♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) ♪ (SOLDIERS YELLING) Episode five shouldjust be called “Holy Shit, ” because we started readingthe outline and just went, “Holy shit!” Doing lots ofdragon strafe runs, burning most of the set.
We set fire to 22 people.
-(MEN YELLING)-ROWLEY IRLAM: Twice.
We've been doing many burns, amputees, mutilated bodies.
We had three motion controlrigs going, a spider cam.
Our King's Landing setis round about 650 extras.
BERNADETTE CAULFIELD: We had three units going, and now, at the end, four.
We've been just slammedsince day one.
SEAN SAVAGE: Big telescopic cranes, up to nine cameras.
It was off the scale, really, in every way.
STEVE KULLBACK: And then we saw the set and what Deb Riley and her team was building, and we just said, “Wow, this is amazing.
” DAVID BENIOFF: King's Landing, traditionally, has beenDubrovnik.
The thing about Dubrovnik is, it's a really beautiful city, and they love it, and they don't want us to, you know, burn it down.
We've had this areaout the back of the office.
It's been there for, you know, since we ever started here.
DEBORAH RILEY: It's so closeand so easy, and Belfast needs a backlot.
Why don't we justcall this a backlotand build the set for real? There's no such thing as a setyou can just walk ontoand shoot when you're planningon destroying it.
There was so much thought that went into every single section because it had so many requirements.
While we were designingthe buildings, we were designing thedestruction at the same time.
So, for every lovely drawingof plans and elevationsof the building, we had lovely plans and elevations of the buildings destroyed.
It's not just a set that stands there and people walk in and out.
It goes through all these changes.
We're gonna see the plaza on Main Street all on fire.
SAM CONWAY: In order to supply all the flames, each building has its ownmanifold system that gets broken upinto many, many different pipes to each window or doorway or roof.
-MAN: (ON RADIO)Stand there, mate.
-WOMAN: Yep, we're on now.
CONWAY: It's all kind of steel and hoses and cryogenic hoses and valves, and normal valves, and two-ton gas tanks, three-ton gas tanks, five-ton gas trucks.
It makes for a heavily propane-filled set.
There wasn't a lot of timeup our sleeve that we could take weeksto change the set overinto a destructed stage.
So, Tom Martin, our construction manager, came up with the genius idea of building the set in its destroyed stage first and then cladding it so that it was perfect to begin with.
No crew member that wasn't there during the build process had any idea that the destroyed version was sitting underneath, waiting to be revealed.
I took a little videofor myself on my phone of the backstreets, not even the main drag.
The lanes, the offshoots, and the aged doors, with tear stains of rust running down them.
It absolutely looks like it's been there for hundreds and hundreds of years.
So, it's loads of detail, loads of cornices and pillars and friezes, corbels, all over the set.
DARREN FITZSIMONS: It's been a lot of scenic sculpture.
We did a quite largerelief plaque with the letter “D” quite prominently.
Both Dan and David.
So we had two of them, obviously.
ROB CAMERON: From a set dec perspective, Deb wanted an authenticsort of place, with the shopfronts, you know, and the color palette, all the doors, all the studs, you know, all that sort of detail we wanted as real as possible.
It's shocking when you gobehind one of these doorsand you see scaffolding, 'cause you really think you're in these places.
Nikolaj and Isaid the other day, “We'll never be on anythingthat is this vast ever again.
They've built Croatia.
And not, like, a street, they've built, like, 17 streets and alleys.
It has its drawbacks, because it's right in the middleof the city.
ROBBIE BOAKE: The King's Landing set was sprawling within Belfast within view of a number of raised buildings.
We had an unprecedented numberof drones, paparazzi attention, people justfollowing the show aroundand trying to get a sneak peek.
What we didn't want them to see was get the view looking down the King's Landing street, so we stuck up a five-high container wall and that problem died down pretty quick after that.
One of the great thingsabout going to Dubrovnikwas there was a reality there that it was impossible to recapture with a set.
And this year, Deb recaptured that reality with the set.
BENIOFF: It felt like you were wandering through Dubrovnik, but we were in Belfast.
We were in a parking lot across from the Harland and Wolff cranes.
It was just, you know, her crowning achievement.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER) MAN: Three, two, one, action.
