“’Game of Thrones’ has made this legacy of incredible craft,” reveals visual effects supervisor Mohsen Mousavi about the Emmy-winning series. In our recent webchat (watch the exclusive video above), he adds, “Everyone’s who has been involved really put forward their best. That combined with the amazing story gives you this beautiful world.”
The series’ penultimate episode, ‘The Bells,’ has earned Mousavi his first ever Emmy nomination for Special Visual Effects. In this installment, Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) destroys King’s Landing with dragon fire so she can claim the Iron Throne. He explains, “The biggest challenge was the scope. 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.”
After his work on previous seasons Mousavi’s special effects company, ‘Scanline,’ was brought in to work on the final episodes of the series. He said that on his team “we had people who really wanted to work on the project. 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.”
In the final episode of the series, the Iron Throne is destroyed by Drogon with help from Mousavi’s team. He reveals, “The throne melt sequence was something we started early. 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.”
PREDICT the Emmys now; change them until September 22
Be sure to make your Emmy predictions today so that Hollywood insiders can see how their TV shows and performers are faring in our odds. You can keep changing your predictions as often as you like until just before the winners are announced on September 22. And join in the fun debate over the 2019 Emmys taking place right now with Hollywood insiders in our television forums. Read more Gold Derby entertainment news.
SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions
