The Extras - Vikings: Behind The Scenes

Episode Date: September 2, 2021

LA based producer Michael Brosnan and Irish behind-the-scenes producer Gerry Duffy discuss their work on the extras for the popular TV series Vikings.  They detail the advantages of filming on location in Ireland and the state-of-the-art Ashford Studios.  They also explain why creator Michael Hirst has filmed both his previous show The Tudors and all 89 episodes of Vikings in Ireland.   They go into detail on their extras on the action and stunts in season 2, as well as the sets, boats, and production design that gave the series its unique look over the years.  Gerry Duffy lends his Irish humor and love for a good time to the podcast in this entertaining look at the show that informs much of how we now view Viking history.The Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and their release on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host, and today we will be discussing the extras for the TV series Vikings with two very talented behind-the-scenes producers.

My first guest today is an award-winning producer of documentaries, special features, and trailers. He has worked in Hollywood for the last two decades for all the major studios, including Lionsgate, Sony, DreamWorks Animation, Universal, Fox, Disney, MGM, and Warner Brothers. He has produced extras for numerous feature films, including District 9, Elysium, How to Train Your Dragon, Trolls, and DC, and have worked together on the TV titles Terminator, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Linespot, The Outsider, The Following, and Shameless. Currently, he is an executive producer at Outpost Media in Burbank, California. I greatly admire his work and consider him a dear friend. Michael Brosnan, welcome to The Extras. Thank you, Tim. I'm super excited to be here. I'm super flattered that you feel that I have something to share with your audience.

For me doing this job, I am a fan just like your audiences. So getting to do this job and to ask all the people I admire so greatly, the writers, the directors, the cast of these shows and features films is something I would do for free. So the fact that I get paid to do it, it's a dream come true to put it as simply as I can. Well, Mike, I'll be sure to edit out the part where you said for free

in case anybody from the studio is listening. At one time I would have done it for free. Maybe not today. That's right. My second guest I'm actually meeting today for the first time. He has an award-winning production company based in Dundalk, Ireland,

focused on exceptional wedding and event production. In addition, he provides production services and crew for behind-the-scenes TV and film production. He has worked with Mike Brosnan on The Vikings for Fox, MGM, and The Outsider for HBO, Warner Brothers. Gary Duffy, welcome to The Extras. Thank you very much, Tim. Nice to join up with the A-Team with Mike as well.

It's amazing the memories that you actually create with each other on site. And just to be able to hear Mike's voice just brings back so many memories of a great show and a bloody good time that we had in recording everything. Well, we're recording this in August of 2021. Jerry, I was just curious how things have been in Ireland during this COVID-19 pandemic. It's been very strange. My focus on the corporate and cinematic and TV world has always depended on folks like Mike arriving into one of the main thriving airports in Ireland, running off to a location,

doing the behind the scenes stuff, and then handing over the footage until I then see it appear on national or international TV. I don't know what these guys are going to do with it. When pandemic hit, Ireland literally shut down. And unfortunately, so did the cinema world, so the broadcast world and the likes of Mike stopped flying. That literally wiped us out overnight. We've spent 18 months perusing our fingers and scratching our backsides, never in reverse order. And thankfully, it's coming back. Thankfully, the green shoots are beginning to evolve. Movies are beginning to be made again. My own hometown here, we've just featured Patrick Dempsey and Disenchanted arrived in town for one

day for location work on the railway station, which is a beautiful Victorian railway station that we own in town. And literally 30,000 people descended on the town to try and get a glimpse of Patrick Dempsey. So people are starving for being able to see, feel, touch their heroes, even if it's from a couple of hundred yards away. People are crying out and extras like ourselves are screaming loudest. We just want to get back to work. That's terrific to hear. I know even yesterday I was going for a walk in my neighborhood and the street was blocked off with trucks and crew, you know, crew tracks. And there were two, 300 people, you know, milling about for production.

And all I could do is smile. I was just so happy to see that it was putting us all out in terms of traffic ways and everything, because I know that just helps so much the local economy and it puts people to work in our industry. So it's so good to hear that that's happening in Ireland as well. Mike, I recall that one of the things that was so exciting about when you first told me you were working on the Vikings was the fact that they filmed in Ireland because you're Irish. Tell us a little about that when you found out you're going to work on it, how you felt.

I've been very, very lucky to get to go to Ireland a lot in my lifetime. My mom and dad are from Ireland. My father's from Kerry and my mother's from Mayo. And I spent occasional summers in my childhood going to Ireland and spending time with my grandparents. And then as an adult, I have dual citizenship. I lived and worked in Dublin for a year when I was 28, just before getting into what I do currently. I just, I love Ireland. I love the people of Ireland and anyone who knows me does that. And my friend who I worked with at Fox Entertainment, Danny Accomando, who works in home entertainment very similarly to the way you did at Warner Brothers, was very aware of this. And once they said to him, we have this thing filming in Ireland, like, who's the person to do it?

He was like, I know the guy. I've got the guy, which is super flattering that he thought of me. And, hey, any skill set I have that makes me the right person for the job is great. The fact that I can understand someone like Jerry, who is unintelligible to most English speaking people around the world, you know, that that's a that's a real skill set. But what you know, it's really funny, even when I got to set the first day, working on Vikings, the transportation person came up to me and he said, do you know this person, Michael Brosnan, we're supposed to be finding or picking up? And I'm like, yeah, I'm Michael

Brosnan. And he said, how did you get here to, you know, the middle of nowhere in these mountains and everything? I was like, I rented a car and I drove here. And he kind of laughed for a while. And he said, OK, I guess we're not picking up at the airport this evening. And they were kind of surprised. I don't think that anyone could find their way there because it's not such a difficult thing. But I think what they're used to with people coming over from Hollywood is they're getting shuttled and kind of moved from place to place because it is a difficult place to navigate if you don't know it. And I was really lucky to know it pretty well. I mean, as well as probably an American working in Hollywood could.

