(WARRIORS ROARING)
-WARRIOR: Ahh! -(BLADES RESONATE)
♪ (ENTICING MUSIC) ♪
(WARRIORS YELLING)
(STRIKING)
(CRASHES)
As soon as we wrote up episode nine,
we knew that it was gonna have to operate on a scale
that we never operated before.
DAVID:
we had a number of sieges but this is the first
pitched battle, or at least the first large pitched battle.
And so, something different for us.
All of it is action with almost no dialogue and lots of horses
and many extras and the giants...
The amount of supporting artists and the size of the crew,
how many cameras they got going.
IWAN:
it's unbelievable.
It was hard, it was a long, long slog.
DAVID:
who is our meister from Heart home in Season five.
That was basically a massacre.
D.B:
We never done that before.
They really wanted to kind of get into the mindset of what
it would be like to be in a battle like that.
KIT: It was fluid all the way through.
It morphed, it changed
but the most important thing all the way through is...
it can't just be a battle. If it's just a battle...
the audience don't have stakes in it, you know?
KIT:
so we decide to follow to Jon.
♪ (ENTICING MUSIC) ♪
Ramsay...
weapon all the way through is antagonizing people.
-(BLADE RESONATES) -KIT:
and Jon completely falls for it.
D.B:
...gift sets-- psychological manipulation,
which Sansa warns him about!
He's kind of thought, ah, this guy gonna do some
stupid and honorable... because he's not gonna be able
to control himself, so I'll shoot his brother with
a bow and arrow.
KIT:
his brother, who is-- been shot up with arrows
and try and save him.
So he falls into that trap.
But he's-- waited until Jon Snow...
...is within archers range.
So that they can start shooting him immediately.
KIT:
so he falls into the next trap
galloping towards Ramsay.
Yah! Yah!
Every step of the way he does exactly what he wants him to do.
Yah!
-(HORSE TRIPS) -(NEIGHING)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC) ♪
Probably one of my favorite shot of the whole season is...
DAVID:
Calvary wall galloping towards him,
and part of the reason it's such a great shot,
is that it's all real.
(BLADE RESONATES)
DAVID:
Until the last minute, I stood there facing off against this
Calvary charge, which is really scary.
KIT:
cause we think everyone is gonna think it was CGI...
...and it wasn't.
Camilla, our horse mistress kept asking every year,
DAVID:
Like, this year was boring it's just people trotting
from here to there on their horses."
So finally we gave her enough to do.
I remember the outline, I went, "Wow, ok, this is adventurous,
how are we gonna deal with this?"
MAN: (YELLS) Charge!
(INDISTINT CHATTER)
CAMILLA:
I ever had on
We flew over in May to kind of start discussing
How are we gonna prep it,
CAMILLA:
(WARRIORS YELLING)
CAMILLA:
So when we first see both armies we'll use 80 on the Stark side
and let me see, 80 on the Boltons,
so we're using the maximum.
CAMILLA:
we'll split it in half.
KIT:
those were all real horses.
CAMILLA:
putting it all together.
And we make channels, so it looks like
they're clashing but they're not the horses are actually
just passing through, you know...
...like two foot channels so that they could clear out.
ROWLEY:
to a collision without actually colliding the horses.
ROWLEY:
we'll have those guys cross
and they'll pull the horses as they cross through.
We're falling them onto a very thick falling bed,
so we don't injure the horses or injure the guys.
Um, but we're gonna try to make that something
that's not really been done before.
-DIRECTOR: (YELLS) Action! -(WARRIORS YELLING)
ROWLEY:
and mayhem and like, you know...
anything can happen any time.
But I really don't want anything to happen any time,
I want what we planned to happened,
and it looked really cool
and let's not hurt anybody.
-(HORSEMEN YELLING) -(BLADES RESONATING)
-(WARRIORS SCREAMING) -(YELLING)
To get across the field and follow the horses,
the speed at which the moving horses,
move really, really fast.
MIGUEL:
a fun machine...
...to work with cause its gives you such dynamic shots.
(TRAVELLING)
FABIAN: Especially, a camera tracking vehicle,
it's a remote control arm.
