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Liverpool based company Glacial Art Ice Sculptors, have reached even greater heights after their ice sculptures featured on the massively popular US TV show Game of Thrones.
Mat Foster and Matt Chaloner are the talented due behind the spectacular “ice henge” that featured in Oathbreakers, the fourth episode of season four.
While the actors wielded swords in front of cameras the artistic friends, who met while studying Model Making and Design at Sunderland University, wielded chainsaws, blowtorches and C02 fire extinguishers behind them.
Mat, the creative director of Glacial Art, says: “Carving is incredibly hard to master. We are still getting better every day.”
With previous clients being Rolex, Sony, MTV and the Cannes Film Festival the company now has the Golden Globe winning show to add to their list, which they say was a “massive breakthrough”, adding that they hope this will be “a great starting point for Glacial Art’s future in ice effects and ice props for the silver screen.”
After having already been fans of the TV show and the original book series, Mat described the experience, saying: “This wasn’t just a step up on the ladder of our career – it was a completely new ladder!”
One challenges that occurring while working with Game of Thrones was that the specifications kept changing. The two Matts were asked to make the ten their spikes, with each one already weighing 300kg individually, a foot taller.
Mat described how they overcame this situation, saying: “We needed to be flexible, and have back up plans in place,” says Mat. “For us, that is crucially the ability to get extra freezer storage, extra blocks of ice and extra man power at the drop of a hat.”
The ice spikes which they were given a “jaggedy texture” were hard to maintain as they “melt away quickly as the ice warms up”,
However, they impressed Game of Thrones director Michelle MacLauren, who also worked on the award winning show Breaking Bad.
Mat commented: “Michelle was very welcoming and friendly to us, and I guess she treated us as experts, asking our advice and involving us a lot in each shot,” says Mat. “It was all kisses and hugs when the filming was over, and she told me she had greatly enjoyed shooting our ice and working with us.”
The creators hope this isn’t the end to their relationship with Game Of Thrones, who regularly shoot scenes in Iceland next to real glaciers and frozen lakes, saying: “The chance to travel to somewhere like Iceland and carve some natural ice features into a dramatic set would be a dream job.”