Now, to be fair to Mike, sorry, sorry, Tim, to be fair to Mike, he did arrive on set in a French car made by the Citroen company, which had plastic panels along both sides of it. Now, it's supposed to look like a padded case that you'd carry your Mac laptop or whatever in, but this was actually carrying a mic inside it. Mike Brosnan was in a padded car. It's well worth your listeners going online and having a look. It has to be the ugliest car that Citroën ever created. It's called the Citroën Cactus. And here he is arriving in Ireland, no chauffeur, no green M&Ms, no green room or special treatment, but they put him in a padded car. So I think it set the story up well for how well we got to know Mike. I do have a picture of that car and the name Cactus. It's just the most unusual name ever that I would be driving around in a car called a cactus. So yes, we did make special note of that. I remember. Well, let's get that, uh, let's get that pick on the, um, the blog page

so that people can see that that sounds, uh, well worth putting up. I, the thing that I kind of recall when, when you first found out, I think we were at comic con, you told me you were going to be working on it and there was going to be, I think there was a panel there. And so I was like, Oh, I mean, I would watch the show anyway. It's my kind of show. And so we went to the panel, but then they had this amazing installation outside of the convention center. It felt like it was almost like a full block. It probably wasn't, but they recreated a Viking village, um, where fans could, you know, interact with things from the show or things that they portray in the show. I think they had like a boat race. It was pretty awesome. I don't know if you call that, but you and I went there and we,

we stood in line because we had to do that. And this, this fan base, to your point is super ravenous. You know, you, you have, you have fan fan bases bases who will who will just show up for anything. And at Comic-Con, I can remember several different things. And for Vikings, it was always really shocking. And in the fact that it was always kind of focusing on the savagery of the Vikings. So, you know, one year I remember one of those duck boats going by full of Comic-Con Vikings fans. And it was, you know, is this amphibious vehicle, the duck boats where it can go on land and then in water. So it drives past the front and it is decorated with prosthetic

heads. And that season, I think it was season three was when Ragnar and his men had decapitated a bunch of their enemies and hung the heads on the Viking ship as they came into town. And that spoke, you know, no one even took up arms against them. They ran at the sight of these maniacs. So the fact that they would recreate that, you know, little kids on the street and here comes this duck boat going by that's kind of been refashioned into a Viking ship with prosthetic heads hanging from it was crazy. I mean, there was another activation they did on the Comic-Con floor where people, they had a camera and you can get a slow-mo shot of yourself wielding the axe down. And at the point where you hit, blood would spray in your face. And you had to,

they kind of framed you out so that you could wear some plastic over your clothes. But I mean, really imaginative things. I had nothing to do with it. But the people who created those location-based experiences, whether it be the rowing race or the duck boat or any of those things were just really great. The last one that I got into and did some standee interviews for was axe throwing has become very popular in America. And I think in no small part to the success of the Viking show. I mean, in L.A., there are lots of bars like L.A. Axe and places like that where you can go while you have a pint, you can throw axes at a target. And so they have one in San Diego. And the last time they were

there, the Vikings activation with Catherine Winnick and Alexander Ludwig, two of the stars of the show was there and they were throwing axes with fans on site. So the Comic-Con activations that History Channel, MGM and everybody involved with Vikings did really, really celebrated the show. And it wasn't shy about gore or blood or even throwing sharp objects with beer in hand. Yeah. The Comic-Con installations were some of the best, I think, over the last five years, six years that they were doing those. Especially those first early years, they just went over the top. It was amazing. You know, here you and I are, we're trying to cover all these different panels and go to different shows and films we're working on. And I always tried to carve out time to go

to the Vikings panel just because I was a fan of the show. I had nothing to do with the show. I knew you worked on it, but I just wanted to see it because the cast was great. The panels were great. Their installations were great. It just was one of the highlights of going to Comic-Con for me. And one of the fun things about Comic-Con is they don't give us any special privileges. You know, not the fact that even that we're doing the behind the scenes on the show. Like if you want to get in the panel, get in line. No special treatment. This is a fan convention.

And so I did get into a couple of those panels. There were plenty because of the popularity of Vikings that I didn't get into because the lines were too long. And they couldn't even put it in a convention room. Giant, hundreds and hundreds, probably a couple thousand people in the hall and still a couple of thousand didn't even make it in, which really speaks to the popularity of the show and the dedication of that cast and crew and creator Michael Hurst, that they would, in the middle of filming, fly to San Diego, do the event and then fly home literally same day because they had to be back on set shooting. They were really smart about the promotion of that show throughout.

The show, the promotion, everything. You can see why it was such a success. And we'll get into that a little bit. But let's go back a little bit now to once you started working on the show, when did you and Jerry kind of hook up to start working together? Joe, when did you and Jerry kind of hook up to start working together? So when I knew I had to film in Ireland, I, you know, I don't have people that, you know, I know lots of people in Ireland, but I didn't know anyone who is the director of photography or DP. And there's a really fantastic woman and her husband who owned the company called The Crew Company.

Her name is Katie Henthorne. And she, her whole business is based on finding people, crews anywhere in the world. And she vouches for them. So like I have to go to Germany on short notice. I don't have a director of photography in Germany and I don't have the budget or the time to get a DP from California to fly with me. So I have to trust that she has the right people in place and she's never let me down. And also as a case with Jerry and John, who's a Jerry's DP. Um, she, when I said, Oh, I got, I need someone in Ireland. She didn't even have to look to her Rolodex. She said, I've got your guy. I've got perfect guy. These guys are

going to take care of you. Like, you know, there are a lot of times I call her and she's like, let me see, let me look into my Rolodex. But she knew Jerry by name as most people remember Jerry. And, and I was like, great, like, let's, let's go to work. And so as soon as she had put me in touch with him, we, we got to work. And I think we had a conversation on the phone or two. And I mean, I think the morning I landed, I met Jerry and we were already on set filming because, you know, you don't have a lot of time on set. I think a lot of people would think, oh, you were there for a month filming behind the scenes. You know, most of the time we were early on, we were probably there for three days later on in the seasons. I think the last time we were there, we only got one day on set.

