Chapter 365: The Lizard with Wings

All the disputes surrounding the Oscars were invariably about fame and fortune.

Moreover, even the United States Internal Revenue Service had stepped in, demanding taxes on the gift bags given to the award presenters!

Since 1989, the Academy had been giving out gift bags at the Oscars, which had become a tradition. Not only the nominees but also the presenters received a gift bag as a token of appreciation for their unpaid appearance at the ceremony.

Under commercial hype, this tradition had evolved into a business worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This year's Oscar gift bag included diamond-studded bras and underwear, a 22k gold leaf, and a crystal hammer, valued at nearly $100,000, and that was just part of the contents.

Although the contents of the Oscar gift bags varied depending on the recipient—for example, a $15,000 "Victoria's Secret" gold and diamond-encrusted lingerie set was available only to Best Actress nominees.

In addition to the gifts for attending the ceremony, the Oscars also prepared gifts for the male and female leads and directors who did not win, to be given after the ceremony. This year's consolation gift bag included a voucher for a three-day stay at a luxury hotel in Las Vegas, intended to soothe the disappointed.

Hollywood stars received gifts at the award ceremony, which indeed made many envious, but this year, the IRS decided to focus its tax collection efforts on these gifts.

The day after the ceremony, the IRS announced that celebrities who received Oscar gift bags must pay taxes on these gifts. Their spokesperson stated—in the full glare of global attention, these stars should remember that they, like everyone else, have an obligation to pay taxes, and hoped the stars would proceed straightforwardly on tax issues.

Only death and taxes are eternal.

In a nation founded on tax resistance, taxation is a major issue. Although Murphy casually gifted his Oscar gift bag to his driver, he still notified his accountant to remember this gift when filing taxes next month.

The reputation of the nation of a thousand taxes was evident from this gift bag.

As the turmoil around the Oscars gradually subsided, Murphy tossed his Oscar statuette into a safe and returned to his work. The statuette represented the past, not the future.

The future still required his efforts.

Post-production work on "Game of Thrones" continued.

Previously, Murphy, along with Joel Griffiths, had completed the initial cut of ten episodes, temporarily handing over the fine cutting to the editing team while he traveled to the small town of Venice to oversee the digital effects work.

In the entire series, scenes requiring CGI were limited, but the final episode, featuring the hatching of Daenerys Targaryen's three baby dragons, was undoubtedly a highlight.

This was one of the two most important digital effects scenes provided for "Game of Thrones."

According to Murphy's interpretation, dragons in Western legends are essentially large lizards with wings, or more accurately, winged dinosaurs.

Therefore, following his instructions, the effects team initially based their model on juvenile dinosaurs from "Jurassic Park."

However, this was merely a reference. Creating a memorable dragon wasn't as simple as attaching wings to a dinosaur; it required establishing its core and framework based on the references.

Murphy only outlined the concept and goals; the precise execution required the meticulous work of the digital effects team.

Digital "sculpting" started from the inside out: first constructing a skeleton, then adding muscles, and finally skin.

They used Murphy's concept of a dinosaur-like dragon capable of flight as the core idea, deciding the dragon's skeletal structure should resemble that of birds. To build the initial skeleton, the effects team used "the easiest bird to find"—a plucked chicken.

This lifeless chicken thus gained significant value.

The effects team conducted a comprehensive scan of it, placing controllers on key areas such as the wings to track the dynamics of the bones and muscles during motion, then transformed these movements in the effects software to depict the muscle movements of a young dragon crawling.

The observant effects artists also noticed that the skin at the joints where a chicken's wings connect to its body was almost transparent. Therefore, when the dragons in the series stretched their wings, they were rendered with a translucent membranous appearance.

The hairless chicken provided the muscle and skeletal movements for the dragon, while the appearance of the dragon posed a more challenging problem for the effects team.

In fact, to make the fictional dragon appear more realistic, the team studied over a hundred animals. Just for the "young dragon," they examined the skin textures and scales of several lizards.

