Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/760821
42 DGA QUARTERLY This was the end of the first part of the "oner" we shot during the initial stages of the battle. The Bolton horseman was on a jerk rig and on a real horse that raced to- wards Kit, who then swung and connected just at the right time and sent the rider flying. It was one of many choreographed moments that needed to be achieved in a single shot, and both Kit and the stunt rider had to be pretty precise to pull it off. Even though it felt like we got it, on the day later in the edit room it looked more to me like he'd hit the rider's hand more than his body, and so we added his flying fingers with VFX to help sell it [see frame below]. Designing and executing that shot was something I initially felt very wary of. We knew we didn't have the time to really shoot the battle after this point, so in a way this moment represented the pinnacle of what we could achieve in the time we had. My feeling was let's spend all our effort and money on making this moment pop so that the rest of the fight was less important. I feel very aware of the flow of a sequence and spend a lot of time trying to imag- ine flow in as visual a way as I can. It helps me to be pragmatic in production, to know what's re- ally important to spend time on and when to just move on. In my mind, I knew if I cracked this part, the rest would be an easier downhill journey. This shot is a VFX extravaganza and rep- resented the one shot we didn't get on the shoot. [Creators] Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff] wanted something to clearly show the relationship between the body pile and the shield wall so we understood beyond any doubt that the allied troops were trapped. Although we had got a shot from the opposite side behind the shields looking towards the body pile, we didn't really have anything from this side because it was too time- consuming to get up behind the pile while we were shooting this section. So [visual effects supervisor] Joe Bauer and his team came up with this to help. No idea how they did it but it looked great. The shields were a late addition to the se- quence and were cut from industrial rein- forced cardboard tubes, then painted and waterproofed like hell. I really liked the repeating image of the Bolton cross. It felt like a strong way of separating the two armies and making the Boltons faceless and more of a machine. It also created a great way to hide the lack of dressing beyond the shields in the rest of the field. Training the extras to move in unison was quite a task and we spent a lot of time working on formations we hardly ever got to show. That said, I think they made a lasting im- pression in my mind as a formidable foe. 7 8 9 10 7 8 9 10