I might have shot another day like some B-roll. But, you know, you have a very limited amount of time and you got to be budget conscious. So, yeah, I just remember meeting Jerry and he's like so many great Irish people I know. He has a way with a story. And I felt like I knew him forever, like within talking to him for 10 minutes. So I felt very fortunate that Katie put me in touch. Now, Jerry will have a different story of meeting me like, like, who the F is this? But I'll let him tell the story. Jerry, I know you have 40 years of production background.

Maybe you could tell us a little bit about how you got into filming for TV shows and films, the behind the scenes and some of the projects you've worked on over the years. The background to it really is that there are two defined video production formats in the world. There is NTSC, which is in the USA, and then there is PAL, which is the system in Ireland. If we go back far enough to where BD-CAM was out there before all the digital formats arrived, there was no NTSC availability of crew or kit in Ireland. And as a young, naive, 19-year-old getting into the industry, I saw this as a niche because there were so many corporate America subsidiaries in Ireland that needed to report back to head office. And they didn't want all the transcoding of the different formats. They wanted it in native NTSC. So with that in mind, I didn't quite tell the

full truth when I started off, but I'll tell it now. I used to fly out of Ireland into London, rent NTSC kit, come back to Ireland, film what was needed for corporate US, and then fly back to London and give them back their gear. Eventually, we built the business up big enough and strong enough that we ended up floating three sets of Sony NTSC kit and sold ourselves to the world. Before the internet or the World Wide Web arrived, we had sold ourselves to corporate America that we were the go-to people. Within that, we met Katie and Dave Henthorne.

They were the production team behind 60 Minutes all those years ago. And they had sprung out on their own to find you a sound man in Scotland, a cameraman in Cambodia, whatever you needed as an American production requirement. And we built up a fantastic relationship with Katie. As Mike

alluded to, she is just par excellence. We're now very lucky 40 years later to be working with the four major crewing companies out of America, but Katie just goes above and beyond. And I took her spirit on board in our own operation. We don't allow unionization to get in the way of anything in Ireland. There are unions, but it's not unions like Teamsters. It's a go-to attitude that says, yes, you need it. Yes, we'll do it. And damn the clock, we'll just keep going until it's done properly. So with that in hand, it meant that Katie had us schooled and ready to meet Mr. Brosnan and the likes and to be able to give Mike exactly what he needed with no interference, nothing in the way. I remember one of the evenings on Vikings,

we had a run through of all we needed to do. And then suddenly there were 14 journalists and vloggers and bloggers arrived without one USB between them. And they wanted to interview everybody and they wanted copies of it. I could feel steam coming from Mike. He was just so frustrated with what was going on. And yet our own team's attitude was, damn it, we're here. We better well do it and find a couple of USBs and get everybody off. And they all disappeared. And Mike was so surprised. He said that just wouldn't happen on the other side of the Atlantic. but it happens in little old Ireland because we want to be able to work to the second and the third and the fourth gig with the same people. And here we are from season two, where I started with Mike back in

2014. We've gone through almost 90 episodes and you don't get that unless you get what's needed to be done, has to be done. And that's what we bring to the table. Now, I also just the last little piece of kit we put in our bag every morning going to work is a sense of humor. And that final little piece does really provide the icing on the cake. People remember good fun while they did good work. And that's what we bring to the table is that sense of fun. Certainly with Mike, I can see him nodding here on screen. We had some

serious fun over those 90 episodes of Vikings. Yes, we did. What are some of the films that you've had the privilege of working on over the years or TV shows? Well, we've gone back through, I knew the question was coming and I went back through and it was like a who's who's directory. I'd actually forgotten. Oh my God, we worked gone back through. I knew the question was coming and I went back through. And it was like a who's who's directory. I'd actually forgotten. Oh my God, we worked with John Hurt. We worked with Brendan Gleeson, an amazing Irish actor. Glenn Hansard for the movie Once.

We did all the box set and DVD stuff, Blu-ray stuff for that. Count of Monte Cristo, Michael Caine. Recently, Vivarium with Lurken and Garrett. And then The Outsider with yourself and Mike working with Andrew Bernstein. And as Mike suggested earlier, it doesn't feel right to get paid to do all this stuff. But my poor dear departed dad, who left us 19 years ago, he'd come out of the grave with

one arm swinging if he thought that we were doing it for nothing. So you do really enjoy your day's work. It doesn't feel like a day's work. And 16 or 17 weeks later, when the check arrives in the post, you think, yeah, oh, that was that gig. I remember that. Unfortunately, there's a wife and three kids.

So the check is already spent before it arrives. But the fun doesn't leave you. And those memories are just incredible. The things you get up to on set, some of which can't be repeated in podcasts, but the fun you get up to on set, some of which can't be repeated in podcasts, but the fun you get up to on set never, ever leaves. I know that Ireland has been a location of a lot of films over the years, like Harry Potter, Saving Private Ryan, and of course, Braveheart and TV series, including Game of Thrones. But do you know, Mike,

why they decided to film Vikings in Ireland instead of somewhere in, let's say, Scandinavia? Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog physical media releases. So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. Well, and I also think Jerry can speak to this, but from my perspective, like one of the really big things is and that that I'm really actually personally familiar with because I had a cousin who was trying to build in Ireland. And Ireland is very, very, very protective of its

natural landscape. And so things like power lines are typically buried. Things like phone lines are buried. You don't have these telephone poles running down every street like you do in America. So the perspective of the land is that it's incredibly untouched. Now, of course, they have things like landlines and other things like that. Not to get too far off topic, but the reason the cell phone was so widely adopted so quickly in Ireland was because the infrastructure was so expensive to do, you know, to run wire and to bury it and things like that. So once there was a cell phone available where you didn't need to do that, Ireland adopted it way faster than America. So I think that untouched beauty of Ireland and the fact