TYRION LANNISTER: There'ssomething you need to know.
DAENERYS TARGARYEN:Someone's betrayed me.
TYRION: Yes.
We enter into five.
.
.
with a broken Dany.
DAENERYS: Jon Snow.
Varys.
DAENERYS:He knows the truth about Jon.
TYRION: He does.
DAENERYS: Because you told him.
BENIOFF: If Jon hadn't told her the truth, if Cersei hadn't betrayed her, if Cersei hadn'texecuted Missandei, if all these things had happenedin any different way, then I don't thinkwe'd be seeing this side ofDaenerys Targaryen.
DAENERYS: I, Daenerysof House Targaryen, sentence you to die.
What?If Tyrion betrayed Varys, Tyrion is responsiblefor Varys's execution? They're best of friends.
Not really.
There's other things at play here.
TYRION: It was me.
BENIOFF: He has to betray somebody, right? It's a choice between betrayingyour best friend or your queen, and he chooses to remain loyalto his queen.
-♪ (INDISTINCT SINGING) ♪-(INDISTINCT CHATTER) BOTH: (SINGING) ♪ We all need somebody To lean on ♪ No, just.
.
.
chillin' with the harmony, babe.
-That was really nice, That was good.
-Yeah, with the harmonizing.
MAN: Here we go, guys.
Shooting.
C marker.
Action! SAPOCHNIK: It was scripted that he puts his hand up to touch Varys.
What Conleth didthat I really, really liked was his reaction, which was shock.
He did that this one time, and I said to him, “Why'd you do that?” He said, “Well, he's never been touched before.
And it was cool, and it wasjust something like, “Wow.
Okay.
That– I mean, it made lots of sense.
” It was like, suddenly he was being touched, and he– this is not a man who's ever been touched.
Well, it was one of the first scenes we shot.
We got to a certain point, and then it started raining, and it started pouring, and then, basically, the only time I've ever beenon Thrones when we got shut downbecause it was torrential rain.
Then we went back and we re-shot the wides of that scene.
And then we realized that we owed all the parts from one side, where you have the dragon behind.
So, basically, it was shot over seven months, and each time, you know, poor Conleth had to kind of show up again, Varys had to just stand theregoing, “Okay, I guess I'm dying again.
” DAENERYS: Dracarys.
(ROARS) BENIOFF: We thought it was important, in the siege of King's Landing, that the good guysnot be good guys anymore, and that the linesbetween good and bad and right and wrong get erased.
SAPOCHNIK: We mirrored a lotof the Battle of Bastards shots, but instead of havingthe Boltonsbe the invading army, we had the allied troops.
There's a shot that pulls up behind Jon and reveals the Bolton army for the first time in “Battle of the Bastards, ” and we do the same thing but from behind the leader of the mercenary group.
What we need to understand, as an audience, is that these people have come here for blood.
The hardest series of shotsis the moment that the King's Landing gate is obliterated by dragonfire.
It's covered by eight cameras, one explosion over all of these camera views, each camera view is carrying the explosion further.
The complexity of breakingnot only the gate, but destroying the wall, wiping out the people, getting the fire element, you know, big enough to travel as we needed it to.
.
.
Then there was this whole seriesof live action components, Harry Strickland's horse that gets annihilated.
MAN: Three, two, one.
-(AIR HISSES)-MAN: Action! (HORSE WHINNIES) A real Gold Companyand digital Gold Company.
Jump straight in, make your arm into a shield, and that's it.
Do you wanna close down, mate.
JAMIE MILES: We trained them the same as we trained the Unsullied, but just changed a fewof their drill movements to define themfrom being Unsullied.
-MAN: Rolling!-(CREW CLAMORING) Forty-four bigger, take five, eight camera mark.
Then there was a half-scale gatebuilt by Sam Conway.
CONWAY: The half-scale gate explosion.
We've been building it out of, like, basically, biscuit foam and balsa.
We're gonna be blasting it out of the way with, uh, with many air mortars.
-MAN: Three, two, one.
-(AIR HISSES) CONWAY: So, basically, what the idea is to achieve this 60-foot explosion coming out of the center of the gates, and also some flame bangs too.
