“Battle of the Bastards” wins major cinematography and directing awards
By Dan Selcke
Awards season rolls on, and Game of Thrones is collecting more shiny trophies. Its latest honors come from the American Society of Cinematographers and the Directors Guild of America.
Let’s start at the 69th Annual DGA Awards, where director Miguel Sapochnik picked up a well-deserved award for directing “Battle of the Bastards.”
Anybody who watched the splashy action spectacular will understand why Sapochnik won. “Battle of the Bastards” featured some remarkable filmmaking, both in its quiet moments—like the parlay between Jon Snow, Sansa Ramsay before the battle—and during the fight itself. I don’t get why the DGA’s website lists the episode’s title as “The Battle of the Bastards,” though. Drop the “The,” people.
Other nominees in the Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Series category included the Duffer Brothers (Stranger Things, “Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers”), Ryan Murphy (The People v O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, “From the Ashes of Tragedy”), Jonathan Nolan (Westworld, “The Original”) and John Singleton (The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, “The Race Card”).
For no particular reason, here’s Sapochnik at the DGAs with Helen Mirren.
Next up, Fabian Wagner earned an award at the 31st ASC Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography for lensing “Battle of the Bastards.” Again, I probably don’t need to say a lot about how spectacular the episode looked and why Wagner deserved it.
Wagner was nominated in the Regular Series for Non-Commercial Television category. He was competing against fellow Thrones cinematographer Anette Haellmigk, who was nominated for her work on “Book of the Stranger.” Other nominees included John Conroy (Penny Dreadful, “The Day Tennyson Died”), David M. Dunlap (House of Cards, “Chapter 45”) and Neville Kidd (Outlander, “Prestonpans”).
“Battle of the Bastards” already cut a swath at the Emmys, where Sapochnik again won Best Director and David Benioff and Dan Weiss were honored for writing the episode. And the episode stands to win many more awards before award season is over. Tomorrow alone, it’s nominated in six categories at the Visual Effects Society Awards. Rock on, show.