that you wouldn't have to be digitally painting out all these telephone poles and things across the landscape is a huge part of it. I mean, Ireland's untouched beauty in the Wicklow Mountains is unbelievable. I mean, they have the fjord there, they have the rivers, they have the ocean, they have the mountains. I mean, they have castles. When the Vikings have to go and pillage and attack castles, the ruins of the Irish castles are all still intact and provide tourists with a really unique thrill. But for filming, it's unbelievable. I mean, we were lucky to be at some of those places. So there's a lot of that reasoning. But I also think Ireland has an infrastructure that wasn't as tapped into as it could have been prior to Vikings. And I think this is where Jerry can kind of fill in the blanks. But I believe Ashford Studios, and I could be wrong, played host to Braveheart and the surrounding area played host to Braveheart. And that a lot of the crew, the older crew who were on Vikings, probably cut their teeth on that film. But let me let Jerry speak to that. Well, Ashford Studios itself actually came about as a result of a local farmer who did well.

He expanded a separate industry that he had going on into China. And then having made money in China himself and his daughter came back and said, what are we going to do with all this farmland? Down the road from his farm was Ardmore Studios. And Ardmore Studios had played host to hundreds of movies in the past. And he literally built a modern version of what a studio should be. So Ashford sits on 500 acres of land. There's three separate sound stages, the largest of which is 30,000 square foot they have just this year invested another hundred million dollars and they're putting in another four sound stages at

40,000 square foot each so you're you're coming to a country of people with a can-do attitude the area that it's in within 30 miles of as Mike said, you've absolutely everything you could want. Rivers, lakes, for all your Viking stuff, it's perfect. Seashore, the making and the battle scenes of the saving of Private Ryan was done 25 miles from Ashford. You've ancient forests, you've woodlands that have been untouched for hundreds of years. It's just a stunning location. And then you land a brand new studio into the middle of that with every piece of tech that you could possibly need. It's a match made in heaven. And ironically, Michael Hurst, who was the writer, the soul swift writer, he had cut his teeth in

Ashford Studios because he brought the Tudors, which was a fabulous, fabulous series. He brought it as the very first series to be made in Ashford. And he hasn't left it since. He's been there for the guts of 15 years with everything that comes creatively out of his pen. So Ashford itself is an incredible addition to the Irish economy. And they reckon the movie industry in Ireland is worth a half a billion dollars per year for a country that only has 5 million people here. That's a whole lot of kudos to be spread amongst everybody in the community, from the little guy who's providing breakfast rolls or chicken sandwiches or whatever, right through to the couriers who are taking in all the gear that's needed. There's a terrific spread of money.

But I remember in one of Michael Hurst's interviews, he had suggested that most movies and TV dramas are made with a 50 to 60% interior shooting schedule. He was coming to the table needing 80% to be shot outside. That is a big jump in figures to go from shooting dark cavernous scenes on soundstage just to be unable to say we're going outside. And the one thing that I can guarantee is if you're filming in Ireland, you're going to see four seasons in one day. That's what we have. We have a wet, damp climate. It's just an incredible country to live in and an even better country to make movies in. Well, that really sets the stage for why, I mean, obviously Michael's background and then just having that facility there. So that makes a lot of sense.

Why don't we talk a little bit about the specific extras you guys worked on together? I know in season two, there was a terrific one you did called imagining and executing climactic battles. And I mean, Vikings obviously has a lot of action and that means a lot of stunts. Mike, why don't you give us a little background on the genesis of of that extra? So what's really interesting is and we got to give a lot of credit to the people at MGM and history. In that first season, I didn't actually go to set, but the show was such a runaway success that there was a real hunger for content. So a lot of the content we were creating in that first season, as we typically do, we reverse engineered. We also reached out to some key people in and around Los Angeles who could help bolster that. One of the people who was

a huge contributor to all of the Vikings content for seasons that. One of the people who was a huge contributor to all of the Vikings content for seasons one through, I believe, four was a professor of medieval world history at Cal State Fullerton. And his name is Jochen Bergdorf. And Jochen is unbelievable, just a wealth of knowledge. And so when you're reverse engineering something, you're like, what can we explore here? You know, let's talk about the real history. How accurate is this portrayal? So Yoshen always gave us that stuff. And, you know, Michael Hurst would say this is for dramatic reasons, but it does play into it. And Yoshen would give us the counter point to that, whether it was actually real or wasn't real. But for the most part, Yoshen found this series to be very accurate in his portrayal of Vikings. And we got to explore

things like, are they doing the weapons right? Are they doing the costumes right? Things like that. And more times than not, 80% of it was historically accurate while being really palatable to a modern audience. So for season one, it was a great, great collaboration with the people at Fox and the people at MGM who filmed everything. I didn't film most of that. I filmed a little bit of it. And season two was similar. We actually got to go to set. We actually got to do some really in-depth interviews. We did a little bit of B-roll, but all of the really amazing B-roll that was done on the season two battles, that's the season where we had brother versus brother. We had Travis Fimmel as the great Ragnar versus his brother Rolo is played by amazing Northern Irish actor Clive Standen, who's a great guy. Those guys were going to square off two Viking

clans clashing brother versus brother. So you had Viking clan versus Viking clan. And the people at MGM in history captured so much great footage, which was then available to us later. So I want to give credit to them. Later in the season, as it was almost time to wrap up, we got to go in with the knowledge of all that footage and create a really great narrative with Michael Hurst and with all those people. The stunt coordinators themselves were so busy, so incredibly busy on that show. We never got them to sit down for us while we were on set. They were just, they were planning the next fight. They were in the next fight. There were so many battles in that show. It's so ambitious. It's part of why the show is so beloved. Those two stunt coordinators had moved on to a film,

