Game of Thrones Season 6, by the numbers
By Ani Bundel
The filming process of Game of Thrones is, to the hardcore nerds among us, sometimes just as fascinating as the final product, if not moreso. I paid attention to it even before I worked for WiCNet. As a former lighting, theater and production geek, the sheer scale of what this show was attempting to accomplish—on a TV budget!—was worth following in detail.
And every year, it seems like the show only grows in scale. Despite all the protestations of the cast and showrunners that characters are coming together and the world is retracting, it seems like each season is an exercise in topping themselves. Season 6 certainly seemed to top anything that’s come before. Over the course of six months, from-mid July to mid-December, we saw the production take over entire towns, park themselves in outdoor fields for months on end, somehow get the paperwork pushed through to film on National Trust-level historical sites, and then go about filming in those places *simultaneously.* The coordination on display is staggering.
Filming in Saintfield, Ireland, September 2015
This brings me to the following story from the following story from Entertainment Weekly, when it covered the Season 6 premiere event in Los Angeles. David Benioff makes like Kai Ryssdal and does the numbers for us:
This season was a beast to make. We shot 680 hours of dailies, which translates to 3.7 million feet of film. We shot in five different countries – Northern Ireland, Spain, Croatia, Iceland, and Canada. We employed 900 crewmembers in Belfast; 400 in Spain. We issued 140 script revisions. We two shot units a day for 22 weeks straight, three units a day for 10 weeks straight, four units for two weeks straight. And none of that would be possible without the greatest producing team on the planet.
3.7 million feet is approximately 700 miles, or the distance from the show’s Belfast Titanic Studios headquarters in Northern Ireland to the north-western tip of Spain, the other country where a lot of principle filming was held this year. Thanks in part to the new ambassador to Spain being a former HBO executive, Game of Thrones moved itself nearly bag and baggage to that country this season, filming in no less than six different Spanish locations over the course of two months.
Filming at Castillo de Zafra, also September 2015
Not only did this bring employment to the 400 crew members (and thousands of extras), but these towns, with their historical sites, are now ripe for Game of Thrones tourism, and if they’re lucky enough to be revisited for Season 7, they soon could be as famous as Dubrovnik’s Old City. The original plan was for the production to not film in Dubrovnik at all this year, but that didn’t work out—the show went back to Croatia briefly to film Myrcella’s body arriving back in King’s Landing, at the same harbor where she sailed away in Season 2. (Don’t worry, Dubrovnik lovers—the city isn’t wanting for famous franchises filming there. Star Wars: Episode VIII rolled in last month, and Disney’s security measures to keep spoilers from leaking are putting HBO’s to shame.)
As for Iceland and Canada, the former has been the stand-in for scenes filmed north of the wall in the past—rumors that the production was filming there surfaced towards the end of August, but any stay was likely brief. The revelation that parts of Season 6 were shot in Canada may startle American fans who has no idea anything was filmed on this continent, but don’t get too excited—the scenes filmed on our side of the pond are the ones involving Ghost—he and his trainer live near Calgary, and sometimes it’s easier to go to the wolf than it is to bring the wolf to you.
So in two weeks, when Game of Thrones Season 6 finally airs on HBO, try and keep these numbers in your head, and allow your mind, just for a moment, to be blown by the scale of it all.