Well no one else is about, so here’s Fabio’s First Attempt at embedding video. Wish me well!
Today HBO gives us more fun stuff on the Making Game of Thrones site. As you can see (fingers crossed), Gemma talks about the practicality of having a realistic lift, as well as the impracticality of having one that requires actual manual operation.
Fire And Blood: “Tremendous feeling of vertigo” is a nice goal. I like that the lift is basically just an iron cage. Peter Dinklage shouldn’t have any trouble at all pretending the contraption makes him nervous. Keep ‘em coming, HBO!
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85 Comments
We-e-e-ell, that didn’t quite work. It’s a link.
“Work in progress.”
Fire And BloodQuote Reply
lol – the joys of web-admin
Martin
MartinQuote Reply
wonderfully wonderful!!!! ;D
Jéssica de F. MacielQuote Reply
I like the wall – quite a good glimpse of what they’ve done with the quarry walls. The lift looks a little more finished than I imagined from the book, but I guess they couldn’t go too precarious with Health & Safety and all that.
Martin
MartinQuote Reply
Even though we’re worrying a bit about some of the design elements (particularly armour and costumes), I get a good feeling from these Gemma Jackson videos. She just sounds like she knows what she’s talking about.
LexQuote Reply
While it does look more sturdy than I imagined I guess the Night Watch have been there a long long time and during that time the best lift they could build was built.
I do wonder how they are going to show it being pulled up though, in the book it’s a couple of people on top of the Wall but that can’t be the case with this lift. Im guessing there will be some Horses/Oxen and a big wheel involved.
MormegilQuote Reply
This is going to look tremendous once they have the post production with the creaking mechanical sounds and blowing snow effects going. I fear for the poor new recruit who accepts a dare to stick his tongue on that cage.
BrianQuote Reply
Mormegil,
Complex gears aren’t -that- new of a thing, lots of old civilizations were able to use them to efficiently lift weights and stuff. Assuming you had a mechanism to keep it going one way, you could easily lift that with 4 or 5 guys I would think.
KanaQuote Reply
Fire And Blood,
You might also want to include the photo Rabbit found of costumed GOT actors in Malta.
izakmoQuote Reply
I like her comment about the “no butterflies and no circles”. The Night’s Watch is the perfect place where things are only made if they have a proper use. There’s no time for polishing this Wall and it’s surroundings up. It would have been kick-ass if they had shown the thing go up with some people in it.
KnurkQuote Reply
Possibility of a full screen link please?
Lord Ned’s HeadQuote Reply
N/M. Figured it out. Sorry.
Lord Ned’s HeadQuote Reply
‘we couldn’t just have crew pulling on ropes with lead actors’
What about the lesser actors. =0
AdQuote Reply
Echoing some other’s thoughts, I just wanted to add my voice to the pro Gemma Jackson camp. Everything she has said up to this point has done nothing but fill me with confidence that she has the mettle to handle to look of the series. No, I’m not expecting her to fufill everything perfectly the way I see it in my mind’s eye, but she definately seems to have the know-how to world build on an expert level.
If she pulls it off as well as she seems to be, this should be an emmy-worthy undertaking. Think about it, can you name other television productions of this quality with as many locations and different cultures that have to be created from the ground up? I daresay there will be more to dream up for this series (season one and in the seasons to come) than in most movie franchises. Keep up the great work Miss J!
Lord Ned’s HeadQuote Reply
Osha will have a Scottish accent it seems. I wonder if that means all Wildings will.
http://twitter.com/#!/svenislearning
MormegilQuote Reply
It’s how I imagined it. Looking at the map of Westeros you can almost see a shadowed reflection of the British Isles in it
Seen here
NOTE: That map I linked can be zoomed in. Just click it.
Everything from Winterfell and north representing Scotland/Ireland. from The Twins down to Highgarden, including Lannisport and Dragonstone Representing Middle England and Wales. And everything south of Highgarden (namely Dorne) representing Northern Spain.
At least that was my perspective.
SleekyQuote Reply
HBO!!
You sand bagging Sons of B****s you won’t catch me grovling at a little meaningless video about elevators!
give us something of substance!
…
But on a side note the wall does look awesome … and I always have trouble picturing the cage till now.
