Game of Thrones is a difficult show to film at the best of times, and Mother Nature doesn’t help by raining rocks down on the cast and crew. According to a behind-the-scenes look from Entertainment Weekly, something like that happened early in the production process for Season 6. Filming was getting underway at Magheramorne Quarry, where the show films scenes at Castle Black, among other places, when there was a disturbance in the quarry’s “seismic profile.” Here’s how Owen Teale (Alliser Thorne) put it:
"A piece of rock the size of a London townhouse just fell."
The Castle Black set is nestled at the base of a rockface dressed to look like the icy Wall. The region gets a lot of rain (generally speaking, rain doesn’t show up on film unless cinematographers want it too, so this doesn’t that doesn’t really come across on the show), which is apparently what was responsible for knocking parts of the rockface loose.
Alliser Thorne, plotting to murder rockslides.
No one was hurt, but the rockslide did throw off the show’s shooting schedule. Logistically speaking, Game of Thrones is among the world’s hardest shows to shoot, and even a small alteration in scheduling can have big consequences. Executive producer Bernie Caulfield and producer Chris Newman managed it, though. They moved some things around, and according to showrunner Dan Weiss, everything worked out fine.
"[W]e got everything we needed in that quarry after it was seismically shored up and netted and proper protection measures were taken. It actually worked out for the best – some of the stuff we were shooting in that location benefited from the addition prep time the rockslide gave us."
Nice try, Mother Nature. Nice try.
Incidentally, this probably accounts for why there were reports of shooting in Magheramorne Quarry as late as December of last year. By that point, most of the filming is generally being done in the studio.