We review every commentary on the Game of Thrones season 7 Blu-ray boxset

Episode 703, “The Queen’s Justice.” Commentary by executive producer Bernadette Caulfield, production designer Deborah Riley and costume designer Michele Clapton.

• When the scouts found Zumaia Beach, they thought the rock striations resembled dragon skin. After that, they knew they had to film Dragonstone there. When she designed Daenerys’ Dragonstone throne, Riley modeled it after the striations. She was mindful of how Dragonstone looked in season 2, as well, although obviously we saw more of it in this season.
• Clapton didn’t give Daenerys a crown, because she’s not the queen yet, but she gave her that badass dragon chain across her chest, which is kind of a placeholder. “It’s a chain of intent.”
• Daenerys switched to blacks and reds in season 7, colors she hadn’t worn before, because she’s finally ready to fully embrace her lineage as a Targaryen conqueror. Her darker outfits are also supposed to reflect what the Unsullied wear, since she’s their commander. Really, everyone in her retinue now wears black. They’re going to war, after all, and they’ll need matching uniforms.
• Season 7 took longer to film than any season before it, but according to Riley, “I think one of the big problems we all had in season 7 was lack of time.” She’s speaking about production design, but the Dragonstone set certainly turned out well, so…
• Euron’s slashed costume is supposed to look like he slashed it himself. He has “a repetitive madness to him” that Clapton tried to reflect in his outfit. Also, “he’s an ass.”
• For the scene in the black cells with Cersei and Ellaria Sand, Deborah Riley actually chained herself to the wall to get the chain length right.
• “A moment of silence for Nikolaj’s buttocks.”
• If you’re wondering, yes, Cersei’s handmaiden is supposed to look like Cersei. The ladies of the court are emulating the queen.
• Sansa’s costume is supposed to reflect many different parts of her journey — there’s a bit of Ned in there, a bit of Catelyn, the chain she wore as “Dark Sansa,” and more. Littlefinger’s costumes, however, are not reflected in her outfits at all, although they were in earlier seasons.
• This marks the episode where Jorah Mormont finally stops wearing that yellow shirt he wore for six straight seasons. After all, it’s contaminated with greyscale now. “[Iain Glen] loved [the shirts] very much, but I finally went, ‘You can’t wear it anymore! You have to let me give you a new costume!'”
• The Casterly Rock set involved a lot of different areas edited together, one of which was the old Riverrun set.

Episode 704, “The Spoils of War.” Commentary by director Matt Shakman, director of photography Rob McLachlan, special effects supervisor Sam Conway, and camera operator Chris Plevin.

• I always wondered exactly what Littlefinger was trying to do when he offered Bran the dagger. As I suspected, he’s just trying to ingratiate himself with the young Stark. But it’s pretty impossible to curry favor with Bran these days; he has other things on his mind.
• These guys note that Bran may be seeing the history of the dagger as Littlefinger gives it to him, which would mean that he sat on the secret of what happened between Littlefinger and Ned for a while.
• The extreme close-ups of Bran and Littlefinger at the end of their conversation are inspired by shots from The Silence of the Lambs.
• The actors named their heavy fur garments. Sophie Turner reportedly named hers “Roger.”
• Now that winter has come, the production made sure that the Winterfell courtyard set was relatively empty of people, and that the ones still out were huddled around braziers for warmth.
• The look of the cave paintings on Dragonstone are inspired by Werner Herzog’s documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, about the first images known to be created by humans.
• Something I didn’t notice: When Littlefinger watches Brienne and Arya fight, he sees that Arya has the dagger he gave Bran, indicating that Arya has more sway over Bran than he does. That gives him a little more reason to target her.
• In some cases, the stunt guys who played the Dothraki riders also played the Lannister soldiers, so they were fighting themselves.
• Camilla Naprous, the show’s horse master, came up with the moment when the Dothraki stand up on their horses and jump from one to the other. So thank you, Ms. Naprous.
• Whenever Shakman talks about the Loot Train sequence, he talks about “really wanting” to stay with Jaime’s perspective rather than Daenerys’. I’d figure that would have been in the script, but whoever decided it, it was a great idea.

Episode 704, “The Spoils of War.” Commentary by producer Chris Newman, visual effects supervisor Joe Bauer, and visual effects producer Steve Kullback.

• There are 419 special effects shots in this episode, and more shots of the dragons than in the entirety of season 6. For reference, the entirety of season 3 had 800 special effects shots. Well, damn.
• At one point, the guys make some very interesting comments about Cersei’s map room set. It’s filmed in the Paint Hall at Titanic Studios, which means it’s an interior set, although it’s designed to look like it’s outside. Apparently, there’s a specific reason for that.
  • Steve Kullback: “Dan and David asked us to make it an exterior location in an upcoming episode, but I can’t tell you why. But that’ll pay off, too.”
  • Chris Newman: “The courtyard always was thought of as being an exterior courtyard, even before she had the map painted, hence the sunlight.”
  • Joe Bauer: “It used to be at least a story taller, but there was a need to see the sky in this coverage.”
  • Kullback: “Forthcoming coverage.”
• The team has had Cersei’s huge map of Westeros painted somewhere in the office, as is only fitting.
• Steve Kullback helpfully looked up the number of times Bran warged before season 7: 119 times. In season 7 itself, he only wargs seven times. Joe Bauer: “You really should sleep more.”
• The Winterfell crypt set doubled for the tunnel through which Lancel crawled before the Sept of Baelor exploded and the place where the pyromancers stored the wildfire back in season 2. It’s stood in for prison cells, too. Basically, whenever they need someplace dark and dank, they use this set.
• More fun facts about reusable sets: the Winterfell godswood also stood in for the scene in season 6 where Benjen dropped Bran off near a weirwood tree.
• And more: The caves underneath Dragonstone used to be the Three-Eyed Raven’s cave, and before that they were Melisandre’s bedroom on Dragonstone. They’re really good at redressing sets, these people.
• Special effects turn up in the most unexpected places. The production filmed scenes at Dragonstone on the islet of San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, which was often cloudy. In the scene where Missandei is talking to Jon and Davos, the sky behind her was entirely removed and replaced.

• The chopped-off horse leg we saw during the battle was CGI, obviously. No actual animals were harmed in the making of this scene. Computer-generated animals, on the other hand…
• Part of the visual strategy for the Loot Train Attack was to show lots of wide shots of the battlefield at the start of the fight — think of the shots where the Dothraki horde charges across the open field — and to get tighter and more claustrophobic as it went on — think of Bronn tumbling through a smoke-filled hellscape toward Qyburn’s scorpion.
• Joe Bauer: “It’s wishful thinking that the dragon is flying so fast that he’s kicking the water up in the air, but it looks neat, so we did it.” You done good, Joe.