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I guess this is why I had a problem with filming in the U.K. and Ireland. So many estates and castles have been in film and TV, so many times, that we have a collective memory of them.

I'm not sure that all that many castles in Scotland are really famous from being film sets - I suspect a lot of us could recognise Doune Castle or Castle Stalker from The Holy Grail or Eilean Donan from Highlander but most castles I can think of either haven't been filmed as far as I'm aware or their film appearances are relatively obscure (how many people would recognise Duart Castle from Entrapment?).

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Over at our Game of Thrones news site (still under construction to some degree), Linda and I have pulled together information following our discovery that Julia Frey, a VFX producer who has worked with Rainmark (a production company associated with the pilot) in the past, has been blogging her location scouting efforts.

Over at our Twitter page, I've dropped some random little notes from what I've gleaned, like the fact that the Scottish castle Louie Pastore was referring to looks like it'll be Doune Castle, and a link to Julia's post showing a set from Kingdom of Heaven that's still standing in Morocco and is being reused for the pilot.

Exciting stuff!

Although she doesn't ever mention the series by name, my favorite clue was the entry with a picture of some terriers, which she says one of the guys is now referring to as "Direterriers." Heh.

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With the news RAN posted that that Robert Stromberg will be the VFX Supervisor on the show, I am now suddenly wondering how much special effects they are actually planning for the show. It may be a lot more than we originally were all assuming.

Stromberg is a FX guy, he's been doing FX work in various roles at the highest level since 1991 starting as a Matte Artist and moving on eventually to FX Supervisor and Designer. He has recently graduated to full blown Production Designer, though he has done so serving under two directors who are themselves first rate artists/designers: James Cameron and Tim Burton. Not only that, he is doing so on what are probably going to be these two directors' most FX laden productions to date with Avatar and Alice in Wonderland. Avatar, which I think has some sort of FX in probably 90% to 95% of the shots in the film, and much of the film being completely rendered and Alice looks from the photos seen so far to be largely FX throughout, too. Needless to say, it doesn't get any bigger!

I'm certain this show will have far, far less SFX than these two movies, but if you are getting an FX guy with his pedigree to be your FX supervisor, I think it's being done for a specific reason, and that is you plan to have rather a lot of FX, at least for a TV show. I'm guessing rendered backdrops and the like might be fairly common on this show and perhaps they do expect, come second season, to do a pretty large scale Siege of King's Landing. If that's the plan, this is the guy to get to do it.

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I really hope that that's what it means. Be great to get a sense of the epic scale via CG, even if they're going to have to make some compromises with reality (like the very small Great Hall).

It's all very exciting. Julia Frey (VFX Producer) was kind enough to take questions for Robert via Twitter, too, though out of respect we stuck to Avatar stuff. I asked him about the uncanny valley, and he thinks that the major issue has been eyes ... and he thinks they've conquered that, that the eyes don't have that glassy, "soulless" look they'd had before. Be interesting to see whether it holds up.

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With the news RAN posted that that Robert Stromberg will be the VFX Supervisor on the show, I am now suddenly wondering how much special effects they are actually planning for the show. It may be a lot more than we originally were all assuming.

A quick peek at his filmography gives us a very good connection. Namely that he was a visual effects designer for the HBO John Adams Pilot. That pilot, and the mini series as a whole, used a lot of

. I can image that Stromberg is on the project because of all the FX backdrops that will probably be used. To have John Adams grade VFX is doable, even though it was a miniseries while GoT will be a full blown series.
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It's all very exciting. Julia Frey (VFX Producer) was kind enough to take questions for Robert via Twitter, too, though out of respect we stuck to Avatar stuff. I asked him about the uncanny valley, and he thinks that the major issue has been eyes ... and he thinks they've conquered that, that the eyes don't have that glassy, "soulless" look they'd had before. Be interesting to see whether it holds up.

I went to the 15 minute special preview of Avatar and I have to say that I don't think they are 100% out of the uncanny valley yet. Oh, the animation was very, very good - but I was still aware that I was looking at something animated. I think at it's best, Gollum's close-ups were a wee bit superior (I remember being astounded at what I was seeing first time I saw TT, I couldn't believe the level of realism they brought to that character). I felt when watching the Avatar scenes, especially those that were 100% CGI, that I was watching a VERY well animated CGI movie, not real things. As for the eyes, they are very expressive, the facial performances are way better than, say, the creepy stuff that Robert Zemeckis has been doing since "Polar Express." In that sense it's much more like the Gollum effect - there is a sense of life in their eyes, but over all I was still aware of looking at rendered images.

A big part of the problem was the same problem I had with the re-issue of the original Star Wars and King Kong, where there was just too much going on in the frame, more writhing and movement of creatures than you would actually see in real life. Someone needs to tell these animators/directors when to pull back. A lot of the time 'less-is-more,' and I think in what I saw Cameron fell into the same trap Jackson did in Kong and Lucas did in the SW re-issue. It becomes hyper-real, instead of convincingly real. Personally, I prefer the latter. It's probably a Director's mistake rather than an Animator's mistake - ultimately the Animator is just carrying out the orders of the Director when it comes to these things.

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A quick peek at his filmography gives us a very good connection. Namely that he was a visual effects designer for the HBO John Adams Pilot. That pilot, and the mini series as a whole, used a lot of
. I can image that Stromberg is on the project because of all the FX backdrops that will probably be used. To have John Adams grade VFX is doable, even though it was a miniseries while GoT will be a full blown series.

All of this sounds very promising IMO. I think John Adams is a very good model for how CGI should be used in GoT and the type of large scale outdoor scenes as one can see in the video above would be essential for creating a vivid Westeros.

