how stylistically they're a little bit different and why they're a little bit different
so good okay well i think we'll start first of all with Cintra which we see here so Cintra
is more of a conventional medieval society to use the layman's term "knights in shining armor" so
it could be France it could be Germany it could be England yes that's it a western european to
the edge of eastern european medieval society so this is a sword made in Cintra armories they make
the same sword for most of their people like town guard swords yeah their their infantry
their cavalry their hierarchy this is the Cintra pattern sword that their armorers
have made they've chosen this style over a few hundred years and perfected it to this
they have that and they have their dagger it runs the common theme of the pommel a little bit of
common theme in on the cross guard as you can see they live in the same family. So for history buffs
out there nominally a 15th century piece with the fish tail yeah absolutely absolutely i have
two or three hero versions of each one when we did the battle against Nilfgaard uh with Cintra
there is steel swords available just for some opening shots where they're brandishing a weapon
then we go into rubber and the whole battle is fought with rubber both of these were made by
the same person by joe again actually and all of Cintra leather was made by a very talented guy
who does some work for me called Carl Derrick. So again we were talking in a previous film
about sort of the signature of of makers the style of makers that you can see from
different people so so again Carl's work there is different to my work so it's going to give a
different look his work has a particular look and i choose that when i want that particular look
to be emphasized then we move on to Nilfgaard my first thought with Nilfgaard weapons is thugs and
brigands and such. They're just not nice people. They're not. they basically kill everyone they get
their hands on so something in my brain tells me that people who do that have a sword you can hack
people with so we once again go to a falchion idea this is the cavalry pattern falchion this sword
is for all Nilfgaard people who ride a horse regardless of rank they get this
all Nilfgaard the foot soldiers regardless of rank get the hand and a half falchion. So,
interestingly there you've got a shorter weapon for the cavalry and a longer left the infantry
very often historically it would be the other way around because the the cavalry man has to
be able to reach down low with a longer weapon so what's going on yes you're absolutely right
but again this is a filming issue the longer the sword you put on on a horseback the more difficult
it is for the rider now we have some riders that are well used to swords and very good and handy
we have some less so it's just easier to give them a slightly smaller sword i suppose the thing
to remember as well is if you think about knight historically, we're you know there is no way we're
disparaging stunt riders here that's not what we do, but you think about at knight historically he
is trained from the age of 10 or 11 or 12 and that is his mission his purpose in life is to
be martial, to fight, to to use these weapons on horse on foot and so you know by the time that
child is 14 he's probably had far more experience than any stunt rider. absolutely absolutely so we
we have to keep the realities of filming in mind and make everything fit for purpose so
the Nilfgaard pattern falchion has the common theme of this back curve this is not a weaponized
side it is just a shape it's based on the the both the French and the Italians had that. The italians
love those i mean they used to call them "storta" which was the same thing as the falchion so the
French and the English word for it was falchion really yeah um that sort of scalloped back edge is
very typical of the sort of things they did they went in for the maddest craziest yeah absolutely
and then the pommel is a very north italian uh late 15th century 16th century yeah
absolutely it's a central look but without the rounded top to the top of the turret it's more
well as you can see it's more flowing yeah and yes you can easily argue that
that pommel is a later period pommel we're not historically tied into an absolute date as i said
before i try and work to a date but we're not in the we're not in this world but what you have done
is you've chosen elements from real weapons which when you combine them the result is a real a real
weapon not a weapon that's ever existed but a weapon that could have existed absolutely
could have existed and it works for me and does the job that it's written to do that sword would
work in reality it's a sword you could turn up to a battle with and have a chance of walking out of
the battle at the end of it if you carried this sword um so yeah nilfgaard you need to think of
a hacking weapon they're built to chop people to pieces regardless of who they are um they'll fight
a battle with them but they'll also just go and kill a village with them 'em. Lovely, and then
the last of the three cultures we're looking at here from series one are the Dryads yes absolutely