The dragons in the series were dynamic; their interaction with the environment required dynamic changes in appearance. For instance, when a dragon hatched from its egg, the droplets sliding down its scales, and the varying colors and reflections in its eyes and skin under different lighting conditions, all demanded that the effects artists achieve every tiny detail with realism.

Having dealt with the winged lizard, Murphy assembled a

 team of 25 effects artists to create the entire series' opening sequence, aiming to finalize everything from the design concept to the final effect quickly.

"Why not include something in the opening that we couldn't achieve in the main series?"

Before starting production, Murphy gathered all the production staff for a brief meeting, "If done well, the audience can understand the characters' development from it."

A TV series' opening can accomplish much, not only immersing viewers in the storyline but also informing them of the upcoming temporal and spatial settings, creating a world unique to the series.

Initially, everything was simple, without animated effects, all in a flat style.

The effects design team quickly produced an original script for the opening, depicting a raven flying from King's Landing to Winterfell. However, Murphy felt this might confuse viewers about the setting of the story.

The team then created five maps, suggesting they could be switched out as the series changed locations. While this seemed effective in clarifying current locations, it significantly disrupted the narrative.

Murphy simply decided to integrate the maps into the opening, making them a part of it.

However, this raised another question: What else is there beyond the maps?

Murphy pondered this as the production had a sufficient budget and skilled technicians; he could do anything he imagined. What should he do?

His choice was to create the most complex and exquisite map imaginable.

Creating such a map was not easy, but Murphy led the effects team from design to production, investing considerable effort.

First, they needed to create a map that moved like a real object, accompanied by the family crests of the controllers appearing with each map.

Following Murphy's concept, the production's art director, Helena Espora, referenced Leonardo da Vinci's mechanical design sketches, which possessed a timeless beauty. The world in the series appeared simple yet was to be brought to life with complexity, and the family crests definitely couldn't resemble modern products—they should be made of wood, metal, leather, and fabric, all handcrafted.

The production aimed to replicate real objects, not to create the impression of CG effects or products of a magic camera.

Murphy believed a motion control camera system should be used to film the opening to make it appear realistic.

Subsequently, Murphy had sketches made of the Red Keep, one of the main buildings in King's Landing. The effects team created a CG model of the Red Keep, then showed it to Murphy.

Murphy was quite satisfied, and the twenty-five-member team started to get into the groove.

Next, they had to remain somewhat faithful to the original text.

By this point, Murphy had maps of Westeros and Essos, both beautifully hand-drawn by George Martin. The effects team placed these two maps into Photoshop, adjusting their sizes until they matched perfectly.

The size of the maps, the distribution of locations, and the borders all strictly adhered to George Martin's original maps. Murphy worked so hard to respect the original text because he realized that since the project's inception, through 20th Century Fox's vigorous marketing, like the "Harry Potter" series before it, "Game of Thrones" had garnered an increasingly fervent fan base.

Busy until April, the ninety-second opening was finally completed.

In the opening, an astrolabe continuously moved, orbiting around a glowing center, its crests revealing the story's history vividly.

Then, a complex map appeared, viewed from a supervisor's perspective, overseeing the entire map. As gears turned, kingdoms and city-states emerged on the map, growing and changing due to war and politics.

From the Red Keep at King's Landing to the godswood in Winterfell, to the stormy Narrow Sea, the ninety-second opening offered viewers an aerial view of the Seven Kingdoms, subtly incorporating many elements of "Game of Thrones."

Integrating the opening into the edited episodes, adding music, and editing sound effects, the initial three episodes of "Game of Thrones" were essentially complete, with the outlines of the remaining episodes also taking shape. However, Murphy was not in a hurry; television, unlike movies, allowed for adjustments based on audience feedback before finalizing the work.

As the date of "Winter is Coming" approached, Stanton Studios and 20th Century Fox intensified their promotional efforts.

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