The Game of Thrones Cast on Acting With CGI, “astonishing” Season 6 premiere

Several Game of Thrones cast members have been out in force to hype up the Season 5 DVD and Blu-ray boxset, leading to several interview snippets being released by various outlets this week. In most, the media has focused on one particular actor’s statements. But The Independent has gone wide, asking several of the actors to discuss one of the harder aspects of creating the series: working with those dreaded green screens that are necessary for all the show’s CGI effects.

Game of Thrones has been winning awards ever since the first season for its use of CGI, to the point that some major cinematographers have begun to demand that VFX get their own category separate from actual photography in awards shows like the Emmys. But though the fantasy genre in general has pushed the use of CGI to another level in recent years, for actors, working with green screens can be very frustrating, especially if they haven’t got a good mental picture of what they’re actually supposed to be looking at. (Ian McKellen famously had a minor breakdown on the set of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey from this exact frustration.)

Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth) claims that, although sometimes we think the use of green screen is extensive, the show goes out of its way to use them as little as possible. The producers try to film on location or on a set whenever possible. Also, the CGI budget simply doesn’t match that of a big budget franchise film, so when they do have to use VFX, it rarely looks as good as it would on the big screen.

Cunningham: “The boat that we travel on to Braavos is actually in a car park – they’ve obviously got to use [VFX] to get the sea right – but there is such beautiful attention to detail from the costumes, from the sets, from the props – they’re magnificent. This goes right down to when I handed over money to Salladhor Saan in the brothel. They brought out this coin that was so intricately made even though there was never going to be a close up of it. The money was minted with two different forms of metal with the Braavos bank seal. That morale is right through the crew, everything they make they want people to look at and ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ over, they want it to be real as possible.”

For her part, Maisie Williams says she’s grateful the show works so hard to make physical sets, like last year’s Hall of Faces. (Some of it was CGI, but the close up set existed, so that the actors had a very good idea of what the rest would look like.) “Particularly when you’re trying to work with someone else, as you’re both imagining something totally different – neither of you are imagining exactly what they’re going to put there.”

They’re like ‘look out to the castle’ and you just think ‘well, how far away is it? Is it right here?’ and although you can ask all of those questions it never looks right. You watch it back and you think ‘I can tell I’m looking at a green screen’, even though for an audience member it may not register.

Getting back to praising the props on the show, Cunningham added that even the costume detail is meticulous, joking that for Carice van Houten’s Melisandre costume, “the material is made of very faint skulls, just millions of tiny skulls.”

Personally, I think that would be really hard to sit down in, no? Perhaps that’s why Melisandre is always standing around glowering.

Finally, in the midst of all these interviews, the actors couldn’t help but do a little teasing for Game of Thrones Season 6. Cunningham had high praise for the premiere episode.

"The first episode to kick off with [Melisandre] – without saying anything again – is astonishing. There’s absolutely amazing stuff coming up, just so left of field. Just watching your and my favourite characters being put in these situations that are just so unpredictable and just so unexpected – it’s one of the trademarks of the show."

h/t Metro