I think that was shooting in the Ukraine, and that was less ambitious and they would have days off. So I literally hired a film crew in the Ukraine to capture them on the set of another picture to give context for all that great work they did. And within all the time, other than a standee here and there that Jerry and I were lucky enough to grab with those guys, standee interview, for those who don't know, is a very quick, very down and dirty interview, maybe two, three minutes. Can we get a little soundbite? And so that's all we ever got while we were on set. But we did get these in-depth interviews with these guys who are just really remarkable. And they gave us the whole thing. And what was also awesome is they do,

they talk about pre-visualization and for visual effects, you'll do that in the computer. But for stunt choreographers, they'll do that with an iPad or an iPhone and they'll film it and they'll edit it together and they'll have their stunt stunt actors brought in front of the director and say, well, this is what we're thinking. And they can say yes or no right there or make changes on the fly. And all of that footage they made available to us, Richard Ryan, whose title on the show, great guy, Richard, his title for the first several seasons of Vikings was Swordmaster. Now, I mean, I don't think it gets any cooler than that. Is there a cooler title that you could have than Swordmaster?

Producer's great, and I'm thrilled to have that title, but Swordmaster would be really badass. So, but Richard was really awesome in that when he would come back home to America, when he wasn't filming on Vikings for those three months, he would take the time to unarchive that and make it available to us. So we had all this great like iPhone footage that we could intercut with the actual battles and really show the audience how did they do it. I mean, it literally is a how to. If young filmmakers wanted to make an action sequence, I would say that's a good place to start. And those are some pretty good instructors to have in that piece. Wow. That's always great when the stunt team provides that previous,

cause I mean, that's the only way the director has enough time to kind of see what it's going to look like and give it the thumbs up and then they can move forward or make adjustments. So the actual piece was a lot of kind of cobbling together behind the scenes footage you'd been given some of the stunt footage you'd been given. And then the interviews, did you do those on set or did like with Michael and others? Or was that after? We did. We did those on set. And Michael, you know, as the writer of all 89 episodes of Vikings,

Michael is very busy, but he's also a multitasker from, you know, from the little bit I got to know him and see him working, aside from being a really amazing guy and generous with his time, we usually planned our time on set with when he would be there because he wouldn't be there for the entirety of the filming. And so Michael always made time for us even more so than anyone else. And fortunately, because he was writing the stuff he usually had the most time. So he'd give us a full hour every time we were there. And Jerry and John Fay, who we should give a shout out to, who was DP on all of that Viking stuff,

did amazing work capturing Michael in all these beautiful settings. You know, we got to use the sets and things as our backdrop, which we'll talk about more later. But yeah, we were able to actually get interviews with all of them. And I think Clive Stanton, who was really, really busy, we weren't able to get him on set either. So later on, we were able to get... Clive was a real fan of the extras and really, really put some thought into it. So there were a couple of times where we were like, hey, what if we get a standee interview just so we get you? And he would kind of balk at that idea. And not because he was not wanting to do it. It was quite the opposite. He wanted to dive into it.

Three-minute standee interview wasn't going to cut it for him. So we would coordinate interviews with a great crew out of London. And I'd send them the questions and they'd do the interview with us. And Clive would give us, like Michael, as much time as we asked for. And a super, super interesting interview. He's in that piece. He gives great context. And I'm really proud of that

piece. I thought it was really great. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. Uh, and we'll have the information on the blog page for that, uh, for the fans, but that's a really, if you're a fan of the Vikings, that's a one you pretty much have to see. He talked a little bit about working with Michael Hirsch when you came up with ideas for some of the extras, did you guys, you know, obviously you had to run it by the studio, but then how much involvement did he have um i mean everything we asked of him for all of those seasons he was on board with you know we recorded i'm trying to think here across the you know six and it's actually nine seasons when you include that four five and six are parts one and two at 10 episodes apiece so you're talking those later seasons or 20 episodes, but we recorded commentaries for every season. And early on, we recorded two and

three commentaries. And Michael was always great about making time, whether it was in London, we'd coordinate and I'd get up at 3am and record him at his time. You know, those conversations were great. And, you know, early on, we included a lot of the actors to record with Michael. And then later on with his historical consultant, just everything we asked of him, he did. He gave us tours of the set early on. And then later on, he gave us tours of, you know, the evolving sets and the timeline of Vikings takes, you know, decades and decades of time. Those actors had to be aged 30 years, you know, or more. So the sets were changing. And you could tell from the background,

and I'll let Jerry speak to this. Jerry, from when we were there season two to the last time we were there season six, how much bigger did the production get? Just from your perspective. It was dramatically different. Season two, whilst we walked in onto the set, you go, oh my God, this is Hollywood has arrived in Ireland.

And ironically, the nearest village to the studio in County Wicklow is the village of Hollywood itself. So it was a new Hollywood that had arrived. But when you look back on it four seasons later, it was almost like Vikings by Ikea. Everything was very basic, was very minimalistic. It just was a chunk of wood and it sat there. But by the time you get into season five and season six, this was a proper, proper production. The amount of set decoration that became involved, the amount of additional lighting that became available because they had the Great Hall, they had Paris. It was just stunning, the difference between early Vikings for us as a crew versus later Vikings. In actual fact, I remember with one particular interview with Michael Hurst,

we wanted to create a background that was subtle but dramatic. And you arrive in there as a video crew on a movie set. Whatever lighting you have with you is all you've got, other than you make a hundred mile journey back to our own base. Thankfully, John Fay, that you name checked earlier on, has been involved with us in so many productions. He was able to skip the Rolodex, skip the iPhone, and literally just tap guys on the shoulder and call them by name. One of the guys he called in was the chief electrician, the Sparks. And he said, need a little bit more light down the back of the Christmas studio, as it was called. And suddenly, instead of having 1000 watts or 2000 watts of power, this guy threw the switch

