Game of Thrones Season 7 director discusses filming the record breaking finale.
*** Warning: contains spoilers for Game of Thrones S7, Episode 7. ***
In the aftermath of Game of Thrones’ seventh season, fans are now left to wait for what will seem like an eternity for the eighth and final season of what is now the most popular show on television. The season drew to a close with a sterling final episode and its director Jeremy Podeswa recently spoke to The Huffington Post to provide an insight of his work and answers to fan questions as a result of the episode, The Dragon And The Wolf.
One of the major questions fans of the show have is whether the now undead Dragon Viserion now breathes fire or ice, after the beast was seen to destroy a huge chunk of the Icewall. Here’s what the director had to say on the subject:
“The way I looked at it was, when the sept burned down, that was green fire, and so then the dragon is going to have some kind of blueish fire. It’s certainly still fire — it has the ability to burn the Wall and melt snow. But it’s going to have a different kind of magical quality to it, because it’s coming from an undead dragon.”
He also spoke of his preparation for filming the scene and piecing it together afterwards,
“There was a little bit of R&D involved in that in terms of exactly what it should look like and feel like, what the hue of it should be, what the impact of it should be. We actually shot the lighting effect on the Wall before we did anything else, so we had to know very early on what the impact of that flame was going to be before we even knew what the actual flame was. When we were shooting the Wall set, we had the lighting effect on the Wall that was caused by the flame, but we hadn’t created the flame yet. But we had a pretty good idea at that point.”
As well as the brilliant final scene, the episode contained many other shocks, including the demise of the nefarious Littlefinger. Whilst many may have suspected that Lord Baelish’s days at Winterfell were numbered, his eventual death still came as a shock to most and Podeswa explained how important it was to get the scene right;
“Well, it was very important to me that the audience was led along this trajectory, and continue to believe the sisters are at crossroads — that Arya might actually be plotting to kill Sansa, and Sansa might be plotting to kill Arya. So at the beginning of the scene with Littlefinger, it really does feel like a turn that we’re not expecting, when we realize that all the Stark kids are in this together, and they’re bonding over the common enemy of Littlefinger.”
He went on to explain how the scene will have a great impact on the strength of the now reformed Stark children;
“I think it’s really the first time that we see the three children reunited, and very strongly reunited, for a single purpose. We see the strength of the family that was there before all the horrible things that happened, and now they’re back together.”
The director gave praise to his ensemble cast in Stark Hall for their commitment to the storyline;
“I think that trajectory was really important, and nobody wanted to give anything away, so the actors were incredibly committed to this notion before that we really should believe that anything was possible — any horrible thing is possible. And it was very satisfying, at the end, for them to show their solidarity, and for the audience to see how strongly connected they all are.”
The episode opened with the Dragon Pit scene and it was incredibly satisfying to finally see so many of the major players finally get a chance to face off with each other but the director went on to relay the amount of effort that was required to do the scene justice;
“That was actually a very involved sequence, one of the more complex things I’ve ever filmed. It’s really almost a play. It was about 50 pages of script between the walking to the dragon pit and then entering of the dragon pit with almost every character in the show in one place. So it has this kind of — it’s almost like a G8 summit. We really did rehearse it like a play. We did early rehearsals in Belfast. We went down to Spain and did further rehearsals on location where we shot it. Then it was about five to six days of full-on shooting.”
The director was also aware of how important the scene was to all of the actors involved and when asked if any of the filmed scenes ended up being cut from the final production, he gave this surprisingly reply,
“No, actually, amazingly we got through it incredibly efficiently. I think it was interesting going in because a lot of the cast were thinking, “How are we ever going to get through this?” because it was so dense, and there were so many people, and it required so much coverage. One thing that’s great about Dan and David’s writing is that it’s full of small character detail. So every glance, every look has this past history that we’re bringing into this sequence between characters that haven’t seen each other in a long time. Everything is loaded. Everything has meaning and has to be captured. But this was quite meticulously planned and choreographed, and we decided how much we were going to bite off every single day. It felt like a real achievement, actually, to get all those moments.”
One of the major changes this season has been the pacing of the storyline which most fans have reacted to positively. When asked if he felt this change had any effect upon his approach to his work, Podeswa revealed his method didn’t really need any adaptation as he only directed the first and last episodes of the season, which allowed him to take on each part of the story individually;
“You know, in general I don’t really think too much about pacing, myself. You kind of look at each script, and what each script demands. I directed the premiere episode and the finale, which are quite different, because in the premiere episode you’re laying a lot of track, and you’re continuing stories that were left at the end of last season. So that has its own kind of rhythm to it, and didn’t really have any huge action sequences or anything like that, but it was very, very strongly character based. It probably laid a little less track than previous premiere episodes had — you so feel like you get right in the story and things are moving quickly. And then in the finale, so much of what it’s about is continuing the idea of these character interactions between characters who haven’t been together in a long time or who have never been together. So even though it’s not action, action, action, it’s full of drama and full of tension and potential for things to go awry. This episode, for me, kind of had everything. It really did feel like I was making a feature film with this episode — it was so big and so layered and, tonally, so complex”.
The seventh season of Game of Thrones is a available on Home Box Office in the US and Sky Atlantic in the UK with a home video release slated for December 11th 2017.