'Game of Thrones' Hall of Faces slayed me
Another visit to a Game of Thrones exhibit at Comic-Con and the same grim diagnosis: I'm dead.
Last year, a dragon torched me, I was turned into a whitewalker and my swordfighting skills fell abysmally short of the level required for survival in Westeros. On Wednesday, I visited HBO's interactive space near the San Diego Convention Center and was inducted into The Hall of Faces, not exactly an honor since it's a space reserved for the dearly and not-so-dearly departed.
Here's how it worked. I stood in front of a small computer screen that took my picture from below, with the angle and the lighting creating the eerie, lifeless repose common to those stacked on the Hall's wall, a facial wardrobe closet of sorts for the Faceless Men, the anonymous assassins of Thrones' House of Black and White.
Joanna Scholl, HBO's vice president of program advertising, gave me a tip for looking properly embalmed.
"I'd recommend closing your eyes to capture that dead sort of silence," she said, adding that poses that might shock Jaqen H'ghar are perfectly acceptable, too. "To each his own. Everyone can have their unique perspective on it."
After the camera took my picture, I got to frame it. Believe me, with the lower angle and the pallor conveyed by the lighting — Yes, I'm going full Hollywood and blaming it on the lighting! — it is not easy to come up with a flattering result.
See!
Less than a minute later, my picture popped up on a Hall of Faces wall, joining Ned Stark, Tyrion Lannister and other characters, dead and living, whose visages were part of Season 6's visual promotion. Think of it as a Brady Bunch-style face wall, just a million times darker. (Fans get a printed photo and can share their post-mortem appearances on social media.)
Besides being immortalized in death, the exhibit, open through Sunday during Comic-Con, allows fans to sit on the Iron Throne (Feel the power, but know this is pretty much a reserved seat on an imminent ride to the Great Beyond); stab or be stabbed by Arya Stark's sword, Needle; admire costumes worn in the show by the actors playing Arya, Jaqen H'ghar and The Waif; and peer into Red Priestess Melisandre's flames via OC Dream hologram technology, which I'm guessing isn't available in Westeros. Then again, we don't have dragons.
If it's anything like last year, Comic-Con attendees will be waiting around the block this weekend to get the chance to be immortalized in death at The Hall of Faces. And hoping, perhaps as I do, that Arya will choose one of their faces as a disguise the next time she decides to kill one of the misbegotten on her famous list.
For now, however, I'm dead. But that doesn't mean I won't make plans to visit next year's Thrones exhibit. After all, look what happened with Jon Snow.