Did you know Daenerys' eyes were originally supposed to be purple in the HBO Television series?
George R.R. Martin (the writer of the "A Song of Ice and Fire," books) created the character Daenerys Targaryan and originally gave her purple eyes due to her blood lineage.
When the show came into production the show creators did some tests using purple eye contacts, but they claimed that the contacts were hurting the actors' eyes, and henceforth hurting their performance. So as a result, they dropped the idea.
Not to mention Season 1 of GoT barely has any fantasy elements to be honest. Besides a glimpse at the White Walkers there really wasn't much. So purple eyes would have probably launched us viewers too deeply into what was purposely being developed slowly. The dragons (baby ones at that) didn't even show up until the finale.
Now what about us fans that wonder, "what would she look like with purple eyes?" How would it affect how we feel when we watch the scenes? Well that's what I sought out to find.
If contacts didn't work, and CGI looks too fake, then what can we do to make her eyes look purple without going over the top?
I'm glad you asked. If you've been following my blog, you've noticed that I really like doing color grading! I won't bore you with all the info, but basically color grading is like photoshop for video. Using a program like DaVinci Resolve to color, I can motion track a characters eyes and then change the hue of them to purple, or really any color I'd like! By using this method, we're not replacing her eyes with CGI. And the actor can perform without worrying about scratchy contacts. The result in my opinion is pretty cool!
A screenshot from DaVinci Resolve: Tracking Daenerys' eyes:
At the same time I know that not everyone would like this choice, and the whole point of me creating this video was to simply see for myself, and to show others who were curious. There were plenty of still images people created, but no one had yet created a video format.
I hope that you guys enjoy the video and find it informational.
