Season 8 filming: Blood-red structure shows up on the King’s Landing set

Game of Thrones season 8 is the year of the impressive set. While we’ve been bowled over by constructions at Magheramorne Quarry and Moneyglass, by far the grandest and most ambitious set is the section of King’s Landing the crew is building on a backlot at Titanic Studios in Belfast. It’s been under construction since freaking October, and is so awe-inspiring that HBO is leaving it up after filming is over so tourists can visit.

We’ve watched as the crew has added new elements to the set over time. For example, in the two pics below, you can see a large green screen on the site. Get ready for special effects.

Now, Los Siete Reinos has spotted a new element. Forget about the green screen; what do you make of this blood-red building poking out from behind other structures in the photos below?

LSR posits that this new structure will, like the green screen, be used for special effects. They think it’ll be a red screen, basically. Green screens are used when filmmakers need to overlay two images or video streams on top of each other, a process called chroma key compositing. Say the one image is of an army on the march, with the members of the army being played by real actors. If you film those actors in front of a green screen, you can insert some other fantastical image behind them, like a dragon or a castle or an impossibly beautiful vista. The color green is generally used between it doesn’t match any color found naturally in human skin or hair. If the actors are wearing green, or if they’re holding a green prop, Hollywood usually opts for a blue screen.

It’s not unheard of for productions to use a red screen, but if they do, they’re probably not filming people, because red tones show up naturally in human skin. However, red screens can be used if you’re filming something involving props or non-humans. Perhaps Game of Thrones is filming a scene involving a lot of White Walkers, who have whitish-bluish skin tones? And also the scene involves a lot of green for some reason?

Also note that, whatever the blood-red structure is, it is not a solid screen. We can see crenelations on the top of it; it looks like part of a castle wall or a guard tower or something. But the solid red color is definitely odd, given that the rest of the King’s Landing set is grey and brown and black — y’know, castle colors.

What are we looking at here? The floor is open for debate.

Next: Video from Magheramorne Quarry: Flaming swords on horseback

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