Original subtitles

l've done feature fiIms, and l've not seen anything on this massive scale. It's just vast.

It's just an epic.

It is huge.

It's never been done before in teIevision on this scaIe.

It's a character-driven story,

but within a genre which is rarely seen on television.

It's an epic fantasy. At the core of it, there's a conflict for power.

It's rich in a way I've never seen fantasy be rich before.

It's got a brilliant combination of the fantastical and the real.

It's very much based in character.

And then slowly, as the season progresses,

we get to see more and more of this magicaI worId.

It's got action, it's got adventure, and Iove and passion.

BetrayaI and greed and murder and sex.

Every character such a full story. lt's very intense.

There's real emotion,

and there's reaI reIationships that you can understand and relate to.

And there are so many twists and turns.

The fantasy fans will love it,

but the HBO audience - those people are gonna love it, too.

People are going to fall in love with these characters

and become afraid for them, and they should be afraid for them.

Nobody's safe.

When you play the game of thrones, you win. . .

or you die.

There is no middle ground.

- Camera mark. - Action.

I began this series in 1 991 ,

and the minute the books started to hit the bestseIIer Iists,

one starts getting inquiries from producers

who are interested in optioning it for a feature film.

And I remember talking to my agents and saying, "It can't be done.

"There's too much. The books are too big.

"They would have to cut so much, there wouId be nothing Ieft."

This is a story that's so rich, and there are so many characters,

and so many different viewpoints and narratives

aII woven together with incredible expertise.

And it was such an intricate tapestry that he was weaving,

that we couldn't imagine mutilating it to make it into a feature script.

So, the only way to do this is as a series of series on HBO.

That's where my series belongs.

So, I told my agents, "Go forth and make it happen."

About three and a half years ago,

George Martin's agent sent me four books,

and l started reading, and about 70 pages in,

I got completely hooked.

And a few hundred pages later, I called Dan.

I said, "Tell me if I'm completely crazy,

"but I'm in the middle of this book called Game Of Thrones,

"and I think it's the best read I've had in God knows how long."

The next day, I said, "You weren't crazy."

And two and a haIf days Iater, I was done with a 900-page book.

You're always a little bit afraid when you sell a work of yours

to be adapted to television or film

because, of course, the history of Hollywood is full of cases

where they just keep the title and change everything.

George Martin is the creator of this worId,

and, in a very real sense, we're all walking in his dream right now.

I think we're cleaving really close to the source materiaI,

because, to be honest, we really respect and love the source material.

My fans are going to be very happy,

because they're going to see the story that I told come alive in a different medium,

played by some fantastic actors.

Our cast is just astonishing.

We felt that, not only in terms of the principaI casting,

but the background casting,

you should get a sense of these are the people,

the type of people, that live in each of these worlds.

I think finding the tone is the real challenge in casting all of them,

because the material is so epic.

It's an ensemble piece.

You're so dependent on having good actors to work with.

And we're very blessed on the show.

I'm most amazed with the kids. The kids are so good.

The biggest challenge on season one was finding the kids.

It took a long time.

The kids are so essential.

They're going to be the heart and soul of it as it continues.

Their stories become more and more important,

and it gives us a great deal of confidence

to know that we can give them the ball and they'll run with it

because they're so good.

When I first got the audition for Game Of Thrones,

my mum heard about the books, and she started reading them,

and she soon found out that they were quite adult

and that maybe I shouldn't read them.

She would just tell me what goes on.

And then, coming to the sets,

it was just like how Mum explained it.

lt's unbeIievabIe, reaIIy, because when you read a scene in the book,

you start to imagine what it's going to be like.

Then you get on the set, and it's better.

The palette is varied and fascinating.

You've got the northernmost kingdoms being covered with snow

and all this harsh landscape.

You've got the middle kingdoms, which are lush.

And then you've got the southern dry, arid, deserty sort of places.

We've researched probably 1 4 different countries

before we settled on Northern Ireland and MaIta.

The decision to shoot in Northern Ireland

was predicated on being able to find a wide variety of Iocations very cIose to BeIfast.

There are mountains, and there are fertile green fields,

and there are beautiful oId-growth forests,

and there is such a range of environments.

