WARNING: If you did not watch last night’s Game of Thrones episode, ‘The Battle of the Bastards’, you probably want to get the heck out of this post!
So last night’s Game of Thrones episode, ‘The Battle of the Bastards’, was absolutely incredible (click here for our recap on it). I honestly stood up watching the final 20 minutes of it like it was, well, like it was the other big thing on TV last night (Game 7 of the NBA Finals).
The battle scenes and the special effects were amazing. As good as we’ve ever seen on television, really.
Director Miguel Sapochnik talked to Entertainment Weekly about everything that went into making the amazing battle scenes:
I watched every pitch field battle I could find (footage of real ones too), looking for patterns — for what works, what doesn’t, what takes you out of the moment, what keeps you locked in. The big reference was Akira Kurosawa’s RAN. Interestingly one of the things I noticed is that staging of these battles through the years has changed dramatically. Back in the day you’d see these huge aerial shots of horse charges and there were two big differences. First, it was all real — no CGI or digital replication. And second, often when the horses would go down, you can kind of tell they got really hurt. Nowadays you’d never get away with that, and nor would you want to.
Also, the more I watched these scenes the more I felt like those aerial shots that are now so synonymous with a final charge they kind of take you out of the moment. That is to say, you experience this moment as an objective observer in all its glory with no sense of danger from the inevitable impact of hundreds of these huge stampeding animals. I was interested in what it must feel like to be on the ground when that sh— happens. Absolute terror? A moment of clarity? What goes through your head when you are right in the thick of it?
And here’s awesome in-depth video, “Anatomy of a Scene: The Battle of Winterfell”:
As for specifically the visual effects that went into the episode, here’s a great video thanks to Variety:
The single shot here with Jon Snow was particularly incredible (h/t: Uproxx):
And this behind-the-scenes gif of the Jon-Ramsay scene is just fantastic: