Matt Shakman is a Game of Thrones newbie, but if anybody had doubts that he could direct an episode of the show, they were silenced when “The Spoils of War” aired this past Sunday. Shakman sat down with Variety to talk about making the episode, particularly that action-packed battle at the end of it.
“I started by trying to focus on whose point of view I wanted to prioritize, because there are a lot of points of view in it,” Shakman said when asked how he tried to make this battle scene different from other ones the show has had. “You see Tyrion’s point of view, you see Daenerys, you see Jaime, Bronn. And I also decided with Jaime and Bronn to focus on what it was like to be the man on the ground in the middle of a dragon attack.”
"We rooted for Daenerys as she burned slavers in Meereen from the sky. We’ve been with her in sort of heroic moments with the dragons. But we’ve never been in a battle between two people that we love and are rooting for, and I wanted to see what it was like for those men on the ground when war changed forever, when traditional fighting goes out the window because of a giant weapon like napalm or even an atom bomb is suddenly introduced and what that sort of horror is like on the ground."
That sort of ambiguous conflict — where we have loyalties on both sides — definitely gave the Loot Train Battle (that’s what HBO seems to be calling it) a different feel that what had come before. Game of Thrones has featured some huge battle scenes, but usually, we knew who the good guys and the bad guys were. Even at the Battle of Castle Black in season 4, we wanted the Night’s Watch to beat the wildlings, even though we liked Ygritte and Tormund. This was something new.
Of course, the other big difference with this battle is that it heavily involved a huge fire-breathing dragon. “So the beginning of this battle…is more similar to the Battle of the Bastards in that you have lines colliding, horses hitting men on the ground,” Shakman said. “So it’s more traditional warfare. But once Drogon comes into it, it changes completely. The dragon is able to fly to any part of the battlefield. So the rules of the battlefield changed. The geography is constantly shifting.”
"The horror on the ground is much larger than it has been, I think – the damage and the destruction from the last time we saw a dragon attack in Season 6. Now Drogon is the size of a 747 and the cone of flame that he sends out is 30-feet wide. So we discussed early on that the center of that flame would be so hot that it would carbonize almost instantly. So we looked a lot at Pompei as reference, which led to the idea of people just turning to ash in an instant. The people on the edge of the fire are cooking in their armor and rushing to the water to try to save themselves. But the people in the middle, their humanity is just gone in an instant."
With that much danger on the battlefield, Shakman wanted the audience to fear that any one could die at any minute. “I hoped the people watching it would fear for Jaime, that they would fear for Daenerys when she was on the ground, that they would fear for Drogon, that they would fear for Bronn,” he said.
"You have Tyrion stuck between the people that he loves, watching Jaime rush to what could be his death, watching Daenerys highly vulnerable down there, pulling that Scorpion bolt from Drogon’s side. I think the goal always was to keep the possibility of death imminent. Also, with Bronn, following him through the horror, he’s really our guide through the worst part of it. He’s running through the most dangerous part of the battlefield, and that’s why I wanted to have a very long, uninterrupted shot of him."
Bronn, for my money, was the MVP of the episode, even if Jaime got the big dragon-charging hero shot.
Macall B. Polay – HBO
All in all, Shakman spent the bulk of six months preparing for this battle, which took 18 days to shoot. And as complicated as it was to incorporate the dragon, seeing the Dothraki in the field of battle was another major moment. Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Shakman described how he approached depicting Dany’s band of warrior horsemen:
"I wanted to play with sound and silence. We sensed them coming before we really hear them coming. Then they’re there from a distance, and we smash into the chaos of them as they approach. I wanted that feeling of a Western — this savage attack coming at this more formalized line of men, that tension of circling the wagons and trying to protect them from the chaos and the onslaught. Working with our horse wrangler, we came up with some of the specific things that they can do: We wanted to show their horse mastery and why they were so formidable in battle. Those were some of my favorite images: When they rise up to shoot arrows, they’re literally standing on their saddles, defying gravity. I worked on a Western once before and did some research on Comanche war tactics and we tried to steal some of those as well. When one of the Dothraki leans completely over to cut off Bronn’s horse’s leg, he leans completely out of his saddle to the side. That’s something I read that the Comanche did to avoid attack, arrows and gunshots. It was fun to create the language for how they would be."
It’s like Robert Baratheon said all those years ago: “Only a fool would meet the Dothraki in an open field.” There’s no teacher like experience.
As for influences, Shakman naturally looked back to other people who had directed huge battles on Game of Thrones, including Neil Marshall (“Blackwater,” “The Watchers on the Wall”) and Miguel Sapochnik (“Hardhome,” “Battle of the Bastards”). He got some inspiration from movies, too, including Apocalypse Now. “There’s one battle sequence between the helicopters attacking a village that’s very similar and that you are dealing death from the sky and you have multiple points of view and you’re with the villagers and they have to react to this horror on the ground. I used a lot of that as touchstone imagery: the idea of these helicopters flying through the smoke is very similar to Drogon flying through the smoke.”
As for depicting the chaos on the ground, he looked to the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, and John Ford’s Stagecoach.
Finally, let’s talk about that cliffhanger. Obviously, Shakman didn’t reveal whether Jaime will survive his dip in the lake, but he did say that the episode ended as writings David Benioff and Dan Weiss envisioned, and revealed tidbits about how they filmed it:
"We shot some stuff underwater in a pool in Belfast, which is always a challenge — it’s very difficult to shoot in water. The final image of the episode in what we call “dry for wet.” He was dropped on a wire rig in a space that was completely black and we added some smoke and shot it in very high speeds of slow motion and then added stuff to make it feel like water. That’s a trick used in The Lord of the Rings and a lot of other movies and gives you more control than actually shooting in water. It was definitely a challenge, but Nikolaj and Jerome were amazing during the shooting of this battle and were willing to do anything and did some pretty amazing stunt work themselves."
Shakman also directed the next episode of season 7, “Eastwatch.” Can he reveal anything about that? “I hope people enjoy the episode.” Ditto.
Next: 'The Spoils of War' is the highest-rated episode of Game of Thrones ever
Switching gears a bit, costume designer Michele Clapton talked to HBO’s Making Game of Thrones about dressing the Stark kids for their reunion in this episode. “Winter has come, so I wanted to reflect the somber mood, a closing down,” she said. “There are discreet tones within the costumes, subdued hints of their sigil colors.”
Helen Sloan – HBO
“I wanted to reflect how different they all are from their experiences. There is something they have taken from their parents in the shape of a dress, the cut of a cape or the quilting details, apart from Bran who is so removed. Sansa’s cape, for instance, represents Ned and her desire to take on more of a leadership role at Winterfell.” Clapton also took a deep dive into Sansa’s belt.
"This is her taking back control of her body. I designed it to wrap around over her side-laced dress to represent the absolute removal of any possible physical touch. Her dresses are also tightly-laced on, incredibly difficult to remove; it’s a message to Littlefinger."
For closer looks at the costumes, head to the Making Game of Thrones blog.
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