WHY GAME OF THRONES WAS DIFFERENT

There’s no shortage right now of feature-film-quality visual effects work in the world of television. So what do Kullback and Bauer think lies at the success of Game of Thrones’ visual effects, both in terms of accolades (including multiple Emmys and VES awards) and helping to bring large audiences to the show?

One aspect Kullback highlights is their own take on shooting everything that can possibly be shot photographically. “It gives us not only an insane number of elements that go into our shots,” he says, “but also insane reference to inform those parts that have to be CG. I think that has probably single-handedly upped the bar, and it’s something we hadn’t been accustomed to even striving for before, in television and a lot of times in features, too.”

Indeed, this final season’s visual effects were certainly ‘upped,’ with Bauer suggesting that “any one of our complex shots would have been the highlight of any previous season. Most of our shots were complex shots this year, with more than two and sometimes eight layers of photographed elements.

“The reason we went so photography-heavy,” adds Bauer, “was the concern of the post-production time, in that with a feature you’ll have much more time to develop your assets and the sim work – all the stuff that you would otherwise shoot. We didn’t have the time to do that, and I wanted to go into post with photography that covered all the bases. Then the CG was all about holding it together. We’ve stuck to that because we really liked the way it looks. The thing is, as the shots get more complex, you end up needing to shoot more elements if you’re going to follow the same philosophy.”

As the VFX work did become more complex season over season, Kullback (who joined the show in Season 2) and Bauer (who started in Season 3), found themselves investing more time in the planning stages. They also learned they could delegate more via a large team of virtual and previs supervisors, and an army of on-set effects supervisors working with different units, including motion control. “Once upon a time we’d be the people running the little dragon heads on sticks around the set,” says Bauer.

The duo says their approach to the visual effects work took a major leap in Season 3 for a moment in which Daenerys orders one of her dragons to kill the slaver Kraznys. “It is the first time that a dragon roasted somebody on camera,” says Bauer. “And that was the first time we made the argument to production to set up an on-set fire stunt rather than doing CG fire.”

Other game-changing VFX moments identified by Bauer and Kullback included the fighting pit sequence in Season 5, where Daenerys climbs onto the back of her dragon, and other sequences involving Wun Wun the giant in battle that had to be shot motion control (“These were the early steps that lead us to the rather intensive machine of techvis and preparation and motion control,” says Kullback).

That close reliance on planning and on photographed elements was often also in concert with the special and practical effects teams on the show, so much so that a very large miniature was built and exploded for the final season. “I would dare say that we’re the only production that would have supported that approach for this event,” argues Bauer. “If practical effects teams have ever been concerned that their jobs were going to be diminished with CG they should have worked on Game of Thrones because our guys were taxed to the max. Special Effects Supervisor Sam Conway and his team were hand in glove through almost all of this.”