Anyone embarking on their Game of Thrones re-watch in the lead-up to the eighth and final season may have noticed the show has gotten kinda big over the years. Thrones has always been an event, but a story that used to be 90% intense conversations in drafty rooms now has full-sized dragons swooping in to do tussle with entire armies of the undead. Parts of "Blackwater", a dope episode, look a bit like community theater these days is what I'm saying. (Admittedly, the wildfire explosion still rips.) And all that comes down to the hours and hours put in behind-the-scenes by the VFX team, as highlighted in a fascinating behind-the-scenes video released today by HBO.

The footage features interviews with VFX producer Steve Kullback and supervisor Joe Bauer, and gives a glimpse into the work that went into massive sequences like the fiery Loot Train Attack in "Spoils of War", the muddy death-tumble of "Battle of the Bastards", and the dragons v. White Walkers clusterfuck in "Beyond the Wall."

"We're pushing the boundaries all the time," Bauer says. "All eyes are on us, and we're tryin to do things that nobody's done before."

Check out the video below. Game of Thrones—which stars Emilia Clarke, Kit Harington, Lena Headey, Nikolai Coster-Waldau, Peter Dinklage, Maisie Williams, and Sophie Turner—returns for season 8 on April 14.

For more on Game of Thrones season 8, check out the links below:

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