See you latte: how did the Game of Thrones coffee cup get missed? | Television & radio

Itwas a jarring image: a modern-day take-out coffee cup – originally identified as a Starbucks cup, then later as one from a local coffee shop in Banbridge, Northern Ireland – sitting casually in a scene set in the faraway, fantastical world of Game of Thrones.

Soon after the cup appeared in episode four of the show’s eighth and final season, presumably mistakenly left alongside goblets and animal horns during a celebratory feast at Winterfell castle, the internet went mad.

HBO has since quietly removed the cup from the episode. And it joined in on some of the laughs, posting a joke about the error on Twitter:

“We’re sorry! Westeros was the first place to actually to have Starbucks, it’s a little known fact,” Bernie Caulfield, one of the executive producers of the show, told WNYC.

The error was predictably ripe for plenty of jokes and memes but it also prompted many people to wonder: on a show that costs $15m an episode to produce, how exactly did this happen?

“This list of people who probably should have caught this is long,” explains Rodney Sterbenz, an on-set dresser in New York City who has worked in the film industry since 1998, including on films and TV shows including The Devil Wears Prada, Boardwalk Empire and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

First of all, there is a “video village”. This is the area where the director, script supervisor, camera person, director of photography and other crew members sit and watch what’s being filmed on a monitor. From there, the footage is sent to editors, visual effects teams and other post-production stopping points.

Set dressers like Sterbenz are responsible for everything in the room that is not props or wardrobe. He cautions that he doesn’t want to place blame on any of the Game of Thrones actors or crew for the error – “You don’t really know whose cup that is” – especially because he doesn’t work for the show and wasn’t on the set.

In fact, Sterbenz has had a coffee cup experience of his own. He was working on season three of Boardwalk Empire when he got an angry phone call notifying him that in one scene a Diet Coke can was visible behind Bobby Cannavale’s head.

“It probably went through 40 people who didn’t see it,” Sterbenz says, noting that most people are focused on their own job duties. “They’re just not looking for it.”

But he did point to a few factors that could explain the GoT mistake. “You don’t know how long they were shooting this scene,” he says.

Shooting even a short conversation between two people can take days. Actors and crew members need to eat and drink. It’s common for actors to bring food and drinks on set. Often, they’ll place items by their feet, out of the camera’s view, or ask camera people whether their beverages are visible. “They could have a whole sandwich hidden!” Sterbenz says.

Perhaps this happened, and the actors thought the cup was out of view, then one of the cameras changed positions. Or perhaps it was only left in frame for one take before someone noticed and removed it, but forgot to make a note for post-production. Another possibility: it was missed because its color blended easily with the rest of the props.

“I wasn’t surprised by it,” says Nina Hospedales, a video editor for a New York-based production company. Hospedales has been working in TV post-production for eight years.

“As an editor, I try to get my content out against a deadline so I think it is pretty easy to miss little details. I’ve done it before and I’m sure every editor has at some point.”

Hospedales points out another, perhaps surprising, potential culprit: “I’m also sure that very few producers watch the episodes since they don’t want leaks.” This means there are fewer chances to catch discrepancies.

Looming deadlines and the need for a quick turnaround may have also played a part. Episodes of that length and quality take time to produce.

Hospedales herself has spotted problems in screenings with little to no time left to make fixes. “At that point, you just hope no one notices,” she says.