32 Comments

  1. Very cool! Just seems so funny to see the stunt men dressed half in costume, half in green-screen clothes for the VFX later.

    And damnit, Jon Snow LIVES!!!

    ETA: must keep with tradition… HODOR! (just lost my Hodor virginity!)

  4. Well here’s why it was so great. There are so many details that they animated, created, added that I didn’t even really see or notice that made it look so real.

    Really wonderful scenes and whole episode.

  6. This is amazing how they did it. Great timing for the video, with the Emmy nominations coming out pretty soon. You know that they will be submitting this episode for Visual, Hair, Makeup & anything technical. The best episode this entire season & I think the best in the past 2 seasons.

  11. This is so good! It almost makes me wish they didn’t perfectly animate all the snow and mist so we could see it all more clearly

  12. No one cares about the stupid, boring Hardhome scene. Everyone wants to know how they pulled off the amazing Sand Snakes fight with Jaime and Bronn.

  13. no one:
    No one cares about the stupid, boring Hardhome scene. Everyone wants to know how they pulled off the amazing Sand Snakes fight with Jaime and Bronn.

    I really don’t get all the harping on that. That fight was about Season 1 quality, and people really need to be practical.

    They had a week to film everything in the Alcazar. All the Dorne stuff but the dock, dungeon, veldt, and beach. This is like 30ish minutes of material, including the fight.

    I think they spent anywhere between a month and two months filming the 12 minute fight at Hardhome. They could also destroy any/or raze anything they liked, so long as it was in budget.

    Compare this to the Alcazar, which is a priceless historical artifact and UNESCO world heritage site which no one ever gets to film in. I think Game of Thrones may have been like the second show next to some really popular Spanish telenovella. They can damage nothing and they only have so many hours to shoot this fight and thus they have to break it up less than usual and do it on the fly in far more of a rush job than normal.

    No one is saying it’s the worlds best fight, but c’mon guys, lets at least be reasonable about it.

  14. HouseMartellBitches:
    No one is saying it’s the worlds best fight, but c’mon guys, lets at least be reasonable about it.

    Reasonable would be for that fight to not even take place.

    Some fight of the Sand Snakes against guards (or rather, quiet assassination) and another skirmish of Jaime and Bronn with some guards, sure. But not this nonsense.

  16. TOIVA,

    you know i’ve heard many complains on the internet but very few directly from other people, i have many unsullied friends who told me this, when i told them the opinion on the internet about this fight: it was not the best, could have been batter. one of my friends told me this fight was not worst then the ones in season 1 and 2.

    and one more point, this time on the story, the fight was pointles i hear people say, my only book-reader friend told me: the fight WAS pointless, just like Arianne’s plan in the books WAS, the entire fight was intended to be pointless.

    so when i hear people saying things like pointelss or plot-hole, i wonder if they read arrianne’s chapters.

    i’m not trying to defend everything tough, i belive the could have been batter but anyway i’m not to pcky with these sort of things, i understand they had only 1 week to film.
    what i want to show here is that the ”fact”, that the fight was the worst thing this show ever made, is not universal.

  17. Armored in crystal? Nah, let them just wear random leather armor.
    Beautiful and dangerous? Nah, lets make them look like shriveled old men.
    I liked the stuff about them arranging bodies in patterns but it amounted to nothing same as most things in this show.
    Since most people who work on this show haven’t even read the source material, it doens’t surprise me that they botch most of the things.

  18. Valiryan,

    most of those things you mantioned are simpky a matter of PRACTICALITY, its easier to make leather armor wich is REAL unlike CRYSTAL wich is not

    and come on if you think they butchered THIS episode then i dont know why you are still watching

    also please do tell me, what is added to the story if they are preaty or ”ugly”? i think they look menecing

    and here we come again to the same cynical point of view, thinking they have made changes just to spite you personaly

    EDIT: on the last point not one movie/TV show has the staff or even directors read the books, just the Writers

  19. The only way (currently and without exorbitant expense) to have the show visually follow the books is to animate it. Even then it may be more expensive. Perhaps in the future the only limit (to use a cliche) will be our imagination when it comes to CGI. I’m now expecting a LOTR/The Hobbit type adaptation, with the Dunk & Egg novellas etc to be excessively long. Maybe not.

  20. Ashara Dayne,

    the problem is EVEN that is expensive as hell. and another problem is that those episodes are 20-30 min max!

    and even that wont fix this ”issue”, i for one dont think there is one but il go with it, because imagine 5 episodes, so 5 weaks, with only talking, nthing else, for example imagine brienne walking with nimble dick for 5 to 6 episodes.

    and things like anime/or any other form of animation NEED some action, so they would add FILLER for battles and so on, or simply cut and change to make it wachable

    the one thing animation would to batter, i admit, is flashbacks wich in a TV show/movie is hard to make it not seem exposition

    so i belive we need to see this the way eve GRRM said: these books where simply not made to be adaptable(hope i wrote this right!)

  21. I am almost finished rewatching the entire series in order to stave off Game of Thrones withdrawal. Watching them all within a close time frame, I’m coming to the conclusion that Season 5 was pretty good – there were some odd moments, but there have been odd, slow moments in every season.