So good Job …
Phantomwriter05Quote Reply
Actually, all it would take is a simple multiple-pulley system and there would be no problem moving that thing up. It would take some time though…
OhDanyBoyQuote Reply
Sleeky,
Thankyou for the map pic…I haven’t seen that one before….absolutely beautiful…
coltaine777Quote Reply
OhDanyBoy,
Yeah I was more thinking pulleys, and then I went ahead and typed gears out anyway. They would make a lot more sense.
And also we gotta remember, the medieval attitude towards workplace safety was a lot different than now. If our elevators crashed 1 out of 10,000 times, there’d be mass panic. For a bunch of black brothers who have no real medicine, it’s safer than a lot of other things they would do during their day.
KanaQuote Reply
Sleeky,
Awesome map! the best one I’ve seen yet, thanks.
humusTasterQuote Reply
This is nice, very nice (love the wood work), I can’t wait to see it in action! Please HBO, we want some finished sneak-peak images soon again, even if they are stills… But a little clip would even be better of course, going something like this: we see the slightly worried looks on someone within the cage, then the angle switches to reveal Castle Black in the depths below while slowly zooming out, finally providing a mind blowing view of that great wall of ice and that tiny little speck clinging on to it. Of course there’ll be some pretty dramatic music playing, wind rustling, and Darkness lying beyond the Wall up North! :-)
KelsierQuote Reply
Does anyone know the music used at the beginning? Is it possible that it’s a little glimps on the score we’re going to get for the show?
Great to see bits of castle black!
SteveQuote Reply
I wonder what colour the wall will be. Im hoping for an icy light blue.
houndQuote Reply
If you have that much ice together, it will rather be a dark blue. In sunny conditions that is, otherwise (as GRRM also describes it in the books I believe) it will be rather a dark grey.
KelsierQuote Reply
hound,
here’s a picture in sunny conditions with a good comparison between a thin slice of ice (on the left) and more massive ice on the right: http://www.pbase.com/gbleek/image/65439053
I took that at the base of the Aletsch Glacier in the Swiss Alps, which at 23 km long is not a bad natural equivalent of The Wall ;-)
KelsierQuote Reply
It looks as though the Raven trailer included shots of the lift ‘from the other side’ with Jon Snow. The panels are the same in the background.
http://www.westeros.org/GoT/Graphics/Gallery/Previews/GameOfThrones_Teaser02_Screencap01.png
Looks to be a great set – just the right level of austere functional over-sized structure and construction.
Martin
MartinQuote Reply
The above link only works if you copy/paste it for some reason.
M
MartinQuote Reply
Kelsier,
Fantastic photographs! I’m still looking through them.
houndQuote Reply
Sleeky,
The other analogy I’ve seen is the North and Iron Islands as a mixture of Scotland and Scandanavia, Dorne as Moorish Spain, the Reach as France and the bits inbetween a mixture of the Holy Roman Empire, England and so on (with the Free Cities as Amsterdam, Venice, the Germanic city-states, eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, with Qarth as Constantinope, Ghis as Greece and Valyria as Italy, although they’re all mixed up).
Adam WhiteheadQuote Reply
Can anyone post to youtube? Can’t see the video in Canada….
Deidre KQuote Reply
I thought the lift was supposed to be a rickety old thing that’s much smaller than the one depicted in this video. I thought everyone was afraid to ride in it as it could fall apart at any moment.. the lift they have shown looks like it should have a bell hop and piped in ‘The Girl From Ipanema’ muzak playing softly.. and whats up with the twisted bars in the windows? I find it hard to believe a blacksmith of the Night’s Watch would have the time or the desire to twist all the bars just so the wall guards would have something nice to admire as they are pulled up the side of the wall.. This one was over engineered big time..
ShagnastyQuote Reply
oh no, lift gate… I think it’s wonderfully wonderful.
dizzy_34Quote Reply
dizzy_34,
I agree, the lift has very nice gate on it.
pualoQuote Reply
Shagnasty,
The men of the Night’s Watch have been up at the wall for a long time with not much happening. If you have ever worked in a “watch” job, like a fireman,or in an ER in a backwater area, you know that there are many hours of humdrum routine during which you cook, clean, repair equipment, train, study, update your standard operating procedure manual, etc..interupted by intense bursts of heart pounding activity. so, yes I think the blacksmith would have had time and inclination to make twisted bars for the lift, not for the guys to have someting to look at but to relieve his own boredom.