You know, it was a lotof planning for productionand a lot of work for Sam, and now it's a lot of workfor us.
Don't fall on him.
Don't dropyour fire extinguisheron his head.
(LAUGHS) MAN: Three, two, one, action.
♪ (UP-BEAT MUSIC PLAYS) ♪ As the dragonshave gotten bigger, they've been lightingmore and more people on fire, and I believe–I believe this year, one of the thingsthat Rowley brought to the table was the most people that have ever been burned onscreen for a production.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)-Yeah, that's fine.
MAN: .
.
.
if you haven'tdone this before.
SAVAGE: That's the directorjust locking my head off.
-(SAPOCHNIK CHUCKLES)-I just know what he's doing.
I wish he wouldn't touch it.
IRLAM: The 22 burns is actually 44 burns.
Um.
.
.
It's two halves.
And five of the 22 werefull burns, but with no masks.
When the time comesand the call's given, there's a process of getting them ready.
They're all wearing two-mil wetsuits covered with three layers of Nomex race underwear soaked in Zel-Jel.
On top of that is a race suit covered with a boiler-suit and then a costume.
And then they have silicon masks on and gloves on.
IRLAM: What we essentially did waswe lit the five guys manually, and then we detonated 17 Taymars, which are basically, um, gas camping canisters inside metal cages.
And they create a 15-foot fireball.
“Three, two, one, action!”17 poppers go off amongst all the full fire jobs, yeah? Then “Three, two, one, action!”everybody reacts forward.
The full burns goon the “A” of “action, ” the partials go on “-tion, “these guys go after I've finished sayingthe word “action.
” Okay? So we geta tiny ripple effect.
We'll do a rehearsal.
When he first lit me up, my trousers were quite baggy, so they had to spritz me with IPH, so there was some fumes in there.
(CHUCKLES) And I'm bending over, and they lit me, and it just went, boom! I thought, “God, that's hot.
I'm hot already, and we've not even started to countdown yet.
” IRLAM: We're rolling, guys, rolling, rolling.
Have a good one, boys.
Three, two, one, action! -Three, two, one, action!-(MEN SCREAMING) SAVAGE: We had up to nine cameras covering that scene.
It was an extraordinarysensation, as well, filming it.
You know it's fiction, but to see that many men on fire, I found quite distressing at times.
PETER DINKLAGE: I remember the smell.
It's horrifying.
IRLAM: (SHOUTS)Go, go, go, go, go! IRLAM: And then we put them all out.
So, for 22 people, we had 22 other people with fire extinguishers plus another six people with fire extinguishers backing all of that up.
So, it's a big deal.
-MAN: Three, two, one.
-(ALL CHEER) We have our initial destruction, which is the dragon comes in, blows shit up, says, very clearly, “This isn't going to end well for you.
” In come the allied forces, and they take out the Lannisters.
And the audience go, “Yeah!” ♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) ♪ Once the Lannisters surrender and the gates have been blown open, and the Golden Company has been dispersed, the battle's over, and Jon feels like that's quite clear.
They did it, they did the impossible.
This is a bloodless coup.
It's out of Cersei's hands.
You cut to Cersei, see her.
You cut to Tyrion realizingthis is an opportunity, this is the momentwhere the bells could ring and we could call all this off.
(DROGON ROARS) And then you go to Dany.
She feels empty.
It wasn'twhat she thought it was.
It's not enough.
EMILIA CLARKE: Every single thing that's led her to this point, and there she is, alone.
We've all got this part of us, that part that goes, “I'm gonna put that chocolate cake down.
” (CHUCKLES) “I'm gonna walk away.
” We can't be getting into these moral conundrums all the time.
I'm not saying chocolate cakeis a moral conundrum, eat as much fucking cakeas you want– but those things that you wrestle with in yourself.
She knows thatshe has won this war.
It's in that moment when she makes the decision to make this personal.
It's one of my favoriteEmilia performance moments, because it took place on the back of, like, a giant green dragon buck without a real thing anywhere in sight.
Emilia's really nice.
And she cares.
She's a whole bunch of things that Dany isn't.
So reaching this part of Dany is a–was a tough call for her.
Ultimately, she is who she is, and that's a Targaryen.
You know, she has saidrepeatedly throughout the show, “I will take what is mine with fire and blood.
