Although filming wrapped last week on HBO’s Game of Thrones, details still come out on occasion concerning the production’s doings. Via DocFourFour, we’ve learned that the Belfast Telegraph-owned Sunday Life newspaper includes a report on the production having filmed at Inch Abbey in Downpatrick. Their report indicates that the site was used for a “renegade camp”, featuring a “Medieval fort” with tents around it, and that there was fake blood at the site.
This is the site where filming took place over at least a couple of days, I believe, around the 10th or 11th. Don’t hold me to it, but I think I recall seeing at the production offices during my set visit in October that Inch Abbey was being used as the site of Moat Cailin in the series. Certainly, I saw Moat Cailin listed, but I’m not 100% positive that Inch Abbey was the real world location associated with it; however, some of the photos of the ruins with tussocks of grass around it strike me as doing reasonably well to indicate the marshy, ruined old citadel of the First Men. If it is Moat Cailin, however, I’m not sure how to reconcile that with the fake blood. Unless different angles or areas of Inch Abbey were used to represent a battle site or something like? Hard to say.
Oh, I’ve been waiting for this one. Simon Brindle, the supervisor of the costume armor department, speaks in some detail about the costume armor for HBO’s Game of Thrones. I had the pleasure of meeting Simon when I visited the Paint Hall facilities, and had a chance to discuss some of the sources and inspirations for the various suits of armor. There’s some truly amazing work being turned out from his shop!
The So Spake Martin section of our site—an archive of correspondence, chats, interviews, and signing and convention reports—has been updated with a link to a podcast interview with GRRM conducted by Bear Swarm!. This is about a month old, recorded at the time of the Days of Ice and Fire event.
Thanks to Conan Stevens, we’ve learned details on where HBO’s Game of Thrones will be airing in Australia. Conan writes that he’s learned the plan at present is for a possible July air date on Showcase, a premium channel which can be found on the Foxtel, Optus, and Austar television platforms.
Another update from GRRM, one of the Angelenos. He’ll be over in Los Angeles in early January (remember, he’s due to attend the TCA Winter Press Tour panel on January 7th) and he’ll be seeing about arranging some public events, such as a signing (probably in the San Fernando Valley area) or a mini-moot. The latter seems almost a certainty, as he adds that David McCaman—a fixture and long-time organizer of the Brotherhood without Banners fan club—will be organizing event on that same day, January 9th.
Keep an eye out here and on the this thread for more details in the days to come.
George adds a tantalizing final note: he may have something exciting to announce ... and maybe two exciting things, “but don’t quote me on that”.
Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin provides two brief updates. As previously reported, he confirmed that filming had wrapped on the first season of Game of Thrones. Our congratulations to all the cast and crew!
But before that update, he had a small update concerning A Dance with Dragons. He noted that he had recently finished a chapter, and had revised (and then re-revised) another, and was presently writing material concerning Jon Snow and the “krakens” (referring to the Greyjoys and the ironborn they rule).
As we’ve reported in the past, George had five chapters left to write as of November. So is it four left? Hard to say. As GRRM cautioned, sometimes a chapter needs to be broken up and expanded into two or even three chapters before he’s happy with it. Still, though it’s a “slog” as he calls it, progress continues.
The Northern Ireland government has pledged £5 million to build new studios in support of the film industry there. As the Telegraph reports, efforts will focus on expanding the Paint Hall facilities, which HBO’s Game of Thrones has fully occupied but will be relinquishing this week now that filming is about wrapped.
This article is yet another that vaguely implies that the 2nd season is a certainty, with the only question being where it might film. However, many of these articles build on one another. As we’ve said elsewhere, the production will certainly be laying the groundwork for a second season now… but the greenlight will only come after the April premiere at the earliest, once ratings are in.
Over at the Making Game of Thrones site, David J. Peterson—creator of the Dothraki language for the production—has a lengthy post titled, “Dothraki 101”, which provides just what you’d think: an introductory lesson in the grammar and vocabulary of Dothraki.
David promises to provide more lessons in future posts. The Language Creation Society’s official Dothraki website can be found at their website, while we’d also recommend taking a look at Dothraki.org, an unofficial fan site created to catalog all the details released (and published) so far concerning the Dothraki language.