OldGranQuote Reply
Ah… time for Liftgate.
vikrum99Quote Reply
OldGran,
Hogwash I say! The castles on the wall are in disrepair. The members of the nights watch wear threadbare clothing and what little armor they have is in poor condition. I would submit that you comparing the Nights Watch to FDNY is totally bogus. The stupid looking symbol on the chair and the bogus lift will not prevent me from enjoying game of thrones the series.. it’s just interesting to point these things out and hear other peoples opinions on the subjects… I met the blacksmith in question in a dream and he indicated that bars depicted in HBO’s lift are indeed historically inaccurate he also took offense to the idea that all he did all day was polish a brass pole.. ty
ShagnastyQuote Reply
I don’t really want to fixate on something here – but I remember being told a while back by a guy doing a blacksmith demo at an art fair here, that putting twists in a bar helps strengthen it, and that it was a pretty common historical technique. Course that could have been hogwash too.
M
MartinQuote Reply
A note about the Free Cities and the ancient world in general –
First, I have always seen them (at least, the ones that have been described in detail) as being influenced by the seven wonders of the ancient world:
Braavos – Titan of Braavos (Colossus of Rhodes & Lighthouse of Alexandria), also influenced by Venice with its canals.
Meereeen – brick pyramids with a Great Pyramid (Great Pyramid of Giza)
Astapor – brick pyramids with planted terraces (Hanging Gardens of Babylon) [Yunkai is described as being similar to Astapor]
I imagine Ghis as being equivalent to the Old Kingdom in Egypt, which was when the pyramids and the Sphynx were built. In comparison, Ghis has its pyramids and the Harpy.
The collapse of Ghis, of course, led to the cities of Astapor, Meereen, and Yunkai to rise (and New Ghis also), who obviously draw a lot of influence from Ghis. I have likened this to the New Kingdom of Egypt, which was marked less by construction and more by conquest, trade, and political upheaval when compared to the Old Kingdom. This compares well to the new Ghiscari cities that have extensive slave trade, but cities that are slowly falling into ruin (the bricks are described as turning into dust.)
Valyria, in contrast, is very clearly to me a parallel of Rome before its collapse. Its empire was called the Valyria Freehold, much like the Roman Empire. It had a strong and disciplined military, which would conquer new lands and build roads that all led back to Valyria. It was the cultural center of its time. Now, I know that the time periods of Valyria:Rome, Old Ghis:Old Kingdom and New Ghis: New Kingdom don’t exactly line up, but the parallels between each respective place and its “real world” equivalent are quite striking.
As a side-note, I’ve always seen the cultural loss of how to make Valyrian steel to be a parallel of the knowledge of the ancient world lost when the great Library of Alexandria was destroyed, which happened roughly around the fall of the Roman empire.
The nine Free Cities (Pentos, Braavos, Lys, Qohor, Novos, Myr, Tyrosh, Volantis, and Lortath) all seem to be influenced by various Greek city-states. Most appear to share a love of fine arts and produce valuable wares like fabrics and wine for trade all over the known world.
For instance, Qohor is in my eyes similar to Sparta, with the Battle of Qohor being much like the Battle of Thermopylae (obviously with a different outcome, though!) The Unsullied seem (to me) very strongly influenced by Spartan warrior ideals.
————————————————————————————————————————-
hah, wow, that was longer than just a note. I guess my point is that I am totally on board with Gemma using a mishmash of influences to illustrate cultures in the show because this is very much the approach that George appears to have taken when he designed his world. I am by no means a professional historian, but I do enjoy learning about ancient history and enjoy all of the little tidbits of historical influence throughout the books.
Stella MarisQuote Reply
wow this is the first time something looks exactly the way I imagined it. This is really going to look awesome when post production is done. What am I saying? It already looks great!
LiesieQuote Reply
Oh, and OT but the Fantasy Writers’ panel at NYCC was last night and GRRM got a shout-out from a few people when the topic of literary influence was brought up. You can read about it here.
There are some pretty entertaining quotes, my favorite describing him as “you know that this author is an unconscionable bastard who can kill off anybody he feels [like].” lol :)
Stella MarisQuote Reply
“…it’s just interesting to point these things out and hear other peoples opinions on the subjects… ”
It’s fun to troll, isn’t it?
HJQuote Reply
YOUTUBE LINK to Gemma Jackson/Castle Black Lift:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXr8goKZKPs
To whomever posted it, thank you!