” And in this episode, she does it.
SAPOCHNIK: For the audience.
.
.
Oh, you wanted a battle?Well, here you go.
-(SCREAMING)-(DROGON ROARS) Drogon's fire-blastingdoes a lot of damage.
I mean, he's not Godzilla, but we're headingin that direction.
Cameras on, all set, and.
.
.
BOTH: Three, two, one, blast it.
CONWAY: Uh.
.
.
We create a lot of, um, interactive light for dragonfire.
So that can either be a series of large flamethrowers or it can be a pyrotechnic charge that we'll light up.
(POPPING) And of course, then, what happens is, we take–we go back to the studio and then we do it with the VFX mo-co cameras.
We had the big flamethroweron the Spidercam onstage that was shooting, you know, 40 feet of fire.
And then we do, also, the impact scene on the ground.
We do that as a half-scale model shoot, pyrotechnic charge goes along.
MAN: Three.
Two.
One.
Action! And all these thingsget tied in together, so you'll see the dragonfire chasing those flames, and then where the dragonfire lands, you'll see all the pyrotechnic charges going off.
The place, when she takes off.
.
.
and starts burning the city, and when the Unsulliedon the ground and the Northmen on the ground take that as their cue that anything goes.
.
.
MAN: (OVER LOUDSPEAKER)That should be enough, guys, but it's not.
Just up ahead, everyone looking up, you can see the dragoncoming down.
It fires on the city.
And.
.
.
go, Gray Worm.
(MEN YELLING) LIAM CUNNINGHAM: There's a moment when we see Gray Worm taking out his enemieswhen there's no need to do that.
(SCREAMING) BENIOFF: The way we described it in the screenplay was that he's becomealmost an angel of death.
♪ (UP-BEAT MUSIC PLAYS) ♪ He's just gone backto being like, this kind of traumatized robot.
WEISS: There are a lot of people lurking in the background.
See if you can find Aaron Rodgers.
I was helping a womanwho was injured, uh, set her down, and then, the hell with her, I'm getting outta there.
So, struggle, struggle, and then, I struggle and die -forcing me to the ground.
-Yeah.
Uh.
.
.
Guys, room, please.
The beheading came from the ideato take the audience to a place where they feltthat they shared the bloodlustof the Starks, so they wanted to see these people get creamed, and then to give themwhat they wanted, -and show them with no mercy the horrors of war.
-(SCREAMS) (SCREAMING) At that face-off in that moment, you're with Jon more than anybody else.
Interestingly, when we were editing it, there was a mistake made at the moment that it goes to slow motion.
(SCREAMING) Our sound cut, and I was like.
.
.
(GROANS) .
.
.
and suddenly, I was riveted.
(BREATHES DEEPLY) (WOMAN'S SCREAM ECHOES) Nothing letting meoff the hook from seeing what he's seeingand experiencingwhat he's experiencing.
There's a great shotthat Miguel got.
You just have the Lannister soldier, who's guiding the civiliansof King's Landing to safety, and the good guy in this shotis a shot in bad guy armor, and the bad guys in this shot -are the ones who are doing all these horrific things.
-(GRUNTING) SAPOCHNIK: If three was the final battle between good and evil, five is “What have we become?” It's all got a bit bleak, hasn't it? It's quite bleak.
This season's really bleak.
(LAUGHS) ♪ (UP-BEAT MUSIC PLAYS) ♪ (ROARS) EURON GREYJOY: If I win.
.
.
I'll bring your head to Cerseiso you can kiss her.
-One last time.
-(GRUNTS) (MAN SHOUTS) PILOU ASBAEK: Finally, after 15 years of being colleagues, I'm given two daysto kick his ass.
(GRUNTING) The time for gentleman-likefights are over.
The idea wasit was a slugfest.
It's gonna be very funnyfor Denmark, because two of their actorsare gonna fight it off.
The Dane Bowl.
(SPEAKING DANISH) IRLAM:It's a little bit disconcerting when they start talking Danish to each other, 'cause I'm not sure whetherthey're changing a move, or conspiring to do somethingthat we don't want them to do.
Where we did it, it wasa very unfriendly environment, which was big rocks and stonesand a tide– it was very– you know, very small covewhere the tide came in and out, and it was wet and sandy.
