Game of Thrones isn’t called an award-winning series for nothing, and it’s not just the people in front of the camera who make it so — direction, writing, cinematography and more have all taken home accolades for the show. That trend continues for the 2017-18 awards season with Thrones’ latest wins from the Visual Effects Society (VES) annual awards.
As we reported in January, the series was nominated for a total of seven awards, including Outstanding Visual Effects, Outstanding Created Environment, Outstanding Effects Simulation, Outstanding Compositing and Outstanding Animated Character (the much-despised-by-the-visual-effects-team undead polar bear in “Beyond the Wall” was one character nominated, although Drogon raining fire on the Lannister army in “The Spoils of War” was the ultimate winner). Thrones dominated at the awards, which were held in Los Angeles on Feb. 13, taking home five awards in total:
Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode: “Game of Thrones: Beyond the Wall”
Joe Bauer, Steve Kullback, Chris Baird, David Ramos, Sam Conway
Outstanding Animated Character in an Episode or Real-Time Project: “Game of Thrones: The Spoils of War”: Drogon Loot Train Attack
Murray Stevenson, Jason Snyman, Jenn Taylor, Florian Friedmann
Outstanding Created Environment in an Episode, Commercial, or Real-Time Project: “Game of Thrones: Beyond the Wall”: Frozen Lake
Daniel Villalba, Antonio Lado, José Luis Barreiro, Isaac de la Pompa
Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Episode, Commercial, or Real-Time Project: “Game of Thrones: The Dragon and the Wolf”: Wall Destruction
Thomas Hullin, Dominik Kirouac, Sylvain Nouveau, Nathan Arbuckle
Outstanding Compositing in a Photoreal Episode: “Game of Thrones: The Spoils of War”: Loot Train Attack
Dom Hellier, Thijs Noij, Edwin Holdsworth, Giacomo Matteucci
It was an impressive haul for the visual effects team on Thrones, which will have their hands full with the eighth and final season. With all the production news we’ve been seeing in the last weeks and months — not to mention the potential for dragons both alive and dead battling it out in the skies above Westeros — it promises to be an epic one! But I think I speak for the fandom when I ask showrunners D.B. Weiss and Dave Benioff to leave room in the VFX budget for Ghost in Season 8…
Drogon!
There are way too many award shows. Congrats to GoT nevertheless.
It will be beyond ridiculous if they don’t have Ghost or Nymeria in season 8. Or have them on just to kill them off. It saddens me that the show has downplayed the importance of the direwolves. It also diminishes Jon and Arya, in my opinion. A couple powerful wargs/skinchangers would be magnificent for the wars to come in our final season.
My assumption is they’ll show up just to kill them off, but I really hope not. I agree that the direwolves have been completely buried in the show. I almost wish they didn’t have any direwolves on the show at all. Other than getting killed, we’ve barely seen any of them.
Hopefully D&D have one more trick up their sleeve to give the direwolves some actual relevance to the remaining story.
Direwolves for Season 8!
Hoping that Kit and/or Maisie will be spotted near Calgary soon…
Hoping for better writing than killing things (Direwolves) or people just to get rid of them now.
DarkVisenya,
It’s a budget issue more then anything else. I’ve heard that the CGI to make them appear is even more technical than the CGI dragon work. I don’t blame D&D for prioritizing Dragons over direwolves. It was always going to be one or the other.
But considering we’re only getting six episodes, I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to squeeze a few direwolve scenes into the overarching narrative. I do hope, as you’ve already stated, that they’re well written. But we’ll also be getting a lot of dragon action in the final season too so who can really say for sure.
I guess I’m one of the few who doesn’t really care about the direwolves. I mean, they’re cool and all, but they don’t really do anything and they’ll be next to useless in th fight against the White Walkers.
Mr Derp,
They never had any plot relevance in the books or the show.
amazing job, can’t wait to see the emmy nominations for this year.
Game of thrones has won a ton of awards over the years, and there will be more to come.
mau,
Then why do they exist?
Mr Derp,
There is no point to there existence, they’re just companions for the Stark children. They are also sometimes used for symbolic purposes.That’s why it doesn’t matter if they’re killed off or not given a lot of screen time. Like I said before, they’re useless in battle.
It just amazes me how a cable netwok entity can afford to create feature film effects and the budget they have to work with. I myself only subscribe to HBO from April through June, as I’m sure many out there do. They could actually get away with PPV and I strongly believe people would pay it for the final episodes, but don’t tell them that!LOL
Young Dragon,
They appear to have more use in the books since the warging powers of certain Starks are more prominent. I think the lack of warging abilities in the show makes them a bit more useless than they are in the books.
I seem to recall Grey Wind helping quite a bit in Rob’s battles. Again though, more so in the books rather than show.