The great thing about Belfast is you've got the Paint HaII, where we've been fiIming,

which is just the biggest set you've ever seen.

And then they find these incredibIe Iocations.

Certain areas just lend themselves. They just look so spectacular

that you know that if you could get the story into them,

that it wouId reflect the amazing Irish landscape.

AII these years, and l stiII feeI like an outsider when I come here.

You're not an outsider.

When I got into this job, there was a call for a spectacular tree.

And I had a folder of sexy trees, and that was one of them.

And we also had to build a little pond just in front of it,

which got excavated and reinforced.

The art department is so amazing with what they've created.

Winterfell is such a huge castle, and it's so fantasticaIIy detaiIed.

The butchers are there, and the armorer.

It helps you so much as an actor

to really just believe in where you are and what you're doing.

The first scenes that we shot were all shot in an authentic medievaI castIe.

I would think, as an actor, standing in a place

where actuaI nobIemen were standing 700 years ago,

must be fairly inspiring.

You feel like you're part of a world here that's reaI and Iiving and breathing.

For some of the bigger moments - the king's arrivaI, the main titIe -

all those call for bigger instrumentation.

(Martin) This is the first time we meet King Robert.

It's the first time the king has been to Winterfell,

the first time he's really seen the extent of the North.

(Bean) It's the very beginning of the piece,

and Robert's coming up with his whole entourage.

But there is a certain tension.

My queen.

Take me to your crypt. I want to pay my respects.

We've been riding for a month, my love.

Surely the dead can wait.

Ned.

We're dealing with such a complex world,

so, musically and instrumentation-wise,

there was really a wide range that l couId puII from.

So, we have everything in this show,

from old instruments, Western instruments, violin, cello,

but then also a lot of modern instruments

like a lot of synthesizers

and just sounds that are manipulated to create really a wide range of sound.

What we've tried to do is be as ecIectic in our sources

and our choices of references for everything,

whether it's costumes, props, set, Iocations we've chosen.

All the worlds that I adore,

I've managed to kind of go into and pluck out bits

that I think have become appropriate for all our different worlds that we're trying to create.

We went for a lot of Far Eastern, a bit of Moroccan,

African, traditional medieval,

but not trying to go for that Ye OIde EngIish Iook.

But if you mix it up enough, and don't use too much of one cuIture, then it works.

Gemma was very clear that she wanted to give every worId its own distinct feeI.

So, when you're at Castle Black, you know you're at Castle Black.

You're not going to confuse it for Pentos,

and you're not going to confuse it for Winterfell.

The Winterfell, of any of them, is probabIy the cIosest

to a traditionaI Northern European world,

with kind of thick, strong castle walls, and big stone.

And l just reaIIy Iooked at the northern castles of Europe.

The North is a little bit Scandinavian,

but, really, that's the closest you get to grungy, oId-fashioned medievaI,

because it's dour and dark and nasty.

The architecture of the North is much rougher,

it's much more decayed.

lt's coId. The weather has got to it. Everything's going to get eaten away.

So, we brought over 30 truckloads of saIvaged timber,

most of them over 200 years old,

that worked really well for the North.

It's been eaten away, rotted away.

We used a lot of smoke at Winterfell

to make it feel like people were working there,

to make it alive and just to create another dimension to it.

Smoke brings it to Iife, just makes it Iook Iike peopIe are there,

peopIe are doing things, people are burning things.

The North basicaIIy have to cloak themselves

with products they can get within a 50-miIe radius.

There's not much trading.

So, they tend to wear grays and blues, quite murky coIors.

lt's very Ieather-based, very practical, lots of fur.

It's a direwolf.

There are no direwolves south of the WaII.

Now there are five.

The direwolf's not been seen for many years around Winterfell,

and so it's kind of an omen - a dead direwoIf

that's just littered a birth of pups.

And it's a massive creature.

The direwolf is our banner, our sign.

There are five pups.

One for each of the Stark children.

They were meant to have them.

It's obvious to Jon at that point what this means -

that the direwolf is the sigil of the Stark House,

that there's five of them, that there's five Stark children.

This is clearly a sign.

These are aII lnuit dogs, which is a breed that was developed

basically to have a dog that Iooks Iike a woIf.

The dogs are supposed to rip people's throats out

and eviscerate people.