Those guys being soaking wet, and having sand everywhere, they're probably still findingsand in the bath now.
MAN: Three, two, one, action.
WEISS: Euron is a psychopath.
A normal person would not swim to shore just so he could murderone other person.
He wants to know what new things are like.
As he says with Cersei, “Life can be boring.
” (GROANS) WEISS: The ultimate new interestingexperience he's never had before is death, and I think he's strangely excited about having that experience as well.
I mean, he dies with a smile on his face.
PILOU: That was the first thing I asked Dan and David is, “Am I dead?” They go like, “No!Maybe.
A little.
” And I go like, “No, I don't think so.
” It struck us that it would beapocalyptically beautiful to see them fightingon this stairway to nowhere with the sky in the background and the dragon flying by, and the flames everywhere, and it's just pretty epic and that's what we wanted.
Hello, big brother.
One more and this time, guys.
.
.
We shot this thingfor days and days and days, and it was so hard to shoot, and it was a massive set.
There was a 72 steps.
RILEY: The really important thing for me in designing the staircasewas that it felt grand.
We've always seen thesecomputer generated illustrations of King's Landing, and there is a big tower down the side of the big keep.
PAUL GHIRARDANI: The problem with the staircase is it will want to go up, so I think the first timein our kind of history of building things here, we've actually hit the grid of the stages.
There's a lot of crew, and there'sjust the one staircase, so.
.
.
trying to get cameras into positions.
.
.
right up against the staircase, it's been quite difficult.
RICHARD HANSEN: The same time, the building is being ruined by the dragon fire, so there'scrumbling walls everywhere.
Special effects will be droppingrocks and sand and debris, and so there's all these kind of interesting challenges as well as.
.
.
running in and fighting, and falling down the stairs.
So, when you attack, it's better that you're slower, but on target.
.
.
(GRUNTS).
.
.
and he gets out of the way, rather than try to bereally fast and deliberately missing, 'causewe'll see a deliberate miss.
-Does that make sense?-Yeah.
Just slow and deliberate.
Everyone, ready?And.
.
.
rehearse stage.
And.
.
.
three, two, one, action.
-(HELMET CLANKS)-Ooh! Help.
Sorry.
SEAN SAVAGE: The way we tackled it was we put one very big crane on the inside of the circle, on the inside of the staircase, which could reach any point on that staircase, and then where the staircaseshad been destroyed at the back, we've got another craneon a large rostrum, so we've could shoot both ways.
When we're on the staircase, we shoot a whole combination of handheld, and then we deploy our Artemis Maxima, which is this handheld stabilized rig.
(THE HOUND GRUNTS) SAVAGE: We learn the choreography.
We get trust of the actors and vice versa, and if you learn it well enough, you can step inside that zone with the swords going overthe camera or under the camera.
Before you know it, it gets pretty exciting.
(GRUNTING) MAN: Cut! You know, that fight was brutal.
It's brutal to watch, but it was brutal to shoot as well, because.
.
.
for Hafpór, he's wearing so many prosthetics.
Hafpór had to wake up at midnight to get ready for a 8:00 a.
m.
call.
SAPOCHNIK: Seven-and-a-half hours of makeup, um, and then he had to do a ten hour day.
They were– They were hard.
They were hard, hard work.
When we read the scripts, we realizedthat there's this big reveal.
MAN: And another step.
Ah, fuck it.
Just pull it off.
BARRIE GOWER: So the last time we'd really seen the Mountain from the hands of our work was season four.
He was like on the slab, and he had this whole rotted, kind of ulcerated areaon the side of his torso.
So, that was really the only springboard we had to the design.
They kept referring to him as Franken-Mountain.
And we just came up with this kind of putrid, almost porcelain looking.
.
.
It was this Frankensteinian looking figure.
MAN: Cut.
IRLAM: Hafpór wonWorld's Strongest Man this year.
We got him really late because of that as well, so we basically usedhis strength to throw Rory's character aroundand he had a really big day where literally, he spent the whole day being thrown into walls.
(GRUNTS) (YELLS) SAPOCHNIK: This isn't a trained stuntman.
This is the guy that smashes stuff up.
