Wayne Wheelwright - 50 Quick Facts About Game of Thrones

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50 Quick Facts About Game of Thrones

Wayne Wheelwright

Publisher Information

50 Quick Facts about - Game of Thrones

Published in 2014 by Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Copyright 2014 Wayne Wheelwright

The right of Wayne Wheelwright to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Facts

1. Whilst on the Game of Thrones television series The Wall is a 700 foot structure made of ice, the tunnel that runs through it is made of cement and is dug into the side of the quarry in Northern Ireland where the set for Castle Black is.
2. In the first scene of the series, when the Nights Watch recruit named Will comes across the horrific discovery of a group of dead wildlings, the creepy girl that had just been changed into a White Walker was not a doll or even a little girl but a 19 year old actress playing the part.
3. In a scene at Castle Black when Jon Snows friends in the Night Watch, Pyp and Grenn are eating in the mess hall, the gruel that had been made by the Game of Thrones production designer was particularly disgusting, so bad the actors wouldnt eat it and if you watch carefully you can see Mark Stanley who plays Grenn wouldnt even swallow it.
4. Magister Illyrios ornate home where he is hosting Varys and Daenerys Targaryen is actually the summer palace of the President of Malta. The palace also served as the gardens of the Red Keep. Even so , the Game of Thrones team was not allowed to film inside.
5. As in the books the Targaryen family have violet eyes, the actors that play Varys and Daenerys shot their early scenes wearing violet contact lenses but the show runners decided the contact lenses were too distracting and took away from the emotion of the scenes so they were scrapped.
6. The filming of the wedding between Khal Drogo and Deanerys Targaryen was almost as eventful as the on screen happenings. Maltese authorities had issues with the nudity and violence during the filming, especially considering a Dothraki wedding without three deaths is considered a dull affair. Shortly after the characters were married a huge storm hit Malta blowing most of the props into the sea.
7. When Viserys is in the bath telling Doreah about his past and family history, a scene which was originally meant to be in the prior episode, Viserys names several dragons including Vermithax which was a dragon in the 1981 movie Dragonslayer. The movie Dragonslayer also included characters that went by the name Valerian and Tyrian.
8. The gruesome scene where Emilia Clarke who plays Daenerys Targaryen had to eat a raw horse heart was not a fun sequence to film for Clarke. She was told the heart would taste like gummy bears but Clarke says that was definitely not the case and the heart actually tasted a little like bleach. The filming of the scene called for Clarke to spend a whole day chewing and the retch she does at the end of the scene was quite genuine.
9. The memorable scene where Vaserys is given the golden crown he demands was done in one shot and had to be due to all the factors that had to be considered. The actor had smoke machines strapped about his chest and back whilst a bald cap was used to look like the molten gold on his face whilst the prop department made the gold like substance to pour over his head.
10. HBO commissioned an organisation that specialises in creating fictional languages to devise the Dothraki tongue. The Dothraki language has more words for kill than it does for love. The scene where Khal Drogo rips out the tongue of Mako wasnt in the script and was in fact suggested by the actor that portrays Khal Drogo, Jason Momoa who had noticed that Khal Drogo had done nothing to show why the Dothraki respected him as their leader.
11. The first scene filmed on the television series Game of Thrones is the scene where Eddard Stark and Cersei Lannister clash in Starks quarters. When broadcast, the scene comes somewhere towards the middle of the first season.
12. When Eddard Stark is delirious with fever following his stabbing in the cowardly attack by Jaime Lannister, Actor Sean Bean who played Eddard Stark caught the flu which lent the scene an authentic sense of what Eddard Stark was going through. The dungeon where Stark is being held and receives a visit from Varys is the same filming location as the crypt between Winterfell.
13. The actress that plays Arya Stark, Maisie Willimas is right handed but Arya Stark is left handed, so Williams took it upon herself, with no prompting by the crew to learn all of her training scenes with Syrio Forel left handed.
14. Following the beheading of Eddard Stark, in the scene where Joffrey spitefully forces Sansa Stark to look at her fathers decapitated head on a spike as well as that of Septa Mordane, the head on the spike to the left of the Septa is a model of George W. Bush with a wig on it. This was not a political statement however but just happened to be a head the Game of Thrones production team had laying around.
15. The actual location that is used for the crypt beneath Winterfell is usually a wine cellar and Winterells courtyard is built on a car park. When the Lannistwers arrive at Winterfell where Robert Baratheon intends to name Eddard Stark as the new Hand of the King, the Queens carriage caused some problems in filming including knocking one of Winterfells gates off of its hinges.
16. In the scene where a topless Robb Stark, Theon Greyjoy and Jon Snow are getting their hair cut in anticipation for the Kings arrival the characters are all showing some impressive abs. Show runner David Benioff revealed that the actors had done so many crunches just before the camera started running that the actors were just struggling not to throw up.
17. In the scene where the Starks come across the dead dire wolf and dead stag, the stag is no prop. Instead it is an actual stag that had been shot by somebody two days earlier. The cast looking a little disgusted in this scene took no acting with it being said that the stag was in pretty bad shape when it came time to film the scene.
18. The pool in the Godswoood of Winterfell is filled with black paint to make it as reflective as possible. Also in Winterfell, the tower that Bran was pushed from by Jaime Lannister following Brans discovery of the Lannister siblings is the same tower, redressed that serves as the set for Brans bedchambers.
19. The Song of Ice and Fire author George R. R. Martin was so impressed but he performance of Natalie Tena, who plays the willing Osha that he said in the next book he writes in the series The Winds of Winter, that he will write Osha into more interesting situations. The actor that played Waymar Royce, Rob Olstere came very close to playing the part of Viserys Targaryen and when Benioff and Weiss began planning the series they were insistent that the series would only work with Sean Bean as Eddard Stark and Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister.
20. The armorer that Jon Snow asks to make Needle for Arya Stark who can be seen when jon Snow and Jaime Lannister clash in the Winterfell Courtyard is Tommy Dunn who crafts all the weapons used in the filming of the Game of Thrones.
21. The scene where Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon walk through the crypt of Winterfell is one of the few scenes used from the pilot and was shot on 35mm film which is why when the episode is watched in HD the scene appears quite grainy. Most of the snow that is constantly swirling around Castle Black is actually cotton wool. One of the artists who worked on Game of Thrones in its early stages who was largely responsible for the look of The Vale and The Eyrie also designed Pandora for the movie Avatar. The filming of Tyrion in his sky cell was filmed in the parking lot opposite the casts trailers, it looks over the spot where James Cameron built a replica of the Titaninc.