We teach them to do things that will make them look like they're attacking.

The actors are like a prop.

So, I could take one of these dogs, and I could take you,

and we could do a go-with

or have them waIk with you Iike they're your pet, in about five minutes.

By using food and little tricks that we do, they'll actually get used to it.

We don't really want them to have a huge relationship with the actors

because that gives them an excuse to goof off,

and they will take advantage of it.

lt's a big chaIIenge. There's a lot of attacks.

Plus, they have to work with little kids.

That's always a scary combination.

We want the dogs to look as fierce and mean as possibIe,

but then they have to be with a six-year-old child.

And then otherwise we have ravens.

They're actually as trainable as a dog.

They are so inquisitive and so interested in food and stuff.

They're Iike a chiId, and they'II find a way to get in trouble very quickly.

Inevitably, it's a problem.

Somebody has got a sandwich, and the bird ends up landing on them,

trying to get the sandwich.

So, we have to tell people, "Sorry, you can't have food on set

"while the ravens are working."

There are scenes where they're supposed to look like they're soaring in the sky,

and we're going to use a wind machine with the bluescreen

to make them Iook Iike they're actually soaring.

Lord Commander.

A raven.

Castle Black is the furthest north that we go at the moment,

and it sits at the bottom of the ice wall.

It's supposed to be grim.

You get the feeling the whole thing has gone to rack and ruin.

Castle Black is historically supposed to be a pIace that was quite grand,

and it's sort of faded and fallen into disrepair.

It's filthy, it's freezing cold.

The mess haII is fouI, very brutal, very sparse.

l did some research on peopIe who lived way up in the Antarctic.

Some of it was from Eskimos, where they live on whale blubber,

and they're all pale and everything is white,

and so all the food is just very basic, sort of colorless stews.

The intention was to build it somewhere where they could work

and not be constantly worrying about CGI and greenscreen and the rest of it.

And I think we've been relatively successful on that.

At the base of the Wall, we've got Castle Black,

which is an incredibly bleak castle

that you wouId think no one would want to inhabit.

Our art department have built a fantastic set here

up to a certain height,

and a certain amount of it contains aII the action that we are concerned about

for episodes one to ten.

But we want to establish something a bit grander than that,

so we have to put on towers which top that up on what we've built here.

So, it's our job to take on the wider shots here

and add those bits and pieces.

The top of the WaII set we're building on stage -

that's achieved by building it on a rostrum about ten foot above the ground.

And then we create plywood formers to give us the shape of the ice.

Then our plasters go on top of that, with pIaster, resin,

and lots and lots of sea salt to give it some sparkIe.

Then our painters come in, give it some more color and texture,

and then we erect a greenscreen around 1 80 degrees of it.

And then we put some wind effects and snow effects.

I wanted to be here when you saw it for the first time.

The actuaI WaII theme - or the Night's Watch theme -

we have strings, we have very low bells.

So, there's something intimidating about that one,

but also something that, later on,

can turn into something, um, majestic and honorable

for when Snow and the others take their vows.

Bear witness to my vow.

Night gathers and now my watch begins.

It shall not end until my death.

You walk into Castle Black, and there it is,

and there's the Wall, there's the lift to the Wall,

and there's all the things you've read about.

And it's very easy to get immersed in that world,

with such incredible sets and detail put in.

One of the biggest challenges in the Night's Watch

was to be able to tell you something

about the different backgrounds of these peopIe

by the costume that they had on,

and the costume had to be black.

It's not a uniform, because they're not funded enough to do that anymore.

The higher peopIe will bring clothes with them

that are probably more suitable.

The others actually often arrive in a thin jacket.

That's aII they have, and you visibly see them freezing.

Then, obviously, as they qualify, they start gaining more clothes.

Well, Lord Snow, it appears you're the least useless person here.

We work with a wonderful fight director called Buster,

and we didn't have much time to learn the fights,

but Buster was brilliant, and you can pretend that you're a hard warrior.

I was pretty fortunate with these guys. They're aII pretty athIetic.

They all seemed to grasp it pretty well.

These fights - it's more like a dance. You're learning a dance.

And I remember a few times, we were aII ready to go,

they were just about to shout out, "Action! "

And I'm thinking in my head, "Oh, my. . . l can't remember the third move."

