6. There's An Insane Amount Of VFX Shots
Look, we all wish that the shoots were as realistic as possible, yet occasionally there comes a time when you have to give up and throw some VFX shots in there. In a fantasy series like Game Of Thrones, that's only to be expected some of the location sare fantastical, occasionally duplication is required and occasionally, something supernatural happens. Yet still, with the exception of the dragons, the crew attempt to use as little CGI as possible, preferring to utilise the more subtle VFX. I've already noted how very little digital touch-ups were used in the Iceland shoot, but the same can't be said for Winterfell and other areas of the Northern Ireland sequences. The fact of the matter is that the Stark's ancestral home is far smaller than you think, with effects used to make it seems a whole lot bigger. After all, while the Thrones budget is huge, building a mock castle just for a couple of scenes is generally frowned upon by the accountants, so the crew make do extrapolating onto a few standing walls and castle ruins. Similarly, the House Of The Undying is a construction created by the crew in Croatia (go on, say that five times fast), and Joffrey's throne room is actually quite a small soundstage made larger by digital witchcraft. But still, you barely notice most of the time. In fact, according to VFX helmers Rainer Gombos (supervisor) and Steve Kullback (producer) on the DVD, the digital rabbit hole goes far deeper than you might expect there are 875 VFX shots in series 2, and the crew have been pulling epic electronic cons since the beginning. Alan Taylor director of series 1 finale Fire And Blood let slip in his own commentary that the way they made the Red Waste seem so vast is by colouring the Mediterranean brown while it was still and hoping for the best. It's so blatant that it's actually pretty impressive you don't notice anything wrong the whole, vast desolation first time round. I guess it makes sense carting Emilia Clarke into the middle of the bloody desert for a shoot might've been too ridiculous, even for Game Of Thrones.