The Wheel of Time series shows off Heron Mark blade, and other tidbits

“opefully Season One will feel more like the entire book series of Wheel of Time than it does like Eye of the World.” Say what?

Amazon has released a new teaser for its Wheel Of Time series, The teaser, an epic look at the stages of production design for one of the series’ beloved weapons, showing off how the production goes about creating a heron-marked blade, an iconic weapon from the books by Robert Jordan. This new video puts the process on display, from the text of the novels to concept sketches to 3D design to a render of how it will look on set.

Before you get too excited, showrunner Rafe Judkins confirmed that this isn’t the actual weapon that will be used on set, but we’re getting there.

Judkins actually stuck around for a while on Twitter and answered 10 questions from fans about production design, and dropped a few other tidbits along the way. His answers show that he’s an earnest fan of the series. Check some of them out below, with the questions edited for simplicity:

How are the sword forms going to be presented? Is the style going to be pulled from a specific region of sword fighting, or are they going to be spread out over many regions?

"We have a fight time and swordmaster on the show who has built a fighting style unique to each weapon and culture. So, if you see a Borderlander fight with a heron mark blade it may feel different than a Seanchan. That’s merely hypothetical of course ;)"

The music, how is that related to the show? Did we just get a glimpse of a theme?

"This is not music from the show itself. When it is, I’ll make sure you know it, and it will hopefully feel very uniquely “Wheel of Time” :)"

How is the set for the Two Rivers designed architecturally? It would seem easy to make it homely and Medieval, but because of it’s location and history, are there any other inspirations coming into play?

"When the books came out they felt so blazingly fresh and different and new, so we want that same thing to be true of the show, and if you see us leaning away from certain elements in the books, often times it’s because audiences have now seen them before! Unfortunately sometimes even in cases where the book-to-screen adaptations are from books that cribbed it from WoT! ha"

Will Moiraine have a staff at the beginning of the show?

"We’re approaching this as an adaptation of the entire series, not just each book individually, so hopefully Season One will feel more like the entire book series of Wheel of Time than it does like Eye of the World. With that in mind — no Moiraine staff. Let chaos ensue, ha."

Will there be different styles of swords and heron marked swords? Or will all of them be in katana style?

"Many, many different styles."

Weapons and their individualistic characteristics are integral to particular characters, especially with Mat, Rand, and Perrin. Will the show give a similar focus or will the weapons mostly just be there?

"You can not even imagine the number of hours that goes into each person’s weapon. I was in at least 20 meetings about the dagger that Egwene has, and that’s not even a major weapon in the books. There’s a whole team of people (and we have a few BIG book fans on the props team)looking at every item held by an actor on the show. I’d be shocked if less than 10,000 woman/man hours were spent on the design and creation of the Heron Mark sword."

How do you decide what needs to be physically made, like the sword, and what’s going to be effects?

"I want things to be as real as possible, so in any place that we possibly can, we’ve built things instead of trusting to effects. Our show could be all green screen, all CGI, but I think you’ll be surprised by how much of it was actually built, and touched and held by our actors."

What are some of the inspirations for armor design? Is there quite a bit of variation between the Andoran and Shienaran armor?

"Yes. Our costume team, lead by the amazing Isis Mussenden, started by building a map of the entire Wheel of Time world, carving out what each nation/culture looked like to make sure they’re differentiated (and honoring what’s in the books) and then diving back into Two Rivers."

Have you filmed any of the pre-production, design, manufacturing of props, etc., for a behind the scenes program?

"Of course! An amazing team has been picking up as much as they can of the process so that after the show’s aired you can see all the work and love that went into creating these details large and small :)"

What balance are you striking between recreating what’s in the books word-for-word and letting the artists have creativity?

"What’s really important to me is that when we’re diverging from the books, that we KNOW we’re doing it. So, every piece of production design from shoes to swords to the White Tower itself begins with pages of quotes from the books about that place/thing. The designer then takes it from there to build something that makes sense in our world, with our production concerns, our cast, our aesthetic, etc. But at the end of the day, it all stems from that first document and it’s something we can always go back to."

The most interesting thing to come out of this may have been this quote: “…hopefully Season One will feel more like the entire book series of Wheel of Time than it does like Eye of the World.”

What on Earth does that mean? Stay tuned.

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