And l know in that third move, there's something coming towards me.

You have to train people very differentIy.

With Ned and Jaime, we used a IittIe bit of the knights of oId,

with the hack-and-slash,

versus we used a lot of Japanese katana style for Jaime's fight -

just the way he heId his sword and the way he twirIed it.

We both have our different styles. I have a much more direct style,

whereas Jaime is much more eloquent and affected in his style of fighting.

You never want to do a flick for a flick's sake.

You won't stand next to someone and throw a back somersauIt

for the sake of throwing a back somersauIt.

So, you try and find cool stuff that you can believe they needed to do.

We want to make this real.

We want to show the brutality of fighting, and what really happens when you get stabbed.

For example, in the hill tribe fight, we wanted to make this really gory.

So, we're going to bash one of the hill tribesmen's faces in,

and we wanted to actually show the bashing of the face in.

So, we started the action with a stuntman with a hit,

shot Peter pounding down on the face,

and aIso now we're shooting Peter pounding down on the prosthetic face.

So, you'll see it being beaten, and bIood popping out of it.

It's going to be pretty horrible.

- Jesus! (Laughs) - Cut there.

We're approaching visual effects in a very specific way.

We want visuaI effects to be as real as possible.

Yes, there are fantasy elements,

but what we're trying to do is to make the fantastical as real as possible.

A lot of what we do is adding IittIe bits and pieces to shots

that hopefully nobody would even realize.

We've got some big crowd scenes happening -

the Sept of BaeIor, when we do Ned's beheading.

We've got, out at Essos,

when we've got the whoIe camp, that's going to be a big crowd scene.

Then they did a tournament. We were doing that.

The tournament set that we built on Iocation at Shane's CastIe -

that was all built with materials sourced at Shane's CastIe.

We picked the trees and the wood. They were feIIed for our job,

brought over, about a quarter-of-a-mile trip, to the tournament ground.

Then, when we take it down, we'll cut up the timber on site,

and that'll be given to the people in that area, really.

I've been sitting here for days!

Start the damn joust before I piss myself!

What they do with animals is amazing.

We rehearse everything very carefully before we get on set

to make sure everyone is going to be safe.

I have actors' horses that I use. They're all trained for the actors,

so they do the job for them.

So, the horse goes from A to B. lt's very quiet.

He goes on set. He doesn't notice anything.

Then I have my stunt horses, which are different.

They're a bit faster, and one of them is trained to fall over.

Everyone was absolutely gobsmacked.

I didn't know if it was actually supposed to happen at the beginning,

because they didn't tell any of us.

I was, like, "Oh, my God. Is someone hurt?"

The fence is all made out of a type of foam.

As soon as it lands on the fence, the fence collapses,

so the horse has no harm at all, there's nothing to it.

And the horse is already trained to fall.

As soon as it's on the floor, it knows that its job is done.

That horse, all it does is fall over. That's all it's trained for.

They're very clever. They get used to it. They know what "rolling" is,

they know what "turn over" is, and they know what "action" is.

And they go straightaway. They go on "action".

Action!

I think Renly was very excited

about seeing Ser Loras Tyrell in his armor for the first time -

wonderful, gleaming armor.

The first time I saw even the costume, it blew me away.

It's just so beautiful. It's a work of art.

It's quite interesting to tie together the structure and the mechanics

that you need for the armor to actually articulate a move,

the very organic kind of flowing forms that Michele was looking for.

The armor is great. It looks brilliant.

It's kind of tough to wear, though.

It definitely hurts the shoulders quite a bit.

It's not even that heavy. It just constricts you.

It takes a while to get this on.

To imagine that people actually fight in this is beyond me.

But it looks fantastic.

The guards from King's Landing and the South

have this kind of elegant, sleek, tailored look to them.

As you go south, obviously they're near the sea.

They can trade, they have silks, they have coIors.

It's a much more sort of Mediterranean feel.

There's more jewelry.

It's beautiful,

like the one your mother wears.

The whole thing about King's Landing is that it's supposed to be quite lush.

You've been up in the frozen North,

and down in King's Landing, people are supposed to be growing things.

King Robert refers to them all being half-naked

and deliciously sweaty and gorgeous.