(The lift is way more modern than I considered, but sure it will look fabulous on screen.)
Deidre KQuote Reply
The pictures and other content, like the heraldry, on Westeros.org can’t be hot-linked. After a few hits it starts blocking it.
Regarding the historical equivalences to the various places in Ice & Fire, there are no one-to-one connections to be made because GRRM purposefully mixed things up. He has said specifically that the Dothraki are a mix of Mongol, Native American and various other influences, as well.
To me, the Slaver cities all had a combination of Ancient Near Eastern influences: Babylon, Egypt and Assyrian is a big one too, I would say.
The Free Cities are a mix of various city-states, mostly Mediterranean, though: Venice, the Greek City States, Tyre probably most especially.
BrudeQuote Reply
Off Topic, but The Mountain That Rides made the Suvudu Cage Match: Villains.
1st Round versus Bramstokers Dracula.
CyanQuote Reply
Cyan,
A new cage match, hurray. I can’t wait to see Gregor win this shit. I mean come on, all he has to do is go through Dracula (vampirism doesn’t come into play if you’re cut in half ) Either the Terminator or the Alien Queen (yawn, Gregor is the terminator of Westeros and the alien queen can be killed no problem), and the Nothing which is just not going to get the votes. Bam we’re out of the division.
GrimtuesdayQuote Reply
A wonderfully wonderful lift! :D
Nah, I think it’s going to look really nice once we see Tyrion get scared in there.
I don’t mind the twisted iron bars in the windows at all – the twist gives them more stability.
It’s true that in the book the lift wasn’t as save as this one seems but if we keep it real we know that we couldn’t expect anything that was actually dangerous in use.
Every Artisans Video gives me more confidence in Gemma Jacksons idea of what Westeros should be like – and that she’s understood the feel of this world. I know I’m not going to be happy with everything HBO does, but I think we can be extremely happy with what we have seen up to now.
Joe AnnaQuote Reply
Cyan,
Could you please post a link ? Would be really grateful ;)
Joe AnnaQuote Reply
Has anyone read this blog post about a friend of a production crew worker complaining of excessive work hours.
They claim “A person from england or anywhere else, irregard of work experience,history,status, etc., will be paid a lot more than any pleb from the north.”
I’m wondering what job role his friend has or if the post is exaggerated/false
http://ask.metafilter.com/167375/Film-Northern-Ireland-Employment-Law
Daniel JQuote Reply
The designers for GoT allude to the cultural commingling that would be inherent in a world that’s well aware of neighbouring continents, countries and culture and I get that. But, and I’ll add that it’s been a good long while since I read the books, and I don’t want to read them again before the series; my impression is that Westeros has been stagnating technologically in the middle ages for well over a thousand years. How can that be?
One possible scenario for a stable (stagnant) society is extreme longevity, another is a society in balance with nature and isolated or at peace with its neighbours and itself. Neither of those applies to Westeros.
Is magic supposed to have put a lid on science? but magic has been gone for centuries. Is Winter like a regular Dark Age where crops don’t grow, the population plummets and sheer survival limits technological progress? My impression was that Winter is a Westeros thing and not something that the other countries plan for, so it wouldn’t explain this world wide lack of imagination about new and more efficient ways to kill each other. Do birds not shit? plate techtonics not occur and leave sulfur around? if the ingredients for gunpowder are around, surely someone’s figured it out by now.
I’m curious how you good folk rationalise what seems to me to be an anomaly. This topic may have been explored in some other forum regarding the books, but I’ve not visited any.
FlayedandDisplayedQuote Reply
FlayedandDisplayed,
It’s a good question. I’m kind of suspicious of the Maesters to be honest – they seem to have the lock on science and technology and also to know more about magic and it’s disappearance/reappearance than they’re letting on. And they allegedly killed off the dragons! So yeah, I reckon they’re responsible for some mysterious reason of their own…
ABear_ABearQuote Reply
ABear_ABear,
It’s hard to tell exactly how stagnant the tech really is. There are hints that it has been progressing – maybe slower than in our world – but still progressing.
We get a glimpse of the Royce family’s legendary armor, which is some ancient Bronze Age type stuff, several thousand years old that “Bronze Yhonn” Royce wears at the tourney. Armor now is made from fine castle-forged steel and such. Valyrian Steel is a high-tech advancement in sword production, clearly and they have pretty advanced glass and lens production, which isn’t easy to do.
