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  • We're here just outside of London at BGFX.

  • Now, this company made every White Walker, every limb,

  • every dead body since season four on "Game of Thrones."

  • We've been allowed to come into their top-secret studio,

  • but spoiler alert:

  • If you haven't seen some of the most recent episodes,

  • you might want to look away now.

  • BGFX is run by Emmy winners Sarah and Barrie Gower,

  • who've worked in the industry for over 20 years,

  • creating prosthetics for

  • "Life of Pi," "My Cousin Rachel," and "A Cure for Wellness."

  • I was working for various other prosthetics designers,

  • and I was doing little projects for makeup designers,

  • and I was doing things out

  • of a small studio at home in our back garden.

  • I was making bits and pieces, then we had a call

  • and went for the interview for "Game of Thrones,"

  • and that's where it sort of kicked off for us really.

  • Ju: Although we first see the Night King in season four

  • in Bran's vision, it's not until "The Door" in season six

  • that we see this version performed by actor Vladimir Furdik.

  • The whole process of making a head like this

  • is probably about, maybe three weeks.

  • We had a head cast in plaster of paris, and then we would

  • sculpt the whole makeup as one in like a plasticine.

  • We would make molds with fiberglass and epoxy resin,

  • and then we would cast the silicone appliances from them,

  • so it'll be like basically a big jigsaw piece

  • of various bits and pieces.

  • Every day that the actor films,

  • he needs a brand-new set of appliances.

  • Ju: This makeup weighs about 2 to 3 kilos

  • and takes four hours to apply.

  • But the Night King was originally planned

  • to look a little different.

  • We first sculpted a whole chest piece,

  • which came down here,

  • because I don't think the costume had been decided on at the

  • time as well, and at one point, he was going to be topless.

  • So it would've been an awful lot of work probably,

  • doing all the body artwork.

  • Ju: One of the most

  • recognizable characters is giant Wun Wun.

  • Actors who play the giants wear silicone appliances

  • while standing in front of a green screen.

  • And it's platinum-based silicone, which I think

  • was originally created for the medical industry.

  • When you get it in its raw state,

  • it's completely translucent. It's water-clear,

  • and then we pigment it to whatever tone we need.

  • So the softer the piece,

  • the easier it moves on the skin, basically.

  • But what's it like to wear one of these things?

  • That's like putting your hand inside of a plate of jelly.

  • Barrie: All the pieces are really cold,

  • so putting it on is a bit of a shock,

  • but everything warms up to the skin during the day.

  • How do you take off something like this? OK.

  • If you, there we go.

  • Ju: It's not just White Walkers, Stone Men, and giants

  • who need silicone masks. The process is also used on

  • fat suits, double chins, and chubby hands.

  • The show is filled with various wounds and infections, like

  • Jorah Mormont's greyscale.

  • Remember this scene in season seven where

  • Samwell Tarly removes all the oozing scales one by one?

  • It was effectively a lot of the same makeup,

  • but we had a slightly different chest piece,

  • which had an underlayer of raw skin,

  • and then we had a patch, which was preapplied over the top,

  • but that was all, had this sort of integrated blood tubing,

  • sort of led out the bottom of his piece

  • and down his costume, and there was myself and Paul Spiteri

  • behind him with just blood tubes and pumps,

  • and it was kind of on action.

  • Literally as they were peeling it away,

  • we had all this kind of methylcellulose slime.

  • Cut to me and Paul behind him just pumping all this

  • stuff coming out of him on cue.

  • Ju: Turns out the team used another

  • popular TV show for inspiration.

  • We're all big fans of "The Walking Dead" here.

  • We're always sort of scouring online,

  • looking at what they've been up to and what they're doing.

  • But for us, it was very important that

  • we want to do something quite different as well.

  • Turns out, there's a scale for how dead a wight looks.

  • Well, we have super fresh wights,

  • which came from Jane Walker's makeup department,

  • and they are extras which she just face makeup

  • and what have you, paled down,

  • and they pull out bone structure and a little bit of blood,

  • and then our fresh wights have small cheekbones appliances

  • where we can sink the eyes back a bit,

  • and we say they're about 6-months-old dead.