so um i mean if you want to start with Steve Ralph's crossbow yeah another guy who does some
excellent work for me is the world-renowned Steve Ralphs who's built these lovely crossbows for us
um this crossbow is very vaguely uh based on a burmese hill tribe one of the big things
about the Dryads is they have no leather and they have no metal so everything is built
out of wood bone sinew for the eagle eyed amongst everybody you can see this is actually cocked
but this is a fixed in position weapon so when we see loads of people with a bolt in place it's not
actually dangerous because the triggers you would never touch the string anyway and as you can see
the string is fixed in place one of the things about that as well is if you've got 50 extras here
you can't watch them if they've all got loaded weapons and you have to be in attendance if they
have things that can injure people well absolutely we would never put a bolt on a crossbow if there's
any danger of anybody tapping the trigger and it going off that just can't happen
so what we do is the triggers are made disengaged they're not an active trigger
the string is fixed in position not only is it fixed in position the actual bow is made
with a more of a curve on it and the string is literally a bit of string between them so there's
no real tension in there so if you actually hit it hard enough to rip the fixings out
if you could do that and it hit the bolt well it'll just drop out it's got no power to it so as
much as we can this is a safe item but it looks like it's loaded and it's threatening but it's
not it's film fantasy when we actually want to fire them we have another few that are practical
that we could fire a bolt out and those of course are the ones you have to monitor much more closely
absolutely and you treat them like dangerous weapons because they are absolutely yeah um
it may be a prop crossbow it may be a prop bow and arrow but anything that fires a projectile,
fires a projectile, and needs to be dealt with accordingly so yes so um put that back down there
then we'll go on to the bolts so the bolt has a distinctive blue and black uh feather on it which
is that something that lives there that donates its feathers for their boats the bolt is bamboo
the head is a lashed on bone head so this was made by one of my guys uh in hungary called Tomash and
two other guys Ference and Balin working hard away in our workshops over there making the
quantity of these quivers all right well let's get on to the uh the daggers and the sword
so these again obviously Dryad pieces um these other items were made by others and so these
were the two pieces here made by myself so as you said we've got a bamboo um scabbard here
and that's all lashed together again with sort of bamboo cordage so all very
organic very jungle yes and that was the theme and then we have one of the very rare days where i do
i suppose i'll call it sort of classic prop making yeah it's what i used to do but we've got genuine
knuckle bone and antler here and a bit of ebony or something in between but the blade is a bone blade
because they don't have any metals yeah so this is from something yes it's a non-specific monster,
monster-creaturey-thing that has died or die somewhere near where they live and they raid its
bones for its blade-making properties. And it's a it's a nice piece so it's it's nice and thick
because it's not going to be thin like a steel blade would be and then again the same sort of
uh theme for the sword quite organic sort of hollow grounding bits and
twisted and a little bit deformed it's a rib bone shoulder blade
but whatever it is, it's perfectly suited for making Dryad swords.
but yeah there were nice pieces to make my grounding is mainly in real history
or similar too but it's nice to branch out and do something completely off the wall. Absolutely
and it's one of the few things that all the belts are in smallish sizes because
dryads are all women there's no men in their society so for once we found that short lengths
actually fit people properly but it was nice that because all the belting on this was done properly
so it could be properly worn as a sword i can't even put this on because i am too fat
but it's properly worn as a sword it is and and it would be worn like a long sword so
what it's not it looks like it is here but it's not it's just this thing dangling around
it is a properly worn absolutely held proper so when you want to put your hand on it it is in the
right place it's not wanging around over here. The only difference is is the beltage is made of rope
and not of leather yeah. So i think we're wrapping up on the different cultures here yeah absolutely
that's just a brief overview of some of the cultures that we've already seen in season one
lovely nick thank you so much again and uh thank you for watching so
i think that's probably going to be the end of it thank you very much for watching and thank
you Netflix for letting us do this yes and go and watch it it is a great series and it really
does get you by the end of it is really really grabs you it's been great chatting to Nick and
talking about the props from The Witcher that myself and others have made. Thank You