Magic could easily have retarded the improvement of technology, though. If you can build a world-spanning communications network via magic, as the Maesters (or maybe it was someone else before them) apparently once had access to as was hinted at in Book 4, then you don’t need to think about developing things like telegraphs. Flying on a dragon’s back might preclude you from even bothering to worry about building airships and airplanes. If magic is helping you build enormous castles and fortifications like The Wall, Winterfell and Stormsend, you don’t need to develop your building techniques as quickly.
The Maesters clearly have a scientific bent, so maybe it’s been only since magic started diminishing that they’ve been making serious advancements in tech? We don’t know when that process started, but it’s maybe been a while. Realize, it took a good 1500 years to get from era Roman tech to the Enlightenment, and another hundred or more before the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. Tech didn’t increase all that much from Rome to the 1700′s, only by increments. We still rode horses, we still even found things like pikemen useful in battle until pretty late. Guns, advanced machinery like watches and such all came along bit by bit, but it took a very long time.
BrudeQuote Reply
Joe Anna,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbUkNHqwhf0
I don’t think they have mentioned it on there website yet, since there at comicon.
CyanQuote Reply
Cyan,
Thanks ;)
Yeah, I was looking for it on suvudu but I didn’t find anything.
Joe AnnaQuote Reply
Voting for the final 2 seeds starts today, Hopefully George will write up some epic stories again, as he did for Jamie.
CyanQuote Reply
It’s a question asked of many fantasy worlds. where everything is kept on a medieval scale.
The riftworld saga for one used magic as the reason why technology stagnated.
as Westeros dosn’t have much in the way of magic, the only thing that could explain the fact that technology dosn’t progress is artistic license and fantasy writing conventions.
although Asoiaf has authenticity in bounds, all fantasy requires a certain suspension of disbelief no?
David DrakeQuote Reply
I agree. It’s sort of silly for us to try and think up reasons and rational explanation as to why technology would hardily advance in 10,000 years when you have dragons, spell casters, alchemists, and worgs (sp?) . That’s the nice thing about fantasy, you can suspend believe and pretend that these things all really exist.
GrinbombQuote Reply
Brude,
Spoiler tags much?
Anyway, I think you’ll find that the long gap between the Roman Empire and the Enlightenment might have a something to do with the Dark Ages…
GaRQuote Reply
Tom Clancy (a hack, but this quote works anyway) is quoted with something like ‘the difference between fact and fiction is that fiction has to make sense.’ I’m all for suspending disbelief as long as the story has internal consistency. GRRM is a brilliant character writer, but he’s no Frank Herbert when it comes to world building. I’m still hoping for a rational explanation for a prolonged middle age.
FlayedandDisplayedQuote Reply
Science = death/persecution
Sun revolves around the earth. Heratic!
Chimps are our family! Blasphemer!
The Earth is round! Kill him before he says more!
That might keep me in a medieval world. Charlatan!
CyanQuote Reply
george is 5 chapters away from finishing ADWD!
Peeter TalvistuQuote Reply
Cyan,
Your examples aren’t the most consistent, but I think I see your point.
We haven’t really had much indication that the Faith of the Seven suppresses science a whole lot, in fact, in aFfC it seems more like the Citadel has a bit of a stranglehold on it and isn’t necessarily very keen on sharing.
That said, Maester Luwin seems pretty clued up on the basics of the heliocentric model.
GaRQuote Reply
Sounds like it will be finished by the New Year? Too bad GRRM is in the middle of 3 months of travel-related delay, or it might be finished already!
LexQuote Reply
Thanks for the link! :D
I was looking at some things GRRM has said over the last year about his writing and the TV adaption and I think the nay sayers are wrong and he will have the writting done before HBO can over pace him.
Now I’m basing this on a few things that have been said in articles that I can’t reference but George said recently that he doesn’t think he’ll have the issues with Winds of Winter and a Dream of Spring that he did with AFFC and ADWD because he won’t have the time line issue making him throw away materiel and start over multiple times. He said he hopes to finish them at about the same pace as he did say COK and SOS, say 2-2.5 years per book.