(YELLS) MAN: And three, two, one, smack him against the wall.
(THE HOUND CROAKS) MAN: Cut.
SAPOCHNIK: Rory was like.
.
.
I mean.
.
.
sometimes, we thought he was dying on the stairs in between takes, literally.
(RETCHES) MAN: Everyone okay? RORY: For a big man, you're very gentle.
(CHUCKLES) Thank you.
(SIGHS) I, after a couple days, decided to have a–I brought Hafpór in, and I gave him this– a box with a sandbag on top of it, and I put the camera underneath and we didn't– there's no reason to shoot it, and I was like, “I just want you to just– When I saw action, just fucking smash that as hard as you possibly can.
Pretend it's Rory's head.
And looking rightat the camera.
.
.
And he was just like going.
.
.
(BLOWS) .
.
.
like that, and we're shooting itin slow motion.
Three, two, one, and action.
(THUD) And one more time.
And three, two one, and action.
Great, and now this time, just– And I just wanted to getall his anger out, so that it was all done and then we went offand did the scene.
MAN: Set! (BOXES THUD) We're gonna do a 30 foot fallwhere Gyula takes off Mike, the stunt double for the Mountain, into a box rig.
For two really big guys, and one of them going off backwards in full prosthetics, it's getting the wall right that's the difficult bit because, you know, it's meant to be like four-foot thick.
It will be a couple of feet thick, but it's trying to get that to look right.
(GRUNTS) BENIOFF: There are many times when we're planning a season, and you know, you kind ofhave to avoid giving the audience exactly what they want because then things start to become predictable.
This is the case where we wanted the same thing.
We've always wanted to see these two face off, and they finally did.
IRLAM: Ready, ladiesand gentlemen.
Here we go.
CAMERAMAN: Yep.
Here we go.
WEISS: You needed a perspective to carry youthrough this horror, and we thought Arya was the bestperson to use for that purpose.
I got a call from Miguel, basically was like, “I can't tell anything, but you know what we did in BOB?” I was like, “Yeah.
” He was like, “We're gonna do that but with you, ” and I was like, “Okay.
” It was meant to be, ultimately, come across as a seven-and-a-half minute, non-stop shot, where you follow her on the run.
We practiced thismany, many times.
We've spent a whole day, two days, practicing the shot already with Arya and with all the stunt team and all the extras we require.
Little boy, back downthe stairs, round.
.
.
Gonna really throw awaythe girl coming out the window.
-MAN: Cam speed.
-MAN: 69 apple, take six.
38 frames.
♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYS) ♪ IRLAM: Three, two, one, action.
From a camera perspective, it took us an hour.
.
.
to figure outhow we're gonna move the camera.
It's all the other stuffthat goes on in the background, you know, and you've got a great special effects crew, who, you know, put in smoke and flame bars, and lots of extras.
(INDISTINCT SHOUTING) Every single extra you look atwill have each of their stories, so.
.
.
you know, I think that'swhat makes those one-ersso intense.
So, I think definitely, when you came in here, that thing that first timeyou're on the ground, it's like, “Fuck! I'm fucked.
I'm fuckedunless I get out of here.
How do I get out of here?Go this way.
” We've got all sortsof air mortars going off.
(EXPLOSION) SAPOCHNIK: And she getspicked up by the crowd.
(INDISTINCT SHOUTING) And she is just cannon fodder, because Dany is bombingthe city.
-(RUMBLING)-(SCREAMING) I've decided on this journeyto a new life, and I might not even make it out of the gates.
I think we want the audienceto think that's she's dead, for like a second, but audiencesare too smart for that.
(GASPS) IRLAM: There's an elementof luck in these things as well, you know, we need everybody to get a little bit luckyat the same time.
We're setting people on fire during it, and putting them out during it.
If I miscue it or not cue it quick enough, it doesn't work.
There's any number of things that can just make the take not as good as you would hope it to be, and they typically take ten takes to get.
MAN: Delta mark, 48 frames.
Bravo, 69.
Delta take one on the end.
Um.
.
.
-(WALL CRACKS)-♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYS) ♪ -(SCREAMING)-(ARYA PANTS) KULLBACK:The journey that Arya's taking, heavily inspiredby the firebombing of Dresden because what it needs to look like is the firebombing of King's Landing.