You feel that you've come to a really hot, sexy place,

and there's light coming through the windows,

a lot of greenery and plants on the balconies, growing through.

Malta becomes the backdrop for King's Landing.

We'll take the basis of what's there,

take away what we don't like,

and add bits and features that we do Iike.

For our abiIity to create a worId that you couldn't quite pinpoint,

Malta was a fantastic location.

It's been settled successively by so many different peopIe,

so there are so many different traditions.

Anything Mediterranean, North African, Southern European,

we can kind of more or less find here,

and we can dress it to cover any period.

Malta is so exotic and mysterious and ancient.

I think it really lends itself to the stories

and gives it a lot of flavor.

Any time you see the Red Keep castle that's at the end of King's Landing,

that's completely CG. Nothing exists.

And that's going into a lot of locations that we're doing here.

We wanted to try and make the castle itself - the Red Keep -

have a sort of indoor/outdoor feeling.

So, many of the rooms have got baIconies

and lots of lovely things growing and beautiful perfumes and flowers,

so that all the time, they're outside, they're inside.

We have two large sets for King's Landing.

There's a composite set for aII the personal quarters in the Red Keep.

And then you have the throne room.

The throne room is magnificent.

It's huge, it's got this pantheon floor, it's got these great big piIIars.

I wanted to try and make that feel incredibIy cathedraI-esque.

It's very lavish, very ornate.

As you come in, you go through some massive bronze doors.

So, as you open that, you reveal this beautiful throne room,

with marble floors throughout.

Then aII aIong one side you've got some terrific stained-glass windows

that pour Iight in across the marble floor.

And then you walk up to the throne itself,

which is sitting on a bronze dais.

And then behind that is a beautiful stained-glass window.

So, you get all that light pouring in over the king.

The centermost prop in Westeros is the Iron Throne,

so we wanted to get it right.

Obviously, we'd made a model of it in the art department.

We had a lovely prop-maker here called Gavin who made it.

It's quite a frightening piece.

It is literally blackened swords bent into a throne,

and it's melted and pitted and hammered,

and uncomfortabIe, which is what it's supposed to be.

The first time I walked through the throne room,

I was really intimidated.

It's the size of a football field.

I didn't know how we were going to light it.

I didn't know how we were going to fill it with people.

l didn't know how l was going to move them through the space.

Thankfully, we figured it out.

The throne room is pretty amazing.

When you go into a set that they've built,

and just the sheer size of that makes you feel

Iike you're in this sort of mystical story.

Each of these worlds is a real pleasure to do.

And the other one is the Eyrie.

I was dumbstruck when I first saw the Eyrie.

It was breathtaking.

It's three-quarters of the way up an enormous mountain,

and you get to it by a stone staircase that's carved,

and there are way-forts along the way.

So, it's the ultimate refuge.

The Eyrie - the look of that had to be quite quirky,

have an uncomfortable feel about it, and a slightly unhinged atmosphere.

So, a lot of faded tapestries,

and the weirwood throne, which was the biggest piece for us,

which is actually made out of reaI wood.

It's actually three different pieces of wood, aII weIded together,

and it's incredibly heavy.

You have to get a crane to get it in and out of here.

I like the twisty shapes of it,

which seem to go with this high height and everything.

Gemma was keen that we get a verticality into it.

We have a staircase that's cantilevered out

and rises around the space, with the moon door at its center -

this kind of execution spot that the Eyrie has.

lt's a scary environment with the height of the castle.

There's a cell with no fourth wall,

and the fourth waII Ieads out into an abyss, a bottomless pit.

And then, just to add to it,

in the ceIIs, the floor tilts just a little.

So, you go to sleep. . .

Going to sleep would be terrifying,

because if you move in your sleep and you kind of roll,

you wouId naturaIIy roII in the direction of the slope.

You wouId wake up a foot from the edge.

Obviously, there's supposed to be a thousand-foot drop beneath it,

so we had a lot of wind there,

and we aIso had faIIing water coming through that set, running down the middle.

lt's supposed to Iook sort of wet and horrible.

You just get such a feeIing of this being her kingdom -

the whole throne, with the gnarly wood, and the grays,

and all the kind of dusty feeling.

The sets are amazing on this.

It's just more than I ever would've anticipated or expected.

Look where we are. It's incredible.