FABIAN:
Throughout "The Battle of the Bastards",
we had a number of tracking vehicles, one of which was...
...the vampire bat with the rushing arm on it.
On a muddy slippery field over about five or six hundred
yards of very fast horses that was the vehicle to chase them
properly, and get the results we wanted.
SEAN:
The results were amazing.
(INDISTINT DIALOGUE)
JON:
(WARRIORS YELLING AND SCREAMING)
You've got two giant armies that are opposing one another.
STEVE:
a few hundred extras on one side or the other
so you got a lot crowd replication.
JOE:
Wun Wun, the giant is involved.
Most of it would be photographed but it also needed a lot of
digital enhancement.
STEVE:
in any real way. You got a giant punching out
a horse.
We shot horses falling and charging toward one another
that we can use as elements,
but we start to get into complex areas that we haven't
really broken ground with on the series before,
where it's fun
and exciting but also, very challenging.
(COMMANDS)
(WARRIORS GASP)
(HORSE NEIGHING)
(GRUNTS)
"The Battle of the Bastards" becomes incredibly compact
all these combatants force into this incredibly tight space
on the battlefield, partly crammed in by bodies.
You got horses, you got... you know, men by either side
just piled up on this massive hill.
The body pile was absolutely enormous in terms of it's
scale and ambition.
DEBORAH:
in the appropriate uniforms.
DEBORAH:
You then need to dress the horses and their saddlery.
You need to make sure that the correct sigil
is on the horse.
Even though I know that all of these bodies are fake.
DEBORAH:
It's pretty grim, it's very brutalizing to look at.
DEAN:
DAVID:
various battles both medieval-- and even more modern ones.
DAVID:
where their bodies were piled, so they become an obstruction
on the battlefield.
I think what I was finding throughout filming this was
moments of giving up.
KIT:
when the crush starts
happening and he just stops for a moment.
KIT: And then he tries to fight his way back but he gets
pushed over, he gets trampled.
-(JON GASPS) -(WARRIORS ROARING)
Jon is almost literally buried alive.
DAVID:
KIT:
not on purpose but just in this wave of fear
that kind of overcomes everyone as they try to get out
of the way of his incoming wall of shields.
And then something drives him to fight out,
and in that moment where he comes up and he goes for breath
he's reborn, again in a way.
-(BREATHES) -(DISTANT HORNS)
-(WARRIORS CHARGING) -(WARRIORS YELLING)
(CLASHING)
D.B.: Winterfell is a place that really mean so much
in the context of the show, and the episode is really about
bringing things home.
(COLLISION)
D.B.:
and it ultimately boils down to Jon against Ramsay,
and Sansa against Ramsay.
IWAN:
It's really nice to get to sort of...
...have the two bastards there together facing off.
KIT:
go a bit too far.
ROWLEY:
"He's not human anymore.
He doesn't feel any sympathy, empathy for this guy."
-(YELLS) -(GASPS)
(GRUNTS)
We actually spent an entire day,
ten hours with Kit on top of Iwan
beating him. (CHUCKLES)
I just shot it in every single angle I possibly could.
KIT: What we wanted to try to get with that was--
that he just needing bread,
he's just flatting this person's face
and that's what changed in Jon for me.
KIT:
I think should be unsettling for the viewers.
There's nothing he wants more then to beat Ramsay to death
with his own fists and then he sees his sister.
I think Jon then realizes, you know, as he's about to
kill him. He's on the verge of death.
SOPHIE:
Because he understands what she's been through.
Where is he?
IWAN:
the power in the end.
Your house will disappear, your name will disappear,
all memory of you will disappear.
It's such a strong moment for her because all her life
she's been affected by these men who have just done such terrible
things to her.
IWAN:
after last season.
And this is the first moment that you actually hear her say,
"This won't affect me and I'm stronger than that".
It's my favorite scene.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC) ♪
Her walk away, that final shot was so crucial
and just to get that little hint of a smile just right
I think we ended up making poor Sophie do it, you know,
12 or 13 times in the middle of the night.
DAVID:
it's just a little hint of a smile.
(RAMSAY GASPING)
DAVID: Sophie doesn't day very much, but I think it maybe
my favorite thing she's ever done on this show.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC ENDS) ♪