An Extra Talks About What it’s Like to Film Game of Thrones
By Ani Bundel
Last year was Game of Thrones first year filming in Spain. And as we have discovered, they liked the experience so much that they’ve moved nearly all filming, bag and baggage, from Croatian to Spainish locations. But the people on the production team weren’t the only ones who loved the experience. In Osuna, where the Plaza de Toros stood in for Meereen’s massive Daznak’s Pit, nearly 600 lucky extras got to experience being in Essos for over five days of filming. This season, the show will be casting thousands of extras from various Spanish locales, and according to one extra, they will love it.
Sharing his experience as a Game of Thrones extra on Quora, Felipe Ferri, who was a local extra in Dubrovnik for Season 4’s lavish wedding feast for Joffrey and Margaery, waxed effusive.
“The five days I spent on the set were amazing. They were intense – we had to meet at a pickup point at 4am and were dropped off at the same point at 7pm, but everything was so exciting that even the long hours didn’t matter. We spent the whole day in costumes and it was amazing to be surrounded by noble men and women, soldiers, servants and maids.”
The prop and sets and costumes that seem so immersive on screen are just as much so in real life. To the point where Ferri says he began to forget it wasn’t real.
“It is funny that you kinda begin to think that everything is real,” he said. “It is kinda scary, if you think about it. It was also extremely funny the anachronisms that you see in a place like that. Though your brain is starting to accept that you are in a medieval world, suddenly when you look to the side you see a servant typing on his iPhone.”
I’m sure that’s slightly disconcerting. But then again, what’s a little fantasy without technology? Let’s hope that those who get to be extras this season have as great a time as Ferri did.