John Adams of course had bigger budget per episode (and maybe in total, I don't know) so I guess we can't expect FX quite on that level, but I think it's a goal to strive for.

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Over at my blog, Mauberly pointed me to an article on the Irish Film & Television Network that states that the director of photography for the pilot is Sean Bobbitt.

Bobbitt worked as DP on the most recent adaptation of Sense & Sensibility for the BBC, where he was nominated for an Emmy. He also was cinematographer on the award winning Irish film Hunger.

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So... Anyone seen Sense and sensibility here? Any good?

I didn't see S&S but I did see Hunger, which was an excellent (if sad) film. The cinimatography was perfect. Sean Bobbit is definitly an up and comer as a D.P., very talented.

Edit: I wrote The Hunger, which is also a great film but not to be confused with Hunger. :P

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A quick peek at his filmography gives us a very good connection. Namely that he was a visual effects designer for the HBO John Adams Pilot. That pilot, and the mini series as a whole, used a lot of
. I can image that Stromberg is on the project because of all the FX backdrops that will probably be used. To have John Adams grade VFX is doable, even though it was a miniseries while GoT will be a full blown series.

I think John Adams is a very good model for how CGI should be used in GoT and the type of large scale outdoor scenes as one can see in the video above would be essential for creating a vivid Westeros.

John Adams is a great example of how digital technology can be sensibly and effectively applied in contemporary film:

First, the compositing is very well executed technically, making it nearly impossible for the lay watcher to 'see through' it.

Second, all backgrounds are excellently crafted in regard to the authenticity of the historical buildings, streets, costumes and landscapes. This is not a matter of course, since the production designers and visual artists need to be familiar with the architectural, artistical and technical characteristics of the era they are supposed to depict. Most popular period films tend to mix up different styles or techniques, thus failing to provide historical accurateness or at least credibility for the lay watcher.

Third, the digital enhancement in John Adams is necessary for the production itself. Most of the location shots (especially in 18th to 19th century Boston and Philadelphia) would have been unaffordable without the use of computers. In my opinion this, too, is a quality feature, since few things are as tiresome as unnecessary digital gimmickry, which at worst renders the 'enhanced' scenes overburdened or kitschy (<- can you actually write this in English?... :leaving: ).

Maybe people overestimate the importance of real background like castles, skylines and so forth for historical location shots. With today's technology producers no longer depend as heavily on actual scenery (original or artificial) as was the case twenty or more years ago; the HBO-documentary about John Adams visualises this.

And considering digital craftsmanship like Mr Stromberg's as well as neat design like Mrs Jackson's, we can expect the series to depict Winterfell, King's Landing, the Wall and all the people of these great places in a most impressive, yet credible way - and hopefully devoid of kitsch. :)

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One should note, to be fair, that the per-hour budget of John Adams is almost certainly about (or more than) twice that, give or take, of what we can expect for Game of Thrones. JA was a little over 8 hours long in total length, according to IMDB, and with a budget somewhere north of $100 million, that's a minimum $12.5 million an hour.

But certainly, effects can go a long way. I can only hope their establishing shots are better executed than those on The Tudors, which are very obviously rendered, and not all too well.

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Granted, Game of Thrones will probably not have as big a budget as John Adams (comparing one of the series' seasons with the miniseries), but as you said: effects can go a long way. And certainly HBO will not be niggardly in producing this project either.

:)

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Granted, Game of Thrones will probably not have as big a budget as John Adams (comparing one of the series' seasons with one miniseries), but as you said: effects can go a long way. And certainly HBO will not be niggardly in producing this project either.

:)

Well, they're certainly not cheap if they hired

(from Germany, like yourself) to play at Winterfell. That's a band with a pretty big following, and I don't imagine they come cheap.

I wonder if the dude with the shaved head and devil's horns will be forced to wear a hat.

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Well, they are not THAT big a shot (probably comes with being a "medieval" pagan metal band...), so I don't know if Corvus Corax are expensive in HBO production terms.

I certainly hope, that they were not allowed to wear their usual costumes and makeup, since they would look rather ridiculous in that stuff. ;)

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I think a look at Robert Stromberg's credits at IMDB.com gives a pretty fair indication of how important extensive CGI will be for the series, especially digital matte work for large scale panoramas and landscapes, scenes in huge towns like King's Landing, the massive castles of Winterfell and Harrenhall and the Red Keep, and even the slaver cities of Ghis. Half or more of his credits are in digital matte art and supervision, beginning with his first credited work 20 years ago and extending to his latest credit for the GI Joe movie. That extensive experience indicates, to me at least, that we will be seeing the kind of large-scale digital matte painting done in John Adams.

I have no doubt that by the time we see it on screen, the hall of Doune will be the massive great hall of Winterfell.

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I find the Great Hall being enhanced with CG unlikely. From all I can tell, not a single person has mentioned seeing green/bluescreens there, and you sort of need those to do something like that. I'm sure it'll be used for establishing shots of Winterfell, though.

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more than likely I'd assume their use standard camera tricks to create the illusion of a larger hall. Rather than do big pull aways of the entire hall only show what seems to be large numbers of people via perspective. And since most of the attention will be on specific characters throughout the scene or gazing at various tables it wouldn't be too difficult to make it seem like there are 3 or 4x as many people as are actually there.

As for CGI I hope that they use Ted N.'s renderings to help show the castles and with such a great Production team I'm sure it will out strips the tutors, which doesn't put very much emphasis on the structures as GoT does, where each castle has a history and tradition.

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