VFX supervisor reveals why some colleagues didn’t want to work on Game of Thrones season 8

Game of Thrones VFX supervisor Mohsen Mousavi had a hand in destroying both King’s Landing and the Iron Throne, but not everyone was eager to help.

Game of Thrones visual effects supervisor Mohsen Mousavi has revealed the true scale of his team’s task on season 8, as well as why a number of them turned down the chance to work on it.

In an exclusive interview with Gold Derby, Mousavi, who won his first Primetime Emmy for working on the series penultimate episode “The Bells,” explained: “Game of Thrones has made this legacy of incredible craft. Everyone’s who has been involved really put forward their best. That combined with the amazing story gives you this beautiful world.”

He’s right about that. Even if “The Bells” wasn’t your cup of tea, you’d be hard-pressed to deny that the special effects work wasn’t a cut above pretty much anything else on TV:

Mousavi talked about the particular difficulties of making this crucial episode. “The biggest challenge was the scope,” he said. “You have this huge city now becoming a major character. It’s not a background anymore. We created the entire King’s Landing digitally. The iconic shot of destroying the Red Keep… you’re looking at this castle you have seen for more than 70 episodes. You want to make sure you are doing justice to the way it looks.”

Mousavi first worked as a visual effects artist on the season season, but when he and his company Scanline were brought back for the final season, Mousavi was now heading the entire team. “We had people who really wanted to work on the project,” he said. “And we had ones that were such huge fans that they didn’t want to. They didn’t want spoilers.”

"This was one of the few projects where I had to force people to go home. They wanted to add more and make it better. It was helpful to have a team that was constantly motivated throughout the process. No matter if it was late nights or things had to change, the spirit was there."

Mousavi and his team also got to work on a crucial sequence from the final episode of the series: the destruction of the Iron Throne. “The throne melt sequence was something we started early,” Mousavi explained. “It was the first sequence we got from HBO to work on back in March, 2018. It was one of the things we had wrapped and finalized by April, 2019.”

"That was very fun and challenging. Imagine being told, ‘Hey you are working on destroying the Iron Throne with a dragon.’ It was very fun developing that sequence. Having that be the first thing to work on motivated everyone."

And their work won’t be easily forgotten.

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