Storyboards: Jon Snow Rises and Tyrion Frees Dragons

As always, HBO’s Making Game of Thrones blog brings us some of the fantastic work that goes into the creation of the most talked-about moments in last week’s episode. In most cases, it focus in on a scene that’s difficult to film and the storyboards created by artist Will Simpson that the directors use as guides. This week, we have storyboards from two different scenes, since there were so many remarkable moments in “Home.”

First up, storyboards from my personal favorite scene of the evening, non-Jon Snow division: Tyrion’s visit with Rhaegal and Viserion. Dany’s other two dragons who have been locked away in the catacombs for months since she started ruling Meereen. Part of the difficulty in filming this scene, of course, is that there aren’t actually any dragons…actor Peter Dinklage has to make us believe they’re really there. In cases like this, having the storyboards is important not only to the director and tech folks, but to the actor as well, so he knows what he’s supposed to be looking at.

That moment when Viserion shows the collar was one of my favorites. I’ve compared the behavior of dragons to cats before, but this is very much in the vein of how you will see bonded cats act, especially after one gets something they both want, like having his fur brushed: “Now do me!”

But although this is the scene where the storyboard were most important, we know that there was no way the show wasn’t going to show the guide to the all-important Jon Snow resurrection scene.

You’ll note that Jon Snow is referred to as “L.C.” Head here to see what that’s about.

Once again, it’s about the behavior of animals that aren’t quite there on screen. Ghost, at least, has a trained wolf stand-in, not a boomlift with a 40-foot flamethrower attached to it. What I think is interesting is that the storyboard shot doesn’t show what I thought was the most important camera shot of this sequence, the one that echoes the final shot of Season 5, except now, Jon Snow’s eyes are alive.