This 'Game Of Thrones' Effects Reel Is All About The Dragons

The Game of Thrones effects are often incredibly good — so much so that the times where things are a bit under par (as we saw a few times in the last season) the deficiency truly stands out. One of the huge batch of Emmys awarded to the show this year was for visual effects, and that win is well-deserved. We've seen quite a few visual effects breakdowns for the show as a whole, and even a couple specifically aimed at the most recent fifth season.

That said, we're always game to learn more about how the show's effects are done, and so this five-minute reel showcasing the work that goes into bringing the dragons Drogon, Viserion and Rhaegal to life is really terrific. This reel is entirely focused on season five, and it has all the dragon fire and hidden musculature you could want.

The reel comes from the company Pixomondo, and reveals some tricks behind sequences such as the fire-breathing moment from the imprisoned Viserion and Rhaegal, and the intense landing of Drogon in Daznak's Pit, and the action and escape that follows.

Game of Thrones won its fourth Emmy for special visual effects last night — one of twelve it took home this year — for the episode The Dance of Dragons. While not everything in that episode was outstanding — some of the shots of Danerys riding Drogon aren't quite up to the show's usual high standard — much of the Pit sequence was tremendous, both in terms of effects and their dramatic impact.

Pixomondo thanks the HBO Visual Effects Team, Joe Bauer (Lead Visual Effects Supervisor), Steve Kullback (Lead Visual Effects Producer), Adam Chazen (Visual Effects Associate Producer), Dan Katcher (Dragon Designer) and Sven Martin (Visual Effects Supervisor Pixomondo) as well as the rest of the team at Pixomondo.

Via Watchers on the Wall.