for 70,000 watts of power. Now that was probably more than ran the entire studio on season two. But by the time we got to season six, it was just flick a switch. And then you notice there's a generator running out the back and you go, did he actually turn on a whole town generator just for us? And the answer was yes. They literally switched on this massive 40 foot truck of power just because they had it. And the Sparks answer to it was when we said, we don't actually need that much. He said, well, I can't run it on anything less or it'll burn out. And you'd know, leave it there, leave it. Don't switch it off. We don't want to be the ones that burned it out. But that was the difference, the drama for us as a crew arriving on a set was it was just chalk and cheese to him. It was incredibly bigger. And that was, and a lot of that started with Michael to kind of get back to your

question. You know, Michael Hurst made everything available to us. He made his time available. Yeah, he was really phenomenal in that way. And everything we asked of him, he really supported us and went the extra mile in creating the content. Michael actually had a great, great, great line that I just remembered. We were talking of the rubber axes and the rubber hatchets and everything else was there because they look vicious, but they're not. You can smack each other.

And we did. You smack each over the head with the Viking axe to get your picture for your Facebook profile or whatever. And it's only a piece of rubber that's hitting you. But Mike Hurst said the most dangerous piece of rubber on set was the eraser on the end of his pencil because his pen was mightier than any sword. And if you look back at what happened in season four, they killed Ragnar, the lead role in the whole damn production. And Mike Hurst's little eraser by Ragnar. Good luck, Travis. Back to sheep farming. That's how powerful it is to have somebody who has the vision that Mike Hurst has. He is an awesome interviewee. You literally just start the camera rolling. You ask a question,

you go way in rear three children and you arrive back and he's given you everything you want as an answer. He's a magnificent person to have on your side when you're telling the story of the extras. Yeah, you watch him in the extras and he just obviously knows everything about every script. He knows all the history. He knows what he has changed in the timelines, so on, so forth to make it work. That kind of leads me into the next extra I wanted to focus on, and that's a city under siege creating an attack in Paris. I think he says in that extra how he had to change the time frame around a little bit in terms of the actual attack. That was in what, season three? That obviously was a massive undertaking,

required a detailed set piece for Paris to be built, didn't it? Yeah, that was something we really wanted to focus on. And, you know, as we talk about with uh yoshin burke doroth and gentleman i and uh mentioned earlier who's a professor of medieval history you know ragnar and rollo and rollo being uh the duke of normandy i believe you know that's a little bit of uh you know dramatic fictionalization but when you get back to it like the essence of the story is all still the same, you know, that this role of this Viking would end up being that person and his connection

to Ragnar. You know, the history at that time, especially with Vikings not having a written history, is something that you definitely have to leave a little bit to the imagination. And what better person than to Michael Hurst? So, you know, it was exciting for us because up to that point, better person than to Michael Hearst. So, you know, it was exciting for us because up to that point, it had always been this conflict between either Ragnar and the Kings of England and or Ragnar and his own brother. That's where the conflict came in the first two seasons. So to be able to take it further and you saw this ambition of Ragnar in Paris, which was considered the seat of culture and all of this, like what an exciting thing. And it was, you know, we want to focus on the action again, because it's really

great. But we kind of did that in season two with the executing climactic battle. So how do we do it a little differently where we get to focus on that? Well, the water attack was a huge thing that wasn't covered at all in our other, you know, kind of land based fight choreography piece in season two. And then we were like, well, hell, I mean, the sets themselves that they're attacking and jumping off of and leaping are just unbelievable. So let's make it about the entirety of that. How do you production design Paris? How do you costume design Paris? It's so very different than the leather armor of the Vikings. It's a whole different look. It's like, you know, going from what a guy would wear

to work to what someone would wear on a fashion catwalk was the difference between those two costume designs, in my opinion. That costume design team was unbelievable. So we got to cover all of these facets in one, I think it's about 15 minutes, which, you know, as far as extras goes, is a deeper dive. Sometimes you'll get shorter things. It may even be as long as 20 minutes, but we really got to talk to how they production designed it. How do you build Paris in the middle of rural Ireland, which they did with a lot of green screen and things like that. But they did build the Paris Wall, which is a siege wall. And we weren't lucky enough to be there the day where they were throwing people off the top of that wall, Vikings being repelled and things like that. We had some amazing

behind the scenes footage that again, the people at MGM and Fox did an amazing job capturing. We had at our disposal when we did the interviews, we had and knew that we had that behind the scenes footage. So not only just seeing it happen in the episode, but seeing how they did that with, you know, the wall and half the wall is green screen that they'd paint in later. You know, it was not nearly as ambitious with the visual effects early on, but when you get to season three in Paris, visual effects are key to make that seem bigger. So, you know, that seemed like a natural thing and it just had so many great firsts for that series that we were able to capitalize on. But you could hear the enthusiasm in the interviews that we were doing with Mike Kress.

He was sitting in front of his blank screen and he with Mike Kirst. He was sitting in front of his blank screen and he's a Mac user. He was sitting in front of this blank screen going, we need to see more than the one ship we had in season one coming up the river. We need to see maybe six or 10 or 20. And as his progression of we need to see went to the screen, it then materialized in the bigger screen, like with 300 ships arriving. His first ship had 30 warriors. His next scene had 3,000 warriors. That's how much Paris had grown. That's how much the necessity to grow the story happened. Even one of his little thought processes was, what if the ship can't get to where we need it to get,

because the Parisians have drawn big chains across the river and the ships can't sail up river, or we're going to be bombarded by whatever the French are going to throw at us. So in his thought process, he suggested, well, what about Portridge? What about dismantling the ships? Wouldn't that be a lovely idea? And then the Irish design team behind the series said, okay, we'll break the ships apart. And he was blessed to be back in a forest in the middle of Wicklow in Ireland to see these Viking ships being taken apart, being hauled up huge cliff sides in the mountain ranges and then rebuilt and run almost like the Egyptians across logs right through a forest. They literally cut down a forest because he had typed up on a