Now based on if he takes 3 years on average to finish each manuscript (which I’m going to say is all HBO would need to make the TV adaption) and if they decide to do SOS over 2 seasons, then as long as he finishs the manuscript for the last book before fall 2017 in time for them to begin filming the 8th and last season in this scenario I’ve set up then everything will work out. And if things to turn out like this we would have the final book be published in 2018 and the final season of the show aired in 2018. Nice thing about this is we would read and see the end of the saga at about the same time.
Now I know things probably won’t turn out exactly like that especially given how many assumptions I made but all is I saying is things look like they can turn out.
Of course GRRM can’t run into any other major snares that make the last two books take 10 years to write and HBO was to actually give green lights and future seasons.
GrinbombQuote Reply
Peeter Talvistu,
The big question, is he still having trouble with the “Mereeneese knot?”
Avalanche3319Quote Reply
There isn’t really a static middle ages. Much longer, yes, but not totally static.
Westerosi history begins 12,000 years ago in the Stone Age, moves up to the Bronze Age when the First Men arrive with tamed horses, bronze tools and the basics of agriculture. The First Men don’t have a written language, eventually evolving a form of primitive rune-based communications. Then the Westerosi Iron Age kicks in when the Andals invade 6,000 years laters, bringing with them iron-wrought weapons and tools, a proper written language, a different religion and so on.
That’s about twice as long ago as the real Iron Age from our time, but by that point Westeros was suffering an effective mini ice-age every few years which would retard development, maybe even reverse it during really bad winters. Even given that Westeros has left the Iron Age and moved into the age of steel-wrought armour and weapons, arguably a gunpowderless version of the 15th/16th Century.
FlayedandDisplayed,
Frank Herbert infamously created this desert planet with an immense amount of ecological thought and a huge amount of creativity in designing things like Fremen society, but he did miss something pretty major which a lot of reviews asked when the book first came out, such as “Without any oceans, WTF do people on Arrakis actually breathe?” Herbert’s answer in a later novel – that the sandworms fart out a gas that is breathable by humans and functionally identical to oxygen – was half-hearted, at best.
Martin’s Westeros isn’t quite as evocative as Arrakis, but GRRM hasn’t forgotten to take into account something as basic as that ;-)
Adam WhiteheadQuote Reply
Grinbomb,
As long as we are blue-skying the timeline, for enough financial remuneration, GRRM could “imagine” a resolution to the GOT HBO show that might or might not track with what occurs in the final two books. That is, he could provide script direction adequate for writers to plot out two years’ of episodes without cannibalizing interest in the books themselves. Twenty scripts in the hands of four writers could be produced relatively quickly. This could be an option, given his age, regardless of the progress of the magnum opus.
DH87Quote Reply
Looks like GOT exec producer D.B. Weiss is supposed to be scripting the remake of John Carpenter’s “They Live“, though GOT is keeping him busy.
“It’s time to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum.”
spacechampionQuote Reply
You can already save Game of Thrones to your netflix queue. Their plot description spoils King Roberts death in the first sentance… Hopefully they get that changed.
Avalanche3319Quote Reply
According to the story I read about that, the producers want to take out the sunglasses which are iconic from the first movie. It would be like if the remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers didn’t have the pods or something. It’s both integral to the plot and a classic image, all at once.
BrudeQuote Reply
Avalanche3319,
Speaking of plotline and taglines. has the great quote: “When you play the Game of Thrones you win or you die” been dropped in reference to the series or are they saving it for a full trailer once they have filmed the line?
Can’t see them not using this as one of the big ‘pull lines’ for the series because of the intruige it suggests but wonder how long they will keep it back.
CrotalidianQuote Reply
Good video concerning the lift, I like these Gemma clips as she gives good insight into her design logic, The lift look grander than what I imagined, very elaborate yet also logical in operation mechanics. If you look at the science behind this lift, you would also think all the big towers in Westeros would incorporate lifts in them. I am not talking about the lift from the book only the series, as the book lift is very crude, yet the series lift has technology in it, so could they have decided to add some tech to the series (perhaps gas street lamps as an example).
On another front, I like how they incorporated the Wall design into the quarry around the lift, it gives a good feel to how the final design might appear. Did any of you notice toward the end where you see a tower butting up to the Wall itself, I don’t remember any structure attached to the wall with the exception of the lift and switchback, this might suggest as from previous photos that the HBO Castle Black is a fortress connected to the Wall and not just a hodge podge of structures as in the books.
TysnowQuote Reply
Crotalidian, I’m pretty sure that will be in the full trailer. It has to be.
