Storyboards: Daenerys burning the khals alive

HBO’s Making Game of Thrones blog has once again brought us a behind-the-scenes look at a critical moment from this past week’s episode, which this week is “Book of the Stranger.” This time, it’s the final scene in the Temple of the Dosh Khaleen. As we can all guess, filming Dany’s pyromaniacal victory took some major planning, largely because of the danger involved. (As director Daniel Sackheim said, 90% of that fire was real, since CGI fire is really hard to get right.)

So how did the show plan out the shots for that scene, and more importantly, how closely did Sackheim stick to them? We’ve seen instances before where the director, for a variety of reasons, didn’t follow the storyboards very closely. For example, the show deviated a bit from the storyboards when filming the scene in Dazank’s Pit last year.

It turns out that, when it came to Dany’s version of Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House,” Sackheim stuck very closely to the storyboards.

If anything, the choice to stick to these shots, which included a bunch of tight images of Daenerys’ hands on braziers, gave the sense that the production was re-using shots.

Everybody panic!

One different: Daenerys’ hair isn’t as tightly tied back in the actual sequence as it is in the storyboards. On camera, it falls over her shoulders. And we never see her from the back once the burning starts.

Overall, the actual scenes sticks surprisingly close to the original concept. I suppose it’s best to follow instructions when playing with fire.