Awards

Game of Thrones nominated for Visual Effects and Directors Guild Awards

Posted on by Hear Marko Roar

Bran Stark

Directors Guild of America have announced their television nominations. Among the nominees for directing of a dramatic series is Game of Thrones episode 410 ‘The Children’, directed by Alex Graves. Congratulations! The episode is running against episodes of Homeland (two of them), House of Cards, and True Detective.

The winners will be announced at the 67th DGA Awards gala in a little over three weeks, on February 7th.

Visual Effects Society has likewise revealed their list of nominees for the 13th VES Awards, and Game of Thrones, unsurprisingly, has been honoured in several categories:

  • Visual effects in a broadcast program: The Children
  • Performance of an animated character in a commercial, broadcast program, or video game: Drogon
  • Created environment in a commercial, broadcast program, or video game: Braavos establisher
  • Composition in a broadcast program: Wight attack AND another entry in the same category, The Watchers on the Wall

All amazing VFX moments (or in the case of ‘The Watchers on the Wall, an entire episode), congratulations! The VES Awards ceremony will be held on February 4th.

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43 Comments

  4. Interesting. On a personal opinion level I view Alex Graves as the worst director on the entire show. But, hey what do I know I guess.

  5. Randa Noyce,

    Yup, that scene with them crying at Daenerys was really powerfull. THAT was acting.

    jim,
    While I believe he is a good director, I hate him for making changes and adding things (like the fireballs, that was his doing not D&D’s). He should stick with directing, he’s good at that.

  6. Created environment in a commercial, broadcast program, or video game: Braavos establisher

    Good to see it gets the recognition it deserves. I thought it amazing.

    Also: Did we just get a countdown clock?! YAY!

  11. Thank you for the countdown clock – proof of S5 getting closer!

    Congratulations to all the nominees, well deserved. (And I didn’t know Jodie Foster was directing TV, good for her.)

  13. I still see it. Says: 82 days 20 hours 20 min and sec counting downward!

    Good R’hllor, TW! What are you on today? It says 87 days 5 hrs 43 min and counting… You sure seem excited about that Season 5 or you’d not be deducting days ahead of time.

  14. We are still working on a couple of bugs with the countdown clock, but the timer itself should be correct now.

  15. I personally did not like the way he directed the fight scenes…so..shaky and…i dont know. There was something odd.

  16. There’s a blue spot between the clouds to the left of the bird’s head. And whaddayaknow, my browser places the days counter exactly at that spot, making it totally unreadable due to the numbers’ bluish color. Please use a color that is always readable no matter over what spot on the image it appears. People will view this page with all kinds of browser window widths and settings, so it’s pretty much impossible to guess where the numbers are going to end up.

  19. Ser Low-Res,

    Yup – have the same problem – can’t see if it says 87, 83 or 82 because of the blue color obscuring. But thanks, WoTW folk. We can really feel that the season is on its way now!

  20. Cumsprite,

    You rival Martin’s pace, Mr. Sprite! Give up. I’m too quick for you. 😀

    (Let me go check the NaB. I’m sure something good will happen one of these days. I feel it.)

  21. OMG love the countdown clock! 🙂 🙂 🙂 yessss!

    Also, wait Balerion The Cat is that true about Alex Graves and the fireballs? I mean, D&D must have approved his idea but that takes him down a notch in my book, the fireballs were one of my least favorite “artistic” additions. He did a great job with some other episodes though!

  22. OT, but I have to say how stunning Maisie Williams was tonight in Cyberbully . It isn’t the sort of thing I would ordinarily watch, but she was just soo good, and I recommend you all go and watch it now if you can.

    She has such a promising career ahead (not that we didn’t already know; this just reinforces the belief).

  24. Speaking of directors, I’m looking forward to hearing from the new batch of directors (and Nutter) for S5. I’m rather interested in their thoughts and the new energy that they will bring to the upcoming season. I wonder if any of them are Sullied (not that it matters)?

  25. jim:
    Interesting. On a personal opinion level I view Alex Graves as the worst director on the entire show. But, hey what do I know I guess.

    I have to agree. His ridiculous rape scene that he somehow thought was consensual in 403 and the chopped-to-hell Oberyn/Mountain fight didn’t do much to impress me.

  26. Josh,

    Nonononononononononono. It started out as rape and then [i]became[/i] consensual. What’s so hard to understand?

    ETA: gimme italics code and I’ll let you live.

  27. Balerion The Cat,

    Um, that is a big part of directing! A director is expected to be the on-the-ground script editor. A lot of tomes, things that read ok on the script page just do not work on set: and the good directors spot that immediately and do something anout it.

    At any rate, the fire looked cool, and it worked a lot better than running around with torches. That always drives me nuts when TV or movies have torches immolate people! (Save in the rare occassion that the actually douse the person or corose with something flammable first…..)

  28. Countdown clock, woohoo! When it reaches fourty it’s time for a final re-watching of all past episodes, one per day.

    Also, Drogon for the win!

