Meet the Guy Who Sees What Isn’t There (Yet)

By Cat Taylor

Naill McEvoyVFX Data Wrangler
Dragon & Wolf units
N. Ireland/Iceland

Job description:
“We gather as much information as we can from a shooting day, be it lighting information, camera information, lens tilt, height…anything that helps us integrate non-existing elements into the final frame. The only way to make these look real is to light them correctly, and shoot them correctly so they fit into the original plate. If you’ve ever seen poor visual effects, I guarantee that it’s because it wasn’t lit right. So we take all the references, categorizing them all, so when we go back at a later date and shoot an element, we can recreate everything accurately.”

Biggest Challenge working on GOT:
“Well, essentially, GOT is a 10-hour-long feature film. It’s a TV show, yes, but HBO demands excellence. To film something of this scale, in our timeframe, everyone has to be on the top of their game, and every detail is important. And the mud. So many of our locations are muddy fields, or muddy quarries. I’ve woken up from dreams where I’m choking on mud. Look at where we are (in a very muddy field at Audley Tower, which is serving as one of Robb’s camps) everything is ridiculous! Every so often you take a step back and think this is crazy, but then it’s amazing. I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing.”

VFX elements he’s most looking forward to in Season 2:
“I would like to see how the dragons have grown, progressed and improved. They appeared late in Season 1, right at the end of episode10. In the upcoming season, we see a lot more of them, and that’s really exciting. And the direwolves. We’ve been involved in creating them this season, and we’ve shot a lot of elements with them. These things are big, the size of small horses, and I can’t wait to see how they look.”

Favorite Character:
“I like the really evil guys. Viserys was so good. So evil. I think he was underrated in a lot of respects, but I thought he was great. And Joffrey. Joffrey was fantastic. I mean what a little bastard. Jack Gleeson is such an amazing kid in real life, all the kids have been amazing, but Jack in particular, being such a nice guy in real life and such a bastard on screen.”