Game of Thrones SFX artist explains how he brought down the Wall

One of Game of Thrones season 7’s greatest moments came at the very end, as the audience watched in horror as a resurrected Viserion brought down the Wall. It was a jaw-dropping sequence, both for its technical achievement and its ramifications on the plot. One of the men responsible, Rodeo FX Visual Effects Supervisor Matthew Rouleau spoke with iNews about putting the sequence together, starting with his reaction when he first heard about it. “It was just in concept art, and the episodes hadn’t been shot yet. I remember thinking, ‘wow…we’re really going to create something impressive!'”

Every season, the special effects get more extensive, to the point where HBO has to hire multiple special effects companies to work on different sequences. For season 7, Rodeo FX was responsible for select shots of Euron Greyjoy’s fleet and, of course, the destruction of the Wall, the latter of which took up the majority of the studio’s time. It took 100 artists six months to finish that sequence.

"We actually decided that the event in the show would function similarly to a glacier simultaneously melting and collapsing. We combed YouTube through hours’ worth of videos of glacial melting, which really gave us a strong sense of dynamic and scale."

After finding their inspiration, Rouleau’s team got to work giving viewers a sense of scale by creating characters walking and running across the top of the Wall. “Characters are crucial to give an idea of the scale, as they put things into context very quickly.” No word on the fates of Tormund and Beric, though.

Then came the watching. Rouleau admitted he wasn’t prepared for fans’ reactions:

"When the episode aired, fans were recording themselves watching it, and their reactions were insane. A guy even cried! Honestly, I think it was seeing the impact we had on the fans that really made us feel like we’d created something very awesome."

Was that guy me? No comment.

Rouleau also discussed the most challenging aspect of his work: the tight schedule.

"We saw from the very first simulations that it was going to be great. The biggest challenges were technical and, of course, working with the time available. TV is always challenging timewise, as you have less time than for a movie but the quality expectations are still very high. To overcome it, we had to rework our pipeline to integrate such intense simulations."

However, bringing down the Wall didn’t pose as much challenge as did the Battle of Meereen in season 6. “We had a lot of different materials and effects to deal with,” Rouleau explained. “[W]ood, the fabric of the sails, and the water and waves the carnage would produce. Those are all very different from one another, and making them work together to get a look was incredibly complex.”

Rouleau and his team have already won there Primetime Emmy Awards for their work on the show. The destruction of the Wall may bring them a fourth, and we can’t wait to see what they have on tap for season 8. Might it involve whatever HBO is shooting at Magheramorne Quarry?

Next: Take the Black Podcast: And now comes the Age of Heroes

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