Warning: This article contains spoilers for the most recent Game of Thrones episode, “The Spoils of War.”
Sunday night’s epic Game of Thrones battle pitting Daenerys Targaryen, Drogon, and a Dothraki horde against Jaime Lannister, Bronn, and the Lannister army has quickly become one for the ages. It already ranks among the show’s top battles for fans, but what’s even more incredible is what went into making it happen.
A nearly 14-minute behind-the-scenes video looks at the making of the latest battle—which Game of Thrones is calling “The Loot Train Attack”—from both a storytelling and technical standpoint.
“When you have a big battle sequence, especially one where you have multiple points of view, you have to figure out how to balance those and what is this sort of chief point of view that you want to lean on,” director Matt Shakman explained. “And I chose to focus on Jaime, that it was about being on the other side of a dragon attack. Trying to hold together his troops in the middle of watching the world change forever.”
Shakman had his own challenges when trying to figure out how to tell the story while the crew had to figure out how to create something we hadn’t seen before. And although Drogon and some of his flames might’ve been added in post, much of what we see is real. On top of the emotional story it manages to tell between all of the effects, it may lead some fans to appreciate just what the sequence accomplished even more.
