Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/760821
DGA QUARTERLY 41 This shot is not very Game of Thrones but felt like the right shot for that mo- ment. We are in Jon's head, seeing the world through his eyes as he watches Ramsay play with Rickon. He's highly sensitized at this moment, on edge, feeling every detail. I wanted to capture that as a heightened, different mo- ment to the rest of the sequence. Thus the shal- low focus high off angle close-up. This was one of the first key frames I imagined of the battle. More than any- thing this was my Kurosawa homage—a super-wide