And the WiCnet Award for Best Special Effect in Season 4 goes to…
…the over-The-Wall shot from “The Watchers on the Wall”! It joins the wildfire explosion from “Blackwater” and the dragon attack from “And Now His Watch Is Ended” as winners in this category, and fits marvelously alongside those.
There are two things you need to do a good battle scene. First, it needs to be impressive. Quality stunts, good costuming, sense of scope, great effects. Second, it needs to be comprehensible. Viewers need to be able to grasp who’s fighting, where, and what the goals are. What is the story of the battle, beyond simple fighting and killing?
As the battle is joined early in “The Watchers on the Wall”, Game of Thrones manages to accomplish both of these in less than a minute with a single magisterial shot….
The first of the criteria—that it be impressive—is not one that Game of Thrones has had many problems with. Its special effects are fantastic, give or take a Jon Snow bird attack. There have, however, been occasional problems with scope. For all the excellence of “Blackwater”, it did at times look like a couple small gangs squaring off in an alley during the melee, while Astapor seemed to consist of a single dusty courtyard. The use of fire to indicate numbers in the swooping Wall shot did a fantastic job of setting that stage, and immediately following it with Mance’s army through the woods worked well to make that army seem huge—even when it was just a couple dozen extras walking forward.
The Wall shot showing the strategic level of the battle, however, was absolutely critical. The key portion of this are when they show Castle Black and its relation to The Wall. It’s tiny and clearly difficult to defend, and, by showing the arterial elevator leading up to the ramparts, it indicates that it’s also the necessary support for the defenders. No matter how imposing Mance’s army across the field is, the field is huge and so is The Wall. In the shot viewers can clearly see that while the battle on The Wall will be important, the raid behind The Wall is what’s critical–which the episode follows through with, putting its climax at the confrontation between Jon and Styr (and Ygritte), instead of an assault from Mance’s main forces.
The effect lasts just 23 seconds–but it frames the entire battle beautifully.
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