We've been very lucky in our locations.

We've been abIe to come to MaIta and film in a wide range of spaces.

San Anton Palace, for example - it's the President's palace.

Malta was also chosen because it had a fantastic coastline.

A Iot of our story has to do with the continents separated by a narrow sea.

It won't be long now.

Soon you will cross the narrow sea and take back your father's throne.

When will they be married?

Soon. The Dothraki never stay still for long.

Dothraki are a bit of a cross between the Mongols

and some of the Native American tribes.

They're a horse peopIe, they live in these great, vast grass plains,

and they make a living by conquering other people,

much like Genghis Khan and the MongoI horde.

Khal Drogo is one of the most brutal and effective warriors

in a worId where vioIence translates directly to power.

The music for Drogo and the Dothraki

is compIeteIy different than any of the other music.

It's very tribal, and we have a lot of ethnic instruments there.

It's more played on these war horns, I guess I would call them.

That's almost like a war call.

They're barbarians. They're nomadic.

Although they have a city, they're on the move most of the time.

So, we looked at lots of different tribes and people that travel a lot -

grass huts, mud huts, that sort of thing -

and then mixed all of it up.

So far, we've got rounded tents, which are more igIoo-shaped,

with skins and cIoths and all sorts of things.

Then they get into these earthen tents.

So, we've created another kind of structure, which is really nice.

The temple of the dosh khaleen, that's been built on stage here in Belfast.

The whole structure is made from willow,

which we've harvested from a locally grown field.

lt's a very flexibIe, very bendy type of wood.

(Speaks Dothraki)

We actuaIIy thought it would be much more believable

if we heard them speaking their own language,

rather than have them speak in heavily accented English.

(Speaks Dothraki)

David Peterson, a linguistics professor at Berkeley,

essentiaIIy invented the Dothraki language.

When you're creating a language

that's supposed to look like a natural language,

first you must start with the culture.

There are actuaIIy, in Dothraki, more words for "kill" than for "love".

When they first told me that, I was, like, "Cool. I'll totally do it."

Then I got it, and I was pretty scared.

But it was a great challenge.

(Speaks Dothraki)

It's really worth it to try to do it right, because it sounds right.

And if you do. . . (BabbIes) . . it always sounds really crap.

So, it is worth trying to master it.

lt's an incredibIe Ianguage, getting your mouth around the words.

They're so expressive.

(Speaks Dothraki)

We're building this fantastic funeraI pyre in MtahIeb,

which is on the west coast of the island,

and this is where we see one of our main characters' burial.

It's very kind of sophisticated in the fact that the whole framework

is welded and made from speciaI effects.

We had two stuntwomen on fire.

So, it's a complex sequence, but it went really well.

You're under the impression that she is going to kill herself and give everything up.

So, musically, it's powerful, it's tribal, it's emotional.

But then, on the following day, we realize she's still alive.

And then it unfoIds that the dragons are hatching,

and she becomes this very powerful person.

So, at that moment, we're playing something musically

that we actually have never heard before.

So, we are playing out her theme in its full glory.

(Clarke) It's just the best story.

You follow it, you get excited by it.

And when you think you've got it figured, it completely changes its mind.

lt's encompassing. Actually, without the costumes,

it could be contemporary life.

It's about people caring, fighting, Ioving, hating.

You think you know them,

you think you've got them pegged as what they seemingIy are,

but they really aren't.

To battle!

It's been very satisfying and exhiIarating

for me to play a part that has got that much depth,

and I've been able to explore it to that extent.

To have the freedom to combine traditions

and to combine the fantasy elements was a great challenge,

and it gave me a whole new respect for the genre.

There's something about the depth of the worId

that George has buiIt such an amazing foundation for,

that tends to pull both fantasy and non-fantasy fans alike into.

Just the idea of taking this story, which George Martin created,

and actuaIIy knowing from the beginning, from now,

the essential shape of the entire series,

it's an incredibIy Iuxury for us as screenwriters.

AII of the things that l was trying to do in it, they got, and they liked,

and they wanted to preserve in it.

So, this is David and Dan's baby.

They're the show runners, and they're making the ultimate decisions here.

But it's still recognizably my baby, too.

The Starks are always right eventually -

winter is coming.