Mac, what if we could dismantle ships? So his foresight, his vision was brought to screen by the can-do attitude of the production team behind Vikings. And a lot of the people in it had cut their teeth on Braveheart, so they knew what's needed. They had gone on to work on Game of Thrones, which is also made in Ireland. A lot of the boats used in Vikings had come from the same people that had specifically built them for Game of Thrones. I know on one of the days we were there, Mike, I'm looking, waiting to see Vikings with the arms rowing in the water. And there was nothing. This thing was just silently

gliding. They had a 200 horsepower Volvo Penta engine built into the middle of a Viking ship because they knew the set won't wait. We're losing light. We got to get from point A to point B, down along the lake. And the only way to do that is a Volvo engine. So that history of crew being involved in multiple productions prior to it allowed Michael Hurst to come to life with his somewhat vivid imagination. He's an amazing person. And to sit in a room, Mike, with that man and listen to him, the enthusiasm just drips out of him. It's fabulous. Wow. That's a great story. I love it. I know that the ships are such a crucial part to the Viking story. And in that instance, you just explained how they used it for that siege on

Paris. What do you know about how the ships were used throughout the other seasons? Did you guys ever focus on some of the ships or anything? Yeah, we actually, uh, we were really lucky to have a lot of, uh, a lot of archival footage that they shot in the PR the people who built the ships had the, had the good sense to film a lot of that coming over. And so we were able to create content for, I want to say it's season, sorry, the seasons are starting to blend together after doing season one through three and 4.1, 4.2, nine seasons, they start to blend together. But I believe it was on season one that we did do an exploration of the ships. It possibly could be season two. So just so if anybody fact checks me, but we did get to do a great piece. We talked

about the technology of the Vikings. You know, what was great is, you know, in a lot of these pieces, we could blend what Michael Hearst was talking about from his history with the insights of Jochen Bergdorf, who was, who was our professor, who was so kind with his time and gave us all these wonderful interviews. And so we could talk about how the Vikings, you know, the ships that were crossing the ocean prior to that time were things that looked like a small village. And meanwhile, the Vikings were crossing something that looked like a very large kayak, you know, and, you know, it's just, you know, when you talk about technology, you think about computers, but their shipbuilding was unbelievable. And we got to dive into that in that piece about Viking shipbuilding. And, you know, the production people themselves learned

how hard it was to make those and to literally transport them from where they made them to where they were going to be used. So there's a lot of that covered in that piece. And I really liked it. I was fascinated by it because everything about the Viking culture seems out of place in that point in time. So the Viking boats that were used in the filming, those were actually seaworthy, weren't they? Yeah, they were. They were able to float. I mean, I don't know that they always did. I know they put the boats on gimbals a lot of the time, you know, in the parking lot. And then they, you know, for scenes and things like that, because it is so time consuming to be on the water, but they did do a lot of, uh, second unit

water shots and things like that. And I know the actors gotten the boats from time to time, but they did also use the boat on a gimbal in like a parking lot with green screen because that was required for the time and the schedule and the budget of a TV series. Right. Well, one thing we haven't touched on quite yet I did want to talk about was the cast. The fans just love the cast.

And Jerry, you were just talking about, you know, how do you kill off your main character in season, was it four? How do you kill off your main character in season, was it four? How do you kill off your main character in season four? But, you know, Michael would do it and then the new cast members would come in each season, had a different storyline. Tell us a little bit, Mike, about working with the cast. Most of them weren't as widely known as they were after that first season. You know, Travis Fimmel as Ragnar is, you know, just really electric.

He has those really kind of steel blue eyes. He says a lot without saying anything. I think he's an amazing actor. And just as a person, you know, he was a he's a guy who isn't that unlike the character. You know, I think if memory serves me right, I believe he spent a lot of time on farms in Australia. And the character of Ragnar, when we initially meet him, is not this great chieftain or warlord. He's a farmer who's taking care of his family. So those similarities aren't lost. I mean, Travis is a big guy, you know, and he's got broad shoulders. And that's what the Vikings were fearsome big people. So physically, he's, he's to a T, you know, he's got the blonde hair and the blue eyes, you know, he he's perfect for that. Catherine Winnick,

you know, is somebody who they were really lucky to have, aside from just being an absolutely beautiful person, had this really intense background in martial arts, which you can see on the screen. She does everything she can. You know, I think she even owns a couple of different martial arts studios, I want to say in Canada, if I have that right. But she is just really remarkable. And from an action choreography standpoint, she was just a gift to them and loved to do everything she could. And let's talk about it. Usually when you see period pieces, women featured, you're talking about corsets and push-up bras and things like that.

And this is not that role. This is a whole different thing. And Catherine brought that fierce attitude. She not that role. This is a whole different thing. And Catherine brought that fierce attitude. She brought that physicality. Really, they were really lucky to have Catherine. And then you talk about height and like a Viking build, you know, Clive Standen is even, even taller than Travis, you know, even bigger physique. And, you know, his character Rolo is a berserker, which in Viking means bare skin. They believe that the fate of the gods is in someone else's hands. So why bother wearing armor? The gods are going to tell you if you win or lose.

So just go shirtless. And if you're going to have somebody go shirtless, Clive Stanton is like a physical specimen, as all the cast are, because it's a very physical role. But he's, you know, I cannot tell you how many people have come up to me and said, hey, did you meet him? You know, he's an amazing looking individual. And, you know, we have amazing in some of those behind the scenes features of him just, you know, working out literally shirtless with that giant axe. And they were so lucky. And to have that early cast, you know, with the three main leads, history did a great thing where they released three separate character posters. You know, one of Ragnar, who's the thinking man's warrior, and one of Rolo, who's the berserker, who learns to be more strategic. And then of Catherine, who embodies all that femininity and fierceness.

