Game of Thrones Wins at Hollywood Post Alliance Awards (UPDATED)
By Ani Bundel
Game of Thrones continues its awards dominance post Season 5. Last night, it took home a TV Visual Effects trophy at the Hollywood Post Alliance Awards. Known colloquially as the HPA Awards, these awards are given out by the Hollywood Professional Alliance, which only changed its name this year from the Hollywood Post Alliance. They are known for honoring those who “redefine post production.”
The 10th Annual Awards were held last night at the Skirball Cultural Center in L.A. Most of the movie nominations and wins were for films honored at the Oscars this past February. These films, including American Sniper, Whiplash and Birdman, basically finished their award season prize runs months ago. Meanwhile, the TV shows being honored were ones that are still in the prime of their awards season.
Game of Thrones was nominated in four categories, including Sound Editing, Color Grading, Visual Editing, and Outstanding VFX. Of these, they only took home the VFX award, for the penultimate Season 5 episode “The Dance of Dragons.” The award went to the team of Joe Bauer, Steve Kullback, Derek Spears, Eric Carney, and Jabbar Raisani. The other nominations were all for episode 8, “Hardhome.” In each case they lost out to the competition, in two cases, to other HBO productions. Boardwalk Empire took home the TV color grading prize while Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways — Nashville won for visual editing. Showtime’s Homeland took home the prize for Sound.
Congratulations to the VFX team for their win.
UPDATE: In other awards-related news, George R.R. Martin posted some thoughts about next year’s Hugo Awards on his Not a Blog. Specifically, he outlined his hopes for the Dramatic Presentation, Long Form category (as he notes, this category basically breaks down to “Best Television Episode”). Game of Thrones has been nominated before, and naturally, he’s hoping a Season 5 episode makes it onto a future ballot. “I’d favor “Hardhome” myself,” he wrote. “[B]ut “Mother’s Mercy,” with Cersei’s walk of shame, could be a strong choice as well.”
On that note, isn’t it interesting how, despite the huge number of awards the show has won this season, relatively few of them have been for “Hardhome?” The show may have won a record 12 Emmy Awards, but “Hardhome” only won for Sound Mixing and Sound Editing. The big awards—Best Directing and Best Writing—both went to “Mother’s Mercy.” Curious, seeing as “Hardhome” seems to be the clear fan-favorite episode of the Season.