Richard Dormer as Beric Dondarrion – Photo 5: Helen Sloan/HBO via HBO Media Relations
Season 7 might be over, but Game of Thrones isn’t done blowing your mind just yet.
The only thing bigger than the dragons in Game of Thrones is the production crew. I can’t think of any other television program that builds and produces on the scale that the Game of Thrones crew does. Their filming locations span huge portions of the world and they boast one of the bigger casts of any major series.
The average estimated budget for any given episode is around $6 million dollars and some even swell to $8 or $9 million. The sixth season in particular, had multiple episodes that went all the way up to over $10 million. All of that money is put to good use and the visual quality of the series is unquestionably epic.
As the show has gone on, the people behind the curtain have started to release more and more behind-the-scenes footage. It is even worth going back to past seasons features, just to see how they pulled those things off. This first video shows how much work went into just the first episode of the seventh season. The real star in this special feature is the real-life map they painted for Cersei at King’s Landing and the hours of sculpture that went into creating Dany’s ancestral home, Dragonstone.
We were all super excited for that first episode, but the shining moment of season seven is the “Loot Train” attack in episode four. Nothing else in the series’ history can really top this moment. It was Daenerys Targeryen in full beast mode and it was glorious. It was also the most people they had ever set on fire at one time.
This next video really highlights the amount of manpower and hard work goes into this show. This feature details the construction of the frozen lake where Jon Snow and his band of merry men were trapped while they waited for Dany to come to the rescue. It makes sense out of safety sake, but I was blown away to learn that they actually built that ‘lake’ in what basically looks like a parking lot. Also, the rig they use to throw fire across the battlefield is pretty scary looking in real life too.
This last one might be my favorite. It details a big shooting day they had back in season six. That season was the first time in Game of Thrones they ever had to shoot with three different crews simultaneously. As explained below, there was a dragon crew, a wolf crew and they added a White Walker crew. This video details the 18 hour day where all three crews were shooting together in the same building at the same time.
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The nicest thing here is that you get to meet so many people you would never know work on Game of Thrones. Even the omelet guy is pretty important to the whole production. I was surprised how much practical work went into blowing up the high septum and the amount of detail that was worked in Dany’s old palace in Mereen.
People have questioned the logic and writing this past year on the show, but videos like these remind us that this is still the biggest show on television. If nothing else, this series will always be worth watching the sheer spectacle of the amazing things they can create. The only reason they can pull it off is because of all the talented and hard-working people they have that often go unseen.
Season 8 of Game of Thrones is still coming and is expected to arrive in 2019
