The Production Descends into Warfare

There are no words.
I mean there are actually no words today. We are scheduled to have a night full of action – there is no dialogue, other than the occasional scream. We have nearly 200 extras on set this evening – charging all over the place and then coming to a sudden halt when the stunt coordinators blow on whistles.
I can’t give you details of exactly what we are filming at the moment, but I will say that the shots look incredible and that it will be worth the wait – what’s filming now will appear late in the season – Neil Marshall is directing episode 9.
If it helps, we have to wait too! I always forget just how long stunts can take to reset. Fires have to be put out and then relit. Extras repositioned. Blood cleared. Weapons reloaded or cleaned. Sometimes it takes 30 minutes or more to set up for a short, sharp flurry of the most amazing action you could imagine.
You find yourself holding your breath while you watch, listening to the clash of metal and the screams of men as they throw themselves against their enemies. Each time you focus on a different area, trying to catch as much as possible. The detail that the costume armorers have put into the design and functionality of the warriors’ gear, the sigils on shields as they are used to bash someone’s head in, the shadows on the wall as the fires light up the fight.
A few feet away from the monitor tent, where we sit sheltered from the rain, is a stack of bodies. Earlier, one of the costume girls walked past me with a bloody leg, still in its boot.
It’s a weird sort of evening.

By Cat Taylor

Taking an Epic Journey

One of the greatest things about working on a show like Game of Thrones is that you are surrounded by beautiful things so much of the time. The costumes are gorgeous, the sets are so detailed you can always find a new facet when you look hard enough, and even the armor and weapons are beautifully finished. The cast isn’t too hard to look at either!  On some days though, the most beautiful thing is the scenery that we are surrounded by.
By necessity, the locations that we shoot at tend to be remote – it wouldn’t do to pull back from the gates of Harrenhall and see that the courtyard is built in the car park of a Pizza Hut. It’s also hard to weave the authentic medieval sound of a Boeing 777 arriving from Newark into the story line. Our sound and camera teams are exceptional (and we’ll be meeting them later), but that’s a lot to ask of anyone.
Just getting to these far-flung places can be a challenge. Tiny roads and large trucks are not always the best combination, and we can certainly be guilty of causing our own mini traffic jams as the crew makes way down roads used primarily for tractors and sheep. Sometimes there is no signal for phones or email, or the nearest shop is a few miles away. The crew lugs kit down paths the trucks can’t get to, and they run cables from the gennys out to beaches, huts and even cliff tops.
Even so, I’m not sure there are many better ways to see Northern Ireland than filming on this show. We are able to have access to places that you just don’t visit in day-to-day life. We get to see some of the greatest sights in a unique way, and even on the longest drives, you see some spectacular views that make it all worthwhile.
This season alone we have been up and down the northern coast of Antrim and into the corners of the country. Filming only a few miles from the world famous Giant’s Causeway and in tiny coves that are so startlingly beautiful it’s distracting. We have filmed on cliff tops and beaches, taken over the grounds of stately homes, caves and even old quarries. In what used to be empty rolling fields, there are castles and battlefield camps. Woodland clearings become campsites full of wagons and horses. A Godswood is just off a dirt track on the way south from the city. It’s all amazing to see.

By Cat Taylor

Meet the Guy Who Sees What Isn’t There (Yet)

Naill McEvoyVFX Data Wrangler
Dragon & Wolf units
N. Ireland/Iceland
Job description:
“We gather as much information as we can from a shooting day, be it lighting information, camera information, lens tilt, height…anything that helps us integrate non-existing elements into the final frame. The only way to make these look real is to light them correctly, and shoot them correctly so they fit into the original plate. If you’ve ever seen poor visual effects, I guarantee that it’s because it wasn’t lit right. So we take all the references, categorizing them all, so when we go back at a later date and shoot an element, we can recreate everything accurately.”
Biggest Challenge working on GOT:
“Well, essentially, GOT is a 10-hour-long feature film. It’s a TV show, yes, but HBO demands excellence. To film something of this scale, in our timeframe, everyone has to be on the top of their game, and every detail is important. And the mud. So many of our locations are muddy fields, or muddy quarries. I’ve woken up from dreams where I’m choking on mud. Look at where we are (in a very muddy field at Audley Tower, which is serving as one of Robb’s camps) everything is ridiculous! Every so often you take a step back and think this is crazy, but then it’s amazing. I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing.”
VFX elements he’s most looking forward to in Season 2:
“I would like to see how the dragons have grown, progressed and improved. They appeared late in Season 1, right at the end of episode10. In the upcoming season, we see a lot more of them, and that’s really exciting. And the direwolves. We’ve been involved in creating them this season, and we’ve shot a lot of elements with them. These things are big, the size of small horses, and I can’t wait to see how they look.”
Favorite Character:
“I like the really evil guys. Viserys was so good. So evil. I think he was underrated in a lot of respects, but I thought he was great. And Joffrey. Joffrey was fantastic. I mean what a little bastard. Jack Gleeson is such an amazing kid in real life, all the kids have been amazing, but Jack in particular, being such a nice guy in real life and such a bastard on screen.”

By Cat Taylor

Why Working on Set in November Feels Like Going to a Rock Festival

By Cat Taylor
Anyone who has lived through the festival season knows that the key to surviving in style is preparation. And while there is no need for a stash of Valyrian steel in the tents of Glastonbury, there are certainly things that make the rules of surviving festivals the same as surviving filming.

1. The field is full of tents, and positioning is everything. Avoiding horse dung, flooding, high winds and steep slopes is the ideal.
2. Wellingtons or hiking boots are a must to avoid swamp foot. There is high risk that your foot will get stuck in the inches of thick and churned up mud. Socks will be the most important thing about your day.
3. A smart crew member will avoid the portaloos at all costs, using honey wagons at base, or bushes if no lights are shining (and they happen to be male).
4. By the third day, wet wipes become a human rights issue.
5. Phone signal will drop in and out intermittently, usually just before you’re supposed to meet or call someone.
6. Sun on the field will make it all seem worthwhile, even if you are helping push a 4x4 out of the muck.
7. Security will spend a good deal of time explaining what is happening and why, sadly, passers-by aren’t allowed behind the scenes without a pass.
8. The traffic to and from location will be dreadful as everyone tries to arrive at the same time.
9. Finding the coffee hut and biscuits is like finding the Lost Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
10. Occasionally, Snow Patrol swing by. It’s a lovely surprise to reveal that the producer’s guests for the evening are some of Belfast’s finest home grown talent. 

A Game of Thrones (disambiguation)

A Game of Thrones is the first novel in the fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin.
A Game of Thrones or Game of Thrones may also refer to:

• Game of Thrones (TV series), an HBO television series
  • Game of Thrones (soundtrack), a soundtrack album from the series
• A Game of Thrones (comic book)
• A Game of Thrones (board game)
• A Game of Thrones (card game)
• A Game of Thrones (role-playing game), a tabletop game
• A Game of Thrones: Genesis, an RTS video game
• Game of Thrones (role-playing video game)