Game of Thrones releases a Behind-the-Scenes promo: A Story in Prosthetics

The official trailer for the final season of Game of Thrones was released recently that featured a number of characters and gave us an insight of the Winterfell Battle and how bloodier it’s going to be. While we had a number of things to breakdown and find out new details in the trailer like Jorah Mormont acquiring a new sword and much more, Game of Thrones has recently released a new behind-the-scenes promo.

The exclusive behind-the-scenes promo gives you an insight into the amount of hard work the team puts in to bring the characters to life. Barrie Gowers who has been linked with this massive project since 2011 and has been managing the makeup and prosthetics since the first season, expresses his says despite the hard work and a long time taken,

“It’s lovely to see all our hard work and all these things we’ve built actually make it to the screen as well, at the end of the day.”

Barrie also talks about the long working hours and spending hours getting the perfection to characters like the Night King, the Children of the Forest, and Stone Men of Valyria. He reveals:

“Just an average prosthetic makeup we usually say is about 4 to 6 weeks to build. We have so many patient actors who sit in our chairs for like four or six or eight hours at a time. So, by the time we usually step up on set to do a rehearsal, we’ve already pretty much done a full day’s. So to then film and have our fun on set making sure everything’s not falling off people for 12 hours.”

We’re already familiar with the prosthetics done on Iain Glen (Jorah Mormont) to make his greyscale look lively – it was really a tough affair and no wonder the details put in it so fantastic. We wonder it couldn’t have been any less gross for Sam the ‘surgeon’ who had been obliged to help the son of his former Lord Commander. Undoing the makeup is a tedious process too. Barrie says,

“The de-wig in the evening can take a good, um, an hour or two. people are quite unaware of the length of time and the process that goes into these things.” 

The kind and quality of the good work that the team is going have shown a considerable amount of improvement as evident from the upgrade of the White Walkers when compared with Season 1. Gower reveals:

“Each year it’s got bigger and bigger and bigger to the point now with Season 8, where we’re sort of maxing numbers about the 70 or 80 mark on the set. And, in the workshop, we usually have a team of about 50 people. it’s a big department to manage. I think we’re very fortunate to have an accumulated a really talented pool of prosthetic people.”

So, when did this journey begin? 

“I got hired for Season 4 and we had only six wights filming and these were green screen guys and at that time, that was a huge thing for us. Cut to Hardhome the following year, where it just exploded. We had like about 40 to 50 prosthetic guys out there at any one time playing the wights and White Walkers.”

Talking about the Final two seasons – seven and eight, Gower says:

“When we found out about two years ago that there were only 13 episodes left, I think we were obviously gutted and distraught. But I think it a real testament to the guys [Dan Weiss and David Benioff] that they were stuck to their word and basically finishing the franchise when it should naturally end.”

Barrie ends by giving us some hope for the final season and says:

“It has become such a huge part of our life now, I think finishing off next year and moving on to a new project is really daunting. I think it’s scary probably for a lot of folks because we’ve just a part of this incredible family. The end is nigh, but I think it’s gonna be a big end.”

We hope the final season and amount of hard work given to the last six episodes would be worth a watch and beyond something we’ve ever seen in the history of television. All we can do now is wait for April 14 for the new season to air. Watch the full video here:

What were your thoughts on the prosthetics and makeups as Game of Thrones takes you behind-the-scenes to get a glimpse of the same? Tell us in the comments what kind of experience would you want in the final season?