  • And then we have sort of mid-decomposed,

  • which are heavier pieces.

  • Top tip if you're using fake blood on somebody,

  • don't use a wet wipe to wipe it off

  • 'cause you'll stain them orange.

  • Ju: Next time you're watching, keep an eye on the wights.

  • This is a cast of Michael Byrch,

  • who has played various roles in, wait for it, 12 episodes,

  • including that wight that jumps out of the crate

  • towards Cersei in season seven.

  • He's played so many parts.

  • He's been killed off so many times.

  • Ju: For battle sequences such as Battle of the Bastards,

  • real-life extras and horses

  • are mixed in with loose, fake limbs.

  • It's also these limbs that are pinned to the wall

  • in a season eight, episode one scene with Lord Ned Umber.

  • The life expectancy of these, if you make a load of props

  • for a sequence, it's rare you'll get them back

  • and they'll be in a decent condition

  • because they're usually covered in so much blood

  • and mud, and they're trampled on.

  • That's like my arm hair.

  • That's just human hair.

  • What is this made out of?

  • That's human hair.

  • Oh!

  • So we punch full heads of hair. We do eyebrows, eyelashes,

  • and it is actually natural hair, which is sold,

  • and we buy it in long lengths,

  • and then the guys actually precurl it

  • around small lengths of doweling.

  • An arm with that amount of hair on

  • would probably take a day to punch.

  • Ju: There are also entire trays of fake wounds.

  • We have the frozen-lake sequence in season seven.

  • Sixty to 100 wights on a day,

  • and just usually the nature of just how nuts

  • the filming process is, and how crazy the battles are,

  • we rarely had continuity days where we had to make sure

  • this guy looked identical each day

  • because he was often going to be seen,

  • so we were able to just make things up as we went

  • from day to day.

  • Ju: It's incredibly light and...

  • Barrie: It's a bit like jellyfish, isn't it?

  • Ju: Yeah, it's just like holding a jellyfish.

  • So what about all of those dead bodies we see?

  • They're made through a process called lifecasting.

  • So we'll start with capturing a former of the actor's

  • head or body, and we'll use a silicone lifecasting material

  • and a plaster bandage, so if you see people with casts

  • on their arms with the plaster bandage,

  • we use that as an outer shell,

  • and then effectively we have a mold of their head

  • which we can then pour in plaster of paris

  • to get a positive copy of the head.

  • These are all our, sort of our rogue's gallery of

  • "Game of Thrones," sort of, over the years.

  • Ju: Is that Joffrey?

  • 'Cause obviously, he starts bleeding out of his eyes

  • and goes the color of radish.

  • So that was a bit of a collaboration between

  • Jane Walker and her team doing his makeup on the day,

  • and then it was visual FX as well.

  • They did quite a lot in post,

  • sort of making his eyes a little bit off.

  • Ju: We should probably qualify that the Arya head

  • was made for her Walder Frey mask,

  • and the Hound came here for his makeup tests.

  • But which adult-sized heads are underneath these bin bags?

  • We're not allowed to see them yet.

  • Aging is also a process that is used for various characters.

  • Remember that "oh, my God" moment when Melisandre takes off

  • her necklace in the season six premiere?

  • We used a lot of reference, I mean, old-age makeup

  • is something quite common in the prosthetics sort of world,

  • so we've got so many books and books,

  • so many files we've downloaded of elderly skin and textures

  • and what have you.

  • We did a very exaggerated kind of sculpture,

  • and it was accentuating the nose, all of the bone structure

  • and what have you, and then we had to thin her hair,

  • so she had a complete silicone bald cap,

  • and then she had a double,

  • who, really sweet, elderly lady,

  • I think her name was Sheila,

  • and we shot performance

  • with her as well

  • walking from the bed.

  • We shot her first, and then Carice matched her movements

  • as well, and visual FX kind of tied the two together.

  • Ju: That's all we have time for.

  • Our favorite bit?

  • Probably the realistic limbs made with human hair.

  • We won't be forgetting that anytime soon.

We're here just outside of London at BGFX.

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