    I am hoping that they do this year, around Christmas, what they did last year, which is show a couple of episodes in a movie theater on the big screen. It was so worth it to see those episodes in a theater and share the awesomeness with other avid GoT fans. I loved it! It was a nice respite until the new season came.

    In fact, I hope they show the last three episodes, 8, 9 and 10. Hardhome was such an amazing episode and would be fantastic on a big screen! Yeah, I would gladly spend the three hours in the theater, and happily take home my Beautiful Death poster. (they gave a poster to each attendee at the showing last year.) Good heavens, is it really nine more months til season 6? groan

  22. Thronetender,

    agreed, seasons always fell slow when watched weakly, just like season 1, 2 and 3.
    this season was NOT slower the those, it was season 2 that was very fast-paced

  23. Ee – the wonders of computers….

    Ashara Dayne,

    It’s been said before but ASOIAF could suit a radio adaptation. That way listeners’ imaginations would be their own VFX and it wouldn’t matter whether Cersei was played by a blonde, a brunette or a redhead (though doubtless someone would whinge that the actress used didn’t sound like Cersei in the books).

  25. Mihnea,

    Several points:

    1) I don’t believe I’ve ever said that Dorne fight (or the Dorne storyline) was the worst thing from Game of Thrones. What I would definitely say is that it didn’t reach the bar set by previous seasons. It very much stands out in Season 5, which may or may not mean it’s worse than all the fights (storylines), including Season 1.

    2) Being unsullied, I’m not likely to read ‘Arianne’s chapters’ anytime soon. And even less to reread them. From my (show watcher only) perspective, the fight (that yes, didn’t look all that well done, either) didn’t make sense happening as the mere presence of most of the characters there in the Water gardens didn’t make sense and made them look dumber than I believe they are supposed to be (of course maybe the fact we lacked proper characterization of the Sand Snakes is to blame – again though, that would point to another mistake done in the Dorne storyline).
    It’s simply frustrating to have read several versions of the Dorne storyline that actually do make sense (to me, a show watcher, anyway) and shouldn’t be any more difficult to shoot than what we’ve seen.

    Obviously, what I see as weirdness and don’t understand may still somehow fit into a bigger picture in future seasons, but I’m not holding much hope for that (that hope has been repeatedly lost at most episodes since the Dorne introduction).
    What I believe may be to blame for the final Dorne storyline we’ve seen is editing. Perhaps what they tried to film did actually make far more sense. But they were forced to cut a number of scenes that didn’t end up looking good enough because of filming time constraints, and the end result just wasn’t salvageable. (In fact, there’s even one more case of what felt to me like weird editing outside of the Dorne storyline. Maybe there was a bigger problem with edits this season?)

    EDIT: I’m sorry for the off-topic btw. What really matters in this comment section is that Hardhome was just great, quite possibly the best fight scene (and not only fight scene, as Karsi character might prove) in Game of Thrones. Which easily puts it in front of most Dorne scenes altogether.

  26. TOIVA,

    i was also speaking in more of a general term, not only to you directly

    i’m sorry about the confusion too, don’t know why i remenbered you as a book-reader.
    i agree on many points with you, mostly that it was rushed and the editing was off.
    on the fight happening i think this is a matter on each of us, i for one don’t mind ”coincidents”. i belive they need to happen for the story to move
    as to characters being dumb i think it was meant this way, as a book reader i can’t but think of how it happen in the books, i think the main essence is still here, a stupid not well toughout plan failling misarabile.

    but yes lets end the off-topic: loved hardhome, don’t think theres anything else to say here

  28. This is great

    What has made it work though is that unlike the Star Wars prequel or the Hobbit films they haven’t centred it around SFX/VFX to the point where it has no soul, rather they have built a set with practical effects and “filled it in” with CGI

    Point being, best mix is to still use practical effects and actual people as the base and use CGI around the edges

    This is where it is good they have people in them partially green suits and they are using actual people in motion capture for the Giant rather than just CGi’ing it all, eg it’s the small things like rubbing underneath his eye when walking to the ships etc

  29. As for Dorne Sand Snake/JB fight, it’s one of those things where you can tell they veer from the books and they are thinking in terms of TV show drama rather than adapting ASOIF drama which is on a whole different level

    The whole thing was a bit like Crasters Keep, these kind of coincidences are part and parcel of TV shows but the thing is ASOIF and GoT as an adaption of that is so good it gets to the point where “original content” really stands out

  30. Ghost’s Lunch,

    The Giant Wun Wun is more than motion capture. It’s simply a man (supposedly a rather large man) in heavy prosthetics behaving in a ‘giant-y’ way that is than multiplied in size. As shown in the video.

    And yes, that’s great. All the things they took the time to create in reality and then all the little details they took the pains to create digitally.

  31. Thronetender,

    I have to agree that binge-watching Season 5 makes it the same as all the other seasons. People forget that watching an episode a week makes it feel like the story is progressing slowly, but a lot happened this Season, for sure.

  32. Very late addition to this, I’d not read any comments past my earlier one, but maybe part of the reason Dorne sucked was because they were very strict with their budget this year, and wanted to save it for the final three episodes. As suggested, maybe they just edited out poorly done scenes rather than trying to fix them, and hoped it’d be ‘good enough’. We didn’t seem to get many extra-long episodes this year.

Comments are closed.