  29. I think Alex Graves directed too much big moments last year…..
    It was a stupid idea to let him direct four episodes out of ten. (Three very important episodes)

    Call me crazy but in my opinion he’s is one of the reason why the last few episodes were not as good as it should have been. He didn’t bring to life correctly some of the best moments of the saga (Trial by combat, Bran/Wights/Bloodraven, Tywin/Tyrion/Shae and Stannis behind the wall)
    I refuse to talk about the controversial sept scene, this has already been tackled several times.

    David Nutter will do justice to the last two episodes of S5, I’m sure. He’s the only one with Alan Taylor and Neil Marshall who has never disappointed me once.
    Sakharov ruined many action scenes unfortunately. This guy can’t direct action properly (Episode 6 and 7 of S4 have three of the worst action sequences of the series) but he’s damn good with dialogue (the best on the show)

  31. For Season 5, I think each director will have his own “specialité”

    Podeswa (Action, Suspense)
    Slovis (He will bring his Breaking Bad style)
    Sapochnik (Fantasy/Atmospheric/Horror)
    Mylod (Comedy/Dialogue Heavy)
    And David Nutter (Dramatic moments) This guy will elevate the WoS to an another level. Should be way more memorable than in the books.

  32. Greenjones,
    Thanks for the clarification!

    I’m not an Alex Graves hater per se but yeah, the sept rape has been discussed to death, so let me just say I was not a fan of his result. I am unsullied and had a very different expectation- in fact I was looking forward to that scene!

  33. The Hound:
    David Nutter will do justice to the last two episodes of S5, I’m sure. He’s the only one with Alan Taylor and Neil Marshall who has never disappointed me once.

    I hope so, although I wasn’t too thrilled with “Mhysa” (S3, ep10). However, my critique of the episode had more to do with the writing than the direction.

  34. Jaime’s girl,

    I still think Alex Graves is great. Eps. 402, 408 and 410 were excellent IMHO. Ep. 403 was weaker, due to some pacing problems in the Sam, Arya and Tywin-Tommen sections and a few others things here and there but I wouldn’t even call it the weakest of s4 (I think ep. 405 is). I still think he’s been the most consistently good director in his work on the show besides Neil Marshall. Also it seems people are too quick to forget his work on the brilliant eps. 304 and 305, which were quite the fandom darlings back in 2013. I for one will be glad to see him come back for s6.

  36. Greenjones,

    I agree, I think he’s done a great job overall, season 3 including the bathtub scene being great examples. I do think he and Marshall have been fantastic for the show, just lose the fireballs/skeletons and totally re-do the sept ‘rape’ and the rest I have no complaints.

  37. Turncloak,

    It was not as bad as having them use torches. That is even more galling than explosions in space: unless you douse the wights with something flamable first, torches would not set them aflame.

  38. Jaime’s girl,

    Yup but I also wonder why they decided to

    leave Jaime and Tyrion on good terms. I also expected them to drive a wedge between Cersei and Jaime yet the show brought them closer. I have a hard time believing that show Jaime would burn Cersei’s letter

  39. Jeb:
    OT,but I have to say how stunning Maisie Williams was tonight in Cyberbully .It isn’t the sort of thing I would ordinarily watch,but she was just soo good,and I recommend you all go and watch it now if you can.

    She has such a promising career ahead (not that we didn’t already know; this just reinforces the belief).

    That was a great performance, basically alone in front of the camera for an hour and about as different from Arya as you can imagine. She really showed her range there.

    Some spoilers in the review: http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/jan/15/cyberbully-maisie-williams-filipa-jodelka

  40. Annara Snow:
    The performance of Viserion and Rhaegal was clearly better. I call shenanigans.

    There was somebody on a YouTube video (which I found randomly and unfortunately can’t relocate) who got quite “animated” in his review; he was quite miffed with Dany for locking up the two smaller dragons when it was Drogon wot* done the dastardly deed! I found myself mouthing “but it’s a story”…….by the way in case you are thinking “Well she clearly needs to get out more”…I do get out ….though I have been spending more time at home latterly trying to shift a winter cold and bronchitis that don’t want to shift.

    * deliberate mis-spelling as in “it was the butler wot done it” – an anglicism sometimes done in jest.

  41. Turncloak,

    In the books, most of the wedge comes after Storm. My guess is that the show will follow suit. However, the show has started planting some basic seeds for that.

    As for why they

    left Tyrion & Jaime on good terms, well, what the book does really does not work for a lot of the readers: Tyrion really should have realized that Jaime was just another one of Tywin’s pawns, and that Tywin was the one to blame for Tysha. A lot of book readers pointed this out 15 years ago (once the uproar from the weddings died down, anyway). And, of course, once the TV show basically amalgamated Tysha and Shae, it was completely moot.

    Moreover, given that they replaced all of the Kevan-Tyrion interactions from the book with (much more resonating!) Jaime-Tyrion interactions on TV, it would have felt especially hallow and forced there.

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