You know, those three posters were amazing. So you think, OK, we lose these characters, which you do in the series the series you lose all three of them which is what you're hanging your hat on and still the series goes on and is continually successful and they have the good sense to bring in alexander ludwig who's a great talent and a and you know and a towering young man and someone we were so lucky to interview and same thing same kind of of mentality with Alexander. What do you need coming up to us in between scenes in like a battle sequence that we were filming in season four? Do you want me to talk to you while I have some downtime? Like literally offering his time to us is incredibly generous.

And also as Ragnar's son, Bjorn became the focus of the series. So Alexander, big shoes to fill with Travis, but he did quite a good job. And then also Alex Hoff Anderson, who plays Ivar the Boneless, remarkable. He plays a person who doesn't use his legs. And when he's on set, he does not use his legs. This is an able-bodied person. So for him to walk around on his hands and to use those splints and still be menacing and fearsome and the scariest person in the room. Unbelievable, like really amazing. And, you know, all credit to Michael Hurst for being able to get rid of the old cast and bring in a fresh new group of people in the same series, like literally reinvent the series

and keep going, you know, as strongly as ever. I remember, Mike, that terrific piece for the season six part one release that you did on Ligartha's death. Talk to me a little bit about that. role has been for her and the series. And she was involved in every way. And so, you know, knowing that these characters, most of them are going to meet their death in a show called Vikings, you know, that's what it is. She she wanted to go out, you know, guns blazing, for lack of a better term. And she really put it all on the line in the in those final scenes. She talked about all of that. She also talked about, you know, she directed a couple of episodes later in the season and has gone on to direct more episodes of TV and things of that nature. So, you know, we get to kind of talk about all of those things with Catherine in that piece. We also get to talk to Michael about the evolution of that character. You know, another thing that

should be said is that Catherine is an absolutely beautiful woman and she had to age 30 years on screen. So, you know, her natural beauty is always evident, but it, you know, her hair has to be great. We have to make her look older. We have to make her look like she's aging, which I don't think would be an easy thing for any person, regardless of your gender. And she did it so effortlessly and so well, and still looked amazing with that stark gray hair. And we get to talk about all of those things and her exciting and interesting death, which fulfills Michael Hearst, aka the God's prophecy that she would be killed by one of Ragnar's sons. Right. Yeah. It's a terrific piece. I really, and I really enjoyed watching that one as well. The show is in its final run in broadcast. Part two of season

six will come out on Home Entertainment before too long. But looking back, I mean, it's been actually a couple of years since you were on set. When did they wrap production? Yeah, it was, I mean, I think it's over two years ago. Jerry, when was it we last saw? Two and a half years ago? 16 pints ago. Yeah. It is. It's about two and a half years, yeah. It is. It's about two and a half years, Mike, yeah. Yeah.

Just to correct you, there are a lot more pints than 16 in two years. That's only in your life. We'll let that go. But yeah, you know, the thing that was great about them was not only did they have an amazing creative output, but their production was really, really great. They would film 20 episodes within eight, nine months, incredibly efficient in the way that they did it. So now season 6.2 has aired, but it aired simultaneously on History Channel and Amazon Prime was the deal they had, I believe, in the States. So the home entertainment with all the content and things like that,

the studio that's releasing it hasn't done so yet. And I think that's a good move. I think that's more for the people who are probably listening to this podcast. It's for the legacy collector who wants to have that for all time. They want to have the unparalleled quality of Blu-ray, which you can't really match in streaming. So I think it's a smart move to get it out there for for the widest audience possible. And then to to introduce this really collector's edition set to the faithful fans who are really going to adopt we will get to record the audio commentary for the series finale with Michael Hurst, which I'm sure we'll do in the middle of the night American time

and sometime during the day in London. But yeah, it's remarkable how long ago we filmed that. And that footage we filmed two and a half years ago still hasn't come to light because they were so far ahead of the curve. I think you've also mentioned that one of the things that made the home entertainment release unique was the fact that in America, the episodes were cut a little shorter, weren't they? It's true. Yeah. Because things like, you know, brief nudity or, you know, something, you know, that it

wouldn't be risque in Europe or in other parts of the world. You know, the episodes were typically closer to 50 minutes in the rest of the world. And in America, I think there were 46 or 44. So when those episodes are released, they are the uncut versions. I'm not sure which version are on Amazon, but if, if I had to guess, I would think the Blu-ray is the one that contains the longest version. That's that's the way it has been in seasons past. And that was always a real a real great reason for fans of the show to be able to get their hands on those Blu-rays. I was excited when I finally had the chance after going to Comic-Con and all those panels and Warner Brothers was releasing on Home Entertainment the season six part one that we finally got to kind of work together a little bit on that. Now, the piece was already done, so I didn't have too much input on it.

But that was a great experience to work with you just on getting that distributed and out to the fans. I really think that those fans who want to see the longest episodes that were edited, just want to point them to the home entertainment release. Cause I think that's where you're going to, you're going to really see the vision of Michael, the way he wanted to present it as well. So guys, it's been a lot of fun. Thanks for coming on the show and taking us behind the scenes at the TV series Vikings. It's a pleasure to be here and thank you again for having me. Thank you, Tim. It's been a pleasure joining you and to be able to connect with Mike again. I really, really appreciate your time, sir. Thank you. Well,

I look forward to the day when either we go to Ireland or Jerry, you come out here to LA and we can all have a pint. Or 16. Or 16. So for those of you interested in learning more about Mike and Jerry's work on the extras for Vikings, there will be detailed information on the website at www.theextras.tv. And if you're enjoying the guests we have on the show, please subscribe and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify,

or your favorite podcast provider. So until next time, you've been listening to The Extras with Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed. The Extras is a production of Otaku Media, producers of podcasts, behind the scenes extras, and media that connects creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals at www.otakumedia.tv or look for the link in the show notes.