VFX Supervisor shares experiences of building and riding dragons

By Rahul Jadhav

Fans seldom understand the effort and bravery put forth by actors even when working in safe environments. This is especially true in graphics intensive action scenes as is commonly seen in the show and is promised to be seen in the final season of the show. The pain of tolerating the harsh weathers of Iceland, the place where the majority of Game of Thrones is shot is one thing. However, having to actually ride a dragon is yet another, and that is exactly what some actors like Emilia Clarke and Vladamir Furdik have had to do.

In a recent interview with Michelle Blok, the previous VFX Supervisor of the epic saga, things started coming into proportion. The proportion of a dragon to a human to be exact. As revealed by Blok, the scenes of Denaerys and the Night King riding the dragons didn’t have as much of VFX to them as fans think they did. She also revealed that not only do the dragons on TV look much smaller than the models while filming, they are also scarier to mount and ride. According to her, “it’s very vertigo-inducing because it’s really high.”

“It’s really hard to describe to people because I thought, you see the dragons on TV you think ‘that’s not big’ and when you see a full-scale model of the dragon torso…it’s high,” said the previous VFX Supervisor.

Michelle also captured the fear faced not only by the actors but also by the rest of the crew filming the shots. According to her, the actors have to first get on top of the colossal structure and then bear vertigo as it starts moving in the air. And to add on top of that, the actors also have to maintain their character and perform the way they are supposed to while battling all the dizziness and fear from a huge height.

“And they are climbing up on this thing and it’s just like ‘that is crazy,’” shared Michelle Blok. “Because we have to lift it up in the air to put it on the motion base and then we have to put cameras that are really low coming out…she she was thirty feet in the air. It’s just so scary. And then the thing starts moving.”

Emilia Clarke is not the only actor who has had to go through all of this for the sake of the show. Denaerys lost one of her dragons when the Night King sleys it with his spear. The same dragon was then resurrected from beneath the ice and was then used by the Night King himself. The Night King, played by Vladamir Furdik, was then seen breaching the walls of Westeros on top of the same dragon. Furdik has also had his fair share of experiences with riding dragons in real life to film the epic saga.

While that is exactly where Season 7 ended, and while a leak confirmed that Season 8 will not be starting there, Dragons would seemingly play an important role in the final season of the show. The premiere of the said season is set on April 14, a date which fans across the world eagerly await.