Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/884568
12 cgw s e p t e m b e r . o c t o b e r 2 0 1 7 scope of what can be shot in-camera. Our mission is to use VFX to serve the story and fulfill their vision." dragon-size effects The battle on the frozen lake in Episode 6 of Season 7, "Beyond the Wall," epitomizes the complexity of VFX sequences this year. Cer- tainly "Iceland did its bit," as Bauer puts it, setting the scene with its unique frigid land- scapes. But the battle was packed with VFX shots: El Ranchito extended and enhanced the bleak environment and re-animated the dragon Viserion, Pixomondo and El Ranchito craed the wights' (reanimated corpses') crumbling-skeleton demise, and Rhythm & Hues "went all in" with the flying dragons' animation, he adds. "More acrobatics were required for the dragons, which are moving fast" and spitting real fire elements shot with the show's sig- nature flamethrower using a motion-control crane technique, Bauer explains. "Rhythm & Hues had to change the dragons' perfor- mances to work with the best-looking fire photography. That gave more nuance to the performance and the awesome scaled fire – one of the secrets of the success of that particular sequence." Los Angeles-based Rhythm & Hues netted 2015 and 2016 Emmy Awards for its work on the series. In craing Drogon for Season 5's "Dance of the Dragons" episode, the company created the performance for a mythic beast that was at once vicious and vulnerable. Rhythm & Hues animated Dro- gon using a model built by Pixomondo, which featured aspects of lizards, bats, and birds to make Drogon – as well as Rhaegal and Viseri- on – believable. When Drogon grew in size for Season 6, a larger-scale dragon model was developed with the show's dragon designer, Dan Katcher, and Pixomondo. Complex and dynamic camera moves were used to put Daenerys atop Drogon to burn the slave masters' ships in the Meereenese harbor last year. "Learning how to pre-animate the dragon for motion-con- trol playback has been a new process for us," notes Derek Spears, VFX supervisor for Rhythm & Hues through Season 7. "We hadn't really explored before how animation drives what happens on the set." That experience informed this season's dragon work, which was still bigger in scope. The frozen lake sequence had a number of people riding Drogon, "so we had multiple passes of people positioned on different parts of his back. And that required more precise animation across the back of the dragon," Spears explains. "We tried to stick close to the greenscreen elements and not alter things and reposition people if we didn't have to." The death of Viserion as the dragon is speared and crashes into the lake was a challenge VFX had not faced before. "It was a rare moment where the whole emotional content of the scene concentrated on VFX," says Kullback. Rhythm & Hues animated and lit the crash; El Ranchito did the water sims. "We were given plane crash reference as a model for Viserion's crash. There is usually a physical analog that can put you on the right path, even for a fantasy tale," says Spears. Still, it took many iterations to success- fully create Viserion's crash and parts of its body sliding into the water. "We had an inherent sense of what it should look like, and it was obvious when we got it wrong," Spears says. The shot combines photogrammetry of the Icelandic location, the CG dragon, and special effects fire as the camera pulls back to watch Viserion sink into the water. "Everything was carefully plotted out," says Bauer. "You could play the previs next to the final VFX shot and they could run in tandem," notes Kullback. "That's the value of preparation." El Ranchito stepped in when Viserion was pulled out of the lake and re-animated as the ice dragon by the living-dead White Walkers. "Given all the dragon work we had, we were stretched for dragon vendors," says Bauer. "So El Ranchito got its first dragon. The shot where the White Walker Night King puts his hand on Viserion's head was their version one – they nailed it right out of the gate." up in Flames Weta created the "zombie polar bear," a fearsome creature that the VFX team had long – and jokingly – lobbied for. "The Revenant had just come out, so that was the benchmark to beat," laughs Bauer. "We