A Battle Like You’ve Never Seen: How Did GoT Pull Off Epic Visual Effects In 6×09

An epic story needs epic visual effects, if it is to be told like it was meant to. No wonder Game of Thrones has employed them from season 1, winning the last four Emmy Awards for visual effects. Now, we’re at season 6 and the GoT vfx team is nowhere near ready to go home and relax. The latest episode, “Battle of the Bastards”, proved to be the biggest challenge yet #actionmagic

As the name suggests, the episode concentrates on two titanic battles that required believable dragons and thousands of soldiers, horses and weapons to be shaped from thin air. 

The 250 extras were supposed to morph in armies of thousands, while Daenerys had to fly her dragons above enemy ships and destroy them with fire. We’ll tell you one thing – it wasn’t easy at all.

As producer Steve Kullback and supervisor Joe Bauer say in the clip above, they were shocked that they pulled it off in the end. “Our goal is always to say yes, no matter what the question is”, says Kullback about the determination that keeps them going.

The most difficult scenes to make were the aerial shots with Daenerys and the dragons, as well as the close shots focused on Jon Snow and the cavalry, where visual effects gave life to horses and took them away, as they were impaled by spears and swords. We’ll let you see for yourself, in the video.