We listen and report on all 12 commentaries from the Season 5 boxset
By Dan Selcke
“Kill the Boy” commentary, featuring director Jeremy Podeswa, DP Greg Middleton, and actors Iwan Rheon (Ramsay Bolton) and Michael McElhatton (Roose Bolton)
This was a surprisingly sedate one, considering the people involved.
- Podeswa wanted to have a “big Brienne arc,” but it wasn’t to be.
- That shot of Sansa looking up at the Broken Tower is meant to be a callback to when Catelyn did it in Season 1
- When watching the scene where Sansa reunites with Theon, McElhatton made the same connection I did: he compared it to the first time Clarice Starling meets Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Podeswa wasn’t thinking about it, though.
“Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” commentary, featuring writer Bryan Cogman and actors Maisie Williams (Arya) and Tom Wlaschiha (Jaqen H’ghar)
I think this is the best commentary on the set. Cogman talks sensitively about important issues and Williams is hilarious.
- Apparently Sophie Turner was supposed to be on this commentary, but she bailed “for her X-Men family.”
- Confirmed: the little girl Arya convinces to kill herself by drinking the poison water is indeed the one whose face she uses when she kills Meryn Trant in “Mother’s Mercy.”
- According to Williams, there are only around 10 face models in the Hall of Faces, but all of them are differently colored, so it looks like there are tons.
- Before writing Season 6, Bryan Cogman re-watched the whole series. Kudos for doing your homework, Cogman!
- Maisie Williams: “Littlefinger just has a very irritating face.”
- Part of the reason Jaime raids the Water Gardens during the day was because the production wasn’t allowed to shoot at the Alcazar de Seville at night. Doesn’t make it any less of a bonehead move, though.
- Cogman denies he knows much about the Water Gardens raid, but says he thinks they didn’t have much time to shoot, due in part to the fact that it was shot at a tourist attraction. Still, his tone makes me think he knows there are a lot of coincidences that stretch credulity here.
- Apparently, Benioff and Weiss were planning to bring Jaqen H’ghar back into the into the series as Arya’s instructor as early as Season 2, when they saw that Williams and Wlaschiha had good chemistry
- Cogman’s comments on Sansa’s rape have been pretty well covered, but here are some more:
"I will say, though, that the accusation that our motives were ‘Oh, well they just threw in a rape for shock value,’ I personally don’t think the scene as shot and as written and as acted by our wonderful actors supports that argument, nor do I think the aftermath of the scene supports that argument, not only in these episodes but also in future episodes. The main thing I would say is that the story’s not over. This is a long, ongoing story. Sansa has a journey ahead of her, and what happens to her in that room is a huge part of that journey and one that we’ve thought through."
- Cogman refers to Season 5 as “the middle” of the show, and says that Season 5 starts “Part 2,” so they had to reset the scene.
- Williams and Cogman clearly enjoy each other’s company. They even sing the theme song at the end!
“The Gift” commentary, featuring…whaddaya mean there’s no commentary for “The Gift?”
Really, why is there no commentary for this episode? It’s one of Season 5’s better hours, and I would have liked some insight into it. Oh, well. There are fully three commentaries on “Hardhome” to make up for it.
“Hardhome” commentary 1, featuring stunt coordinator Rowley Irlam, director Miguel Sapochnik, and actors Kit Harington (Jon Snow) and Kristofer Hivju (Tormund Giantsbane)
Everybody wants to comment on “Hardhome.” Honestly, these commentaries weren’t all that insightful, but we sure did get a lot of opinions.
- In Episodes 7 and 8, one of Iain Glen’s eyes was bloodshot because his cornea was scratched in an earlier fight scene, but the production removed the blood in post-production.
- Hannah Waddington, who plays Septa Unella, is a comedian. Huh.
- Apparently, Ramsay’s “20 Good Men” scene was all one shot. The camera slowly pushed in on Ramsay’s face for the entire time, and ended with a close-up. That sounds like it would have been cool, but for some reason they inserted shots of Roose and different shots of Ramsay along the way.
- Harington has a hard time watching Game of Thrones, in part because he always figures out what he should have done in a scene after he’s already filmed it.
- The shooting script for this episode, which was written by Benioff and Weiss, described wights in a very specific way: “They look like zombies, but they’re not zombies.”
NOT zombies.
“Hardhome” commentary 2, featuring VFX producer Steve Kullback, VFX supervisor Joe Bauer, and producer Chris Newman
This is a commentary from the technical guys. What secrets do they unearth?
- There are 484 visual effects shots in this episode, 477 of which were from the Hardhome sequence.
- The scene where Cersei slurps water off the floor was surprisingly hard to pull off technically. They couldn’t actually force Lena Headey to suck water off what might have been a dirty floor, so they had to inset a sanitary bit of prop floor into the ground. They filled it with Evian water.
Apparently, this wasn’t as gross as it looks.
- The shot where the White Walker general steps into the hut and the fire kind of avoids him was the last shot of Season 5, which I take to mean it was the last shot to be visually touched up.
“Hardhome” commentary 3, featuring DP Fabian Wagner, camera operators Sean Savage and David Morgan
These guys repeat some of the factoids from the previous “Hardhome” commentaries, like the bit about Cersei slurping the water off the floor, but it’s cool to hear their passion. It’s no wonder so many members of the technical crew wanted to talk about “Hardhome”—it was the biggest thing they’d ever gotten to do on the show…at the time.
- The shot where Jorah is framed in a doorway as he leaves Meereen was done with a green screen.
- Wagner notes that, in a show where the dialogue and acting is strong, there’s no need to move the camera much, since it’ll just take away from the scene. Way to respect the material.
- These guys spent 17 days working on the Hardhome set. Keep in mind that they shot this in Northern Ireland during a time of the year when there wasn’t as much daylight, so they really had to make the most of the time they had every day.
- When the White Walker general pushes Jon Snow off the landing in the hut, Kit Harington didn’t have anything to break his fall, so that probably hurt.
- Director Miguel Sapochnik “played” Wun Wun when the giant is swinging a giant, flaming log at wights, by which I mean he ran around waving a stick with a tennis ball on the end of it to give the extras an idea of where the giant was supposed to be. The actor who plays Wun Wun was filmed at a different location and digitally added to the mix later.
- The guys drop little hints about the need for Game of Thrones to top itself every year when it comes to spectacle, and imply that Season 6 has something bigger than Hardhome. I’m sure plenty of fans can guess what that will be.