Winter Is ComingQuote Reply
From that article I think in the comment section it was suggested they might want to use contact lenses. I suspect they might actually go with an augmented reality iPhone or Android app! Regardless, they are still planning to use something to give the same effect as the sunglasses in the original.
spacechampionQuote Reply
How much do you think will the contents of the fourth book be used in season one, with Cersei being a first class character now. Her thoughts and the explanations for her actions were only revealed in AFfC. Will we find out about the valonquar and the prophecy in this season or not?
jimmyQuote Reply
Winter Is Coming,
Another quote that I would love to hear used for promotional material is
If they played the first sentence and then cut to some fast glimpses of violent action sequences then showed Littlefinger and Sansa looking creeped out I would probably get chills
Josh KQuote Reply
I normally chime in in favour of internal consistency and against pulling-stuff-out-of-your-arse.
However, I think the problems in Westeros aren’t as big as imagine. For one, Adam is right in his analysis above. For another: we don’t SEE this history. We’re told it, by the characters. People in history, before history itself became well-developed, tended to believe that everyone in the past was exactly like everyone in the present. So if accounts of the past in ASOIAF sound anachronistic, I put it down to anachronism in world-internal historical records. E.g. they know that there has been some group of people keeping out the Others in the north for a long time, so they assume it was exactly like the modern Night’s Watch. The list of the thousand commanders, for instance, is probably pieced together from many scraps of documents, augmented by oral sources, and with a number of big gaps in it, and confusions of people with the same name. Cf our own confusion over the Pope Johns – the guy originally named “Sicco” may be John XVI (correctly, and as he called himself), XVII (as Papal lists have traditionally called him, believing that there was anothe John between XIV and XV (a combination of XIV himself at another phase of his reign with another John who never became Pope)), or XVIII (if the OTHER John XVI is counted as a Pope rather than an Antipope). Relatedly, there has never been a Pope John XX, and Pope John XXIII was only the twenty-first pope of that name…
OK, I think I’ve gone off on a tangent here.
The point: there’s a difference between a history presented as authentic, and a history presented as ‘what-people-think-about-their-history’, and a degree of stasis and anachronism is expected of that latter.
WastrelQuote Reply
Winter Is Coming,
Josh K,
Thinking over it there are going be some amzingly iconic scenes that could be used for Trailer Material or just as really memorable moments.
- Jon’s Oath for the Nights Watch “Night gathers, and now my watch begins.”
- “Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?”
“That is the only time a man can be brave.”
- and of course the Classic “The things I do for Love”
I’m getting shivers just thinking about how they will deliver these soon to become classic lines!
/fanboy gushing
CrotalidianQuote Reply
Let’s not forget “dark wings, dark words”!
The trailers seen thus far feature the raven prominently…I really expect to see this tagline as the season progresses and things get a bit grittier.
Stella MarisQuote Reply
I like just “win or die” as a tag line after the title logo. I don’t need the whole Cersi quote.
dizzy_34Quote Reply
A missing line from the leaked script. Hopefully they decided to put it back.
GoombaQuote Reply
I just saw The Tudors finale and theres a scene in witch Henry sits on a chair (around 0:48:30). And it looks like the “Hand Chair”. It has the fishes and columns, evrything. It’s the same chaire!
GuzioQuote Reply
Im by no way an expert in the subject of technological development but to me it seems as if there are certain milestones that changes a society. Some of these can be found in the world of GRRM such as written language, math, and the discovery of metals.
Other discoverys and inventions in our world such as the steam engine, gunpowder and penicillin have completely changed our world but what is not to say that they have been accidental?
Often one gives the other. Written language gives the possibility to pass on knowledge from one generation to the next. The discovery of glass and invention of lenses makes medicine and astronomy leap in development. In our world the discovery of glass took 5000 years to develop into the first lens.
c0venantQuote Reply
c0venant,
Actually, Westeros does have penicillin, after a fashion. I forget exactly where, but I distinctly remember someone using a poultice that involved moldy bread. Of course, for them to fully realize the significance, they’ll probably need to come up with germ theory.
DemokritosQuote Reply
Demokritos,
People rubbed the contents of small pox sores into cuts as a form of vaccination before they had the slightest clue how it worked (and often, it just spread the disease). See John Adams for example (ewwwww)…
userjQuote Reply