Remember those heady days of April, when all we thought what might be the biggest problem with Game of Thrones’ final season was that it was kinda hard to watch that epic battle between the Stark-Targaryen forces and the Night’s King at Winterfell? Such innocent times. Well, if it was all too dark for you — literally — at least this VFX reel lets you see the talent behind it.
Weta Digital just released its own reel of work from Thrones’ final season, and while there is a variety of work there — from the one-in-million shot that took out Rhaegal, to Jaime and Cersei’s death-by-rubble-landslide — it mostly focuses on the studio’s FX work for the Battle of Winterfell.
Which is good, considering on whether or not your TV was calibrated to be very specifically perfect for this one episode of the show — unlike every other episode, according to it’s cinematographer — meant you either got to see a cool ice zombie battle or a giant black blob of incoherence.
Turns out underneath all that shadow there was a lot of cool trickery! Although honestly, as nice as the ice zombies and flame tech is to see being built up slowly, I think my favourite shot of this is the clouds being formed for Rhaegal and Drogon to fly over on the eve of the battle. It’s a gorgeous shot, and the way this reel artfully pulls all the clouds together bit by bit is very pretty. And easily visible!