The Daily Express has a brief interview with Rory McCann, cast in the role of Sandor Clegane. Rather amazing tale there, and it sounds like this role came to him at the best possible time. The one note about the article? Some of the facts and figures are inaccurate—it’s a bit more expensive than £25 million, and it is not an HBO-BBC co-production.
Back in September, fans stumbled across the blog of photographer Wolf Sunkmanitu, where he stated he had stumbled across a set on Malta for HBO’s Game of Thrones. Now, on the verge of the first season filming wrapping, he’s posted an extensive gallery of his photography from Malta ... including quite a few pictures from the Street of Steel set in Mdina which we caught glimpses of in the “Inside Game of Thrones” preview starting here.
At Sunmanitu’s gallery, the first of the Street of Steel photos—available for purchase as prints, as with the rest of his galler—can be found starting here. The amount of set dressing and the great number of quite mundane props—bellows, anvils metalworking tools, and more—has certainly transformed what’s nomrally a thoroughfare through modern Mdina into a bazaar-like street in King’s Landing. I do believe this room is the same as Tobho Mott’s forge, seen
here.
Valyrian Steel has written up a new post with some photos of Ice, their officially licensed replica of the ancestral Stark sword. These photos are interesting because they’re setting the weapon besides the two previous weapons they’ve made, Longclaw and Needle. The current plan is for a special premium limited edition of Ice to be made out of Damascus steel, for those who wish to have something so exclusive, while Valyrian Steel starts work on designing the next weapon in the line: King Robert’s famous warhammer.
Sometime on Wednesday afternoon or evening, the last, “Cut”, will be called, and the first season of HBO’s Game of Thrones will have seen filming completed. The wrap party already took place this past weekend, as much of the foreign crew will be gone by this coming weekend, departed back to home. What’s left now is weeks more of post-production, such as introducing scoring, visual effects, and so on. We already know the writing and production team will be doing preparatory work in case the show gets greenlit for a second season, so we expect at least a couple of scripts and a good deal of location work (including word that Iceland and/or Morocco are under consideration as shooting locations for the East and the lands beyond the Wall) will be done in the intervening months.
We know that on January 7th, the critics of the Television Critics Association will be getting a glimpse of the production through a long panel schedule to feature the executive producers, GRRM, and actors Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage, and Emilia Clarke. Word has it they’ll be getting an exclusive look at the show proper, as well—except a lot of Twitter and blog activity on the night.
And after that? The march towards the April premiere date—we suspect that the actual day will be announced at the TCA Winter Press Tour—with gradually increasing promotion and marketing efforts. The official t-shirts are, to say the least, just a start…
George R.R. Martin will be joining six other “Wild Cards” authors at Page One Books in Albuquerque tomorrow, at 3:30PM, for a book signing event after Tor reissued the first Wild Cards novel, Wild Cards I. The reissue contains three brand-new stories by Carrie Vaughn, Michael Cassutt, and David Levine, and a brand-new cover by Michael Komarck.
Another post from Bryan Cogman has gone live at Making Game of Thrones, and this time we’re at Manikata in Malta where the Lhazreen village scenes were filmed a number of weeks ago.
In the post, Cogman discusses a scene being filmed there, where the Dothraki are looting. Most notably, the scene is “almost entirely” spoken in Dothraki, a language created for the show based on what George R.R. Martin has written. The scene features Drogo admonishing an insubordinate warrior in no uncertain terms. Bryan signs off with the following lengthy example of Dothraki: “Eyél várthasoe she ilekaán ríkhoya arrekaán vékha vósi yeroón vósma tolórro!” We’re guessing the last word is the same as in Vaes Tolorro, where Tolorro means bones.
As part of the fifth anniversary of their site, the Tower of the Hand has polled its community of users to determine a list of the top 30 favorite characters, and each day features a profile for one of these characters as they count their way down to the most popular character of them all. Today, they’ve presented the #8 character in their poll, Davos Seaworth, with a profile written by yours truly.
I was quite honored to be invited to participate in this. Congratulations to Johnny, Alex, and the rest of the Tower of the Hand crew!