Game of Thrones sound designer explains why “The Long Night” was so dark

Paula Fairfield worked on a sound designer on Game of Thrones starting with its third season, and almost from the start, she was one of the show’s many secret weapons. She regularly talked passionately about her work on the show, often focusing on what she brought to the dragons.

The final season was no different. Now up for an Emmy for Outstanding Sound Editing, she talked to Gold Derby about how proud she was of her work on season 8, and on the show in general.

Specifically, Fairfield and her team are nominated for an Emmy for their work on “The Long Night,” the landmark episode where the living fight the dead. “I think that tested everybody on this show way beyond anything we thought we were capable of doing,” Fairfield said of the notoriously difficult-to-produce episode. Each year, Fairfield tried to imagine what was coming, and said that “in my wildest dreams it was a battle between a live dragon and a dead dragon. I did not imagine an air fight between all three. That was insane.”

When designing the soundscape for the episode, Fairfield paid attention to the way Rhaegal sounded — since we didn’t know him as well as Drogon — as well as the sounds of the wights, who generally don’t make much noise unless attacking. But much of the reaction to the episode was about the low lighting, something Fairfield said was deliberate. “The point was to place you, the viewer, in the battle.”

"The White Walkers created this storm which thwarted their efforts to help one another. With this sense of being lost in the darkness, the viewer had to rely on sonic elements. Sometimes you literally could not see anything…which seemed to make a lot of people very uncomfortable. But if you were in that battle that was part of it. It was the disorientation. It was the night. It was the way the White Walkers were using the forces of nature to beat everybody down."

With everything being so dark, Fairfield and her colleagues had a lot of pressure to make the sound just right. Fairfield found herself focusing closely on things that hadn’t seemed as important before, like the sound of the dragons’ wings. “The wings actually became a gigantic element this season,” she said. “The ultimate expression of their size and their power in these scenes…I spent an enormous, probably ridiculous amount of time crafted the wings, and giving elements that made them very tactile and sensual.”

"One of my favorite sequences in “The Long Night” is one of the quietest. The dragons come above the clouds and…all you hear is light wind and the flapping of wings, before they dive back down…Those moments are so gorgeous. We go from this really delicate beauty to crazy raging power that were the dragons…It was a huge ride this season. It was amazing."

That moment was indeed a highlight, and Fairfield knows why, arguing that you need a break in cacophony or things become tiresome. “The fatigue is so overwhelming, people start to check out…The peaks and valleys kind of help give places to breathe, and also make the loud moments more dynamic.”

Fairfield also poured a lot of herself into the scene where Drogon finds Daenerys’ dead body and carries her away, surely one of the boldest scenes of the series. “That was what this season was about: laying it all on the table,” she said. “And it culminated in Drogon’s screech to the sky and his burning of the throne. For my journey with the dragons, it was fabulous closure. It broke my heart. And I remember cutting the last wings of Drogon as he flew off and going, ‘Oh my god, that’s it, never again.’”

"In some way his screaming at the sky…were kind of echoed by fans who didn’t want the damn show to end and they started screaming and yelling and it’s like this insane culmination of expression of emotion that in some ways we were all experiencing."

I’m sure there are fans who take issue with that particular interpretation of the backlash to season 8, but for Fairfield, the journey of working on Game of Thrones was an intensely personal one, one that started in anguish but ended in joy.

"I was going through some deep personal trauma when I started [in season 3]. And the show kind of saved me…Several of my family members had passed away of cancer very close to one another, my sister in particular had just passed…I was in such deep throes of pain and I had nowhere else to put it…I discovered the power of being vulnerable and emotional in the work…It became a source of communication and it became a source of my own personal healing, but I also realized that it made for a richer viewing experience…It became…a very powerful element of my own work, and something that I will take with me going forward for the rest of my days."

She makes reference to “the plaza scene” as being an early standout moment for her. I have to assume she’s talking about the scene where Daenerys sacks the city of Astapor, which is also one of the first scenes where we really see what the dragons are capable of. Fairfield has been killing it ever since.

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You can watch Fairfield’s full interview with Gold Derby below:

We’ll always be thankful to Fairfield for bringing her passion and expertise to the show, and will be rooting for her on Emmy night!

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