With its last battle, Game of Thrones consolidates its seat on the TV throne VFX

Maybe this is not said aloud because it seems obvious or the viewers realize it unconsciously while watching, but Game of thrones represents the best visual effects ever made on television. While it's not a perfect measure, Emmys says what people in the TV industry admire and want to recognize at some point: experts figuratively look for other experts and gently nod their heads . respect, it will do recognition. Through the seven seasons of the series up to now, Game of thrones won the Emmy Award for "Outstanding Visual Effects – Series" six times (one way or another, he lost in S1 against Boardwalk Empire). Star Trek, in all series since the 1960s, has only eight versions of this award. This series brought the idea to shine to the general public and predicted a bit-like iPad.

While the battle of Winterfell, which is so much talked about, finally materializes, materializes, smart money Game of thrones & # 39; The VFX team wins seven of the eight Emmy. The dragons were flying under whiteout conditions, hundreds of Dothraki took off with flaming swords and characters like Samwell Tarly or Melisandre really saw every little undead detail of a White Walker face to face. One side of this battle has literally built a bridge from burning bodies.

Like everything that involves Game of thrones & # 39; The last season behind the scenes, unfortunately, the special effects pros who worked on the current action were prevented from discussing it – not just Winterfell, none of the S8 – until the final broadcast of the series. But since the whole world is amazed by what viewers have seen this week, it may be interesting to look at the past of the show, which explains what makes effects around Westeros so special.

Yes, they are dragons and white walkers.

The best technical VFX around

Discuss past moments spent in Game of thrones becomes hard without pushing people to Image Engine. The Vancouver-based VFX has quietly done the final effect behind some of the most visually stunning films of the last decade, creating everything from raptors to Jurassic World Graphorns Fantastic beasts to, well, humans / mutants in Logan. And like Game of thrones began to be more and more technically demanding during his last seasons (as you know, White Walkers and Dragons began to appear more frequently), HBO turned to Image Engine services to count of the season 5.

Since then, the company has played an important role in the construction of all the walls, from the construction of the ice walls around Castle Black to the extensive libraries of the Citadel, through the design of iconic characters like The Night King or Drogon . Image Engine has also delivered iconic death scenes ranging from Jon Snow beheading somebody at the end of Ramsay Bolton. Image Engine's work on S7 alone involved about 100 employees. (And the show itself works with several special effects sellers – the Australian-based VFX Illoura production company did some improvement work on crowds and people during parts of S7, for example. ) Eu The presentations and the corresponding on-screen results delivered definitely left an impression on these visual effects professionals.

"Game of thrones represents a tectonic shift in the way we think about television – before Game of thronesI was a special effects supervisor working exclusively on feature films and working on television would have been considered a demotion, "says Image Engine. The Thrones VFX Supervisor, Thomas Schelesny. "So when I was asked to start working on Game of thronesI'm going to be honest – I was a bit oblivious. I did not have HBO, nobody spoke to me about the show and I had no idea what was happening on cable TV. I did not know what I was getting into. But the high-end television work has gone from something that filmmakers would not want to do to the kind of work we all want to do. It's fast, dynamic, the lead times are fast and the quality has to be very high. It has become a playground for very experienced artists. I think it is the challenge that attracts us all. "

Game of thrones has reached its peak at exactly the right moment in this light; the budget and time allocated to today's best TV productions are finally at a VFX quality level that was previously only available on the big screen. The Thrones not alone in this regard – in December, Vulture went deep on how the lions for Netflix A series of unfortunate events practically match what Disney showed in teasers for his live-action Lion King-But HBO grants this show more leniency and financial support than virtually anything that is broadcast on television. The series cost $ 15 million per reported episode in S8, and these episodes occur almost two years after the end of S7.. Maybe a big movie production lasts even longer, but high-end television is getting closer. "It's difficult to determine exactly how fast we're working in TV shows versus a movie," says Schelesny. "But as an approximation, I would say that high-end television projects are changing their work in 70 to 80 percent of the time that was spent on a feature film."

In this environment, one of the most important tasks of Schelesny and the image engine is The Thrones The animation supervisor, Jason Snyman, in S7, involved these beloved dragons. Schelesny estimates that HBO has pushed VFX employees to increase their complexity and volume by 15 to 20% with each corresponding season. Official HBO figures seem to confirm this. In his documentary behind the scenes about the battle of the "booty train" of S7, for example, Game of thrones Visual Effects Supervisor Joe Bauer notes that in S6 Daenerys rode the dragon for 11 strokes. In the Loot Train sequences alone, the show had more than 80.

Thus, not only does a store such as Image Engine simply have more work, but the plans seem to become infinitely more complex. Compared to their beginnings of pretty baby things, the S7 dragons are now bigger and bigger (the size of a Boeing 747 according to this documentary done behind the scenes). This means that there is a greater need for detail and greater variety of actions that can take place. Combine that with the incredible number of visual perspectives in a sequence like the loot train, and it becomes easy to understand how the shooting count began to reach 100 – and it's easy to imagine what it had to be for some parts of S8.

In just three episodes, Daenerys has already taken Jon Snow ghost threat ride-style ride using his mythical reptiles and viewers finally got the The Thrones version of the Battle of Darth v. Luke lightsaber (it is fire blast and ice dragon blast in the moonlight). The battle of Winterfell alone featured several stunning visual sequences: Bran engaging the three-eyed raven mode to see the king of the nights; Lyanna Mormont stabbed heroically a giant undead in the eyes; Arya's engaging in Thief-stealthy maneuvering mode to murder some White Walkers and escape his own bombings. Any of these moments could probably fill his own documentary (or his story).

Again, the Image Engine team can not comment on S8, but Schelesny and Snyman do not deny that the trend toward increased complexity is continuing. "I mean it's the most difficult animation I've ever done," says Snyman. "I can say that." And these technical challenges are facing pressure like no other project on which the team has worked.

"With something like The Avengers, you have a fan base, but with Game of thrones it's as if everyone is forming the fan base, "says Snyman to Ars. It's terrifying. You know that your work will be closely scrutinized and your peers will comment on it. Therefore, you want to create something as great as possible.

"[With the dragons,] we strive to inject as much into this character that we did not think – all the muscle that flexed and did not breathe was not that of the previous dragons, "he adds." We always look back to see what we can improve I now have this creature that can have a muscular train that pulls the wings, and you can feel the power being portrayed in the way it flies. You give life to the character and you see all these tiny elements appear in the final rendering – you have a dragon flying over a sunny meadow – it looks super awesome. "