WEISS: It was interesting to usthat we could– we could take a modern reference and map itonto a pre-modern situation, because we have air firepower in the form of the dragons.
(SCREAMING) SAPOCHNIK: If you see some of the photographs, they're terrifying photographsof not just the levelof destruction, but you know, there's peoplewalking to work the next day with decapitated heads lying on the ground.
It's like– it's a terrifying, terrifying thing.
MAISIE WILLIAMS: She's seen some awful things, but this is likemass destruction and.
.
.
it's pretty sickening, even forthe strongest of people.
We'd been doingmany full body burns, some with negative space, some crushed, sort of mutilated bodies.
Extras, which are amputees, and we've created severed limbs, so we've had team of about five, six people on a day to day basis and on some days, Miguel would say, “Right, I need these guys to have some head injuries.
This guy's got his throat slashed.
This guy's gonna be really badly burned.
So, suddenly, our guys just pile in, and we've gotthis big jigsaw puzzle of pieces that we've got in our arsenal, and fortunately, it seems to have worked out.
IRLAM: Now, I've got one of my girls walking along, and she's got handfulof intestines, and we've got amputees.
Bless 'em.
And then you make the ends of the limbs that they have look horrible, and you make trails of blood where they've been.
And then, they're screaming horribly.
(SCREAMING) MAN: Cut, cut, cut.
IRLAM: But when they cut, someone's walking around with a box of ice-lollies and going, “You want an ice lolly?” “No, I'm all right.
” What we do for a living is a bitsurreal at times, you know.
♪ (SOMBRE MUSIC PLAYS) ♪ BENIOFF: It was originally shot to be this really long one-er, and it was actually a decisionthat Miguel and his editor, Tim Porter, made as they were cutting it that intercutting the Clegane Bowl and Arya's escape was actually much more emotional and effective than having this 12 minute long one-er and then the fight as two separate pieces.
WILLIAMS: All she's left with is the sound of burning people and the smell of burning flesh.
And she sees a white horse 'cause it's symbolic.
.
.
and beautiful.
And then, she hops on and gallops off and makes it out of the city.
-MAN: 68 echo, take one.
-(LENA SIGHS) A, B, and C, come on boards, -D marker.
-(CLAPPERBOARD CLAPS) LENA:It's a kind of genuine discovery as she goes along, each step she takes, somethingcrumbles, something falls.
The destruction is unavoidable.
She loses peopleand finds herself totally alone.
MAN: Dragon.
Track.
The thing that he haswith his sister, which isabsolutely unconditional love.
(CERSEI SOBS) -CERSEI: (SOBS)You came back for me.
-JAIME: Of course, I did.
SAPOCHNIK:He goes back to her, even though he knows that she's gonna die.
He goes back to her even though he knows that she'll never surrender.
He goes back to her just to be there for her.
He almost goes back to her, I would say, to prove that he was never going to leave.
The skull room, unfortunately, had to be recreated because in order to destroythe space, we had to build it.
And then, a lot of bricks were brought in for it, and we had some big architectural pieces made as well.
The great thing was I had all of the information about the space.
We had already, um, measured it and drawn it.
I had all of the photographs of it.
One of the lessonsthat I learned very quickly was a pile of rubbleisn't very interesting.
.
.
unless you have identifiablearchitectural pieces that– that can sit in it, and an audience can identify with having fallenfrom that building.
COSTER-WALDAU:The escape route is blocked, and there is no way out.
And now we're talking seconds, and– and she's panicking.
MAN: Action.
CERSEI: Please don't let me die.
(SOBS) Please don't let me die.
I don't want to die.
Jaime, please.
Look– Look me in the eyes.
Don't look away.
CERSEI: Please don't let me die, not like this.
Look at me! There's a helplessnessfrom both of themand a sense of loss that.
.
.
is the strangest feeling toexperience with them, because.
.
.
you know, Cersei is one ofthe most horrendous characters committed to film, and yet, somehow, at the end, she's just a girl, and she's just scared.
And– and he's there to comfort her.
Just look at me.
-I don't want to die—Shh.
.
.
Nothing else matters.
Just us.
Only us.
♪ (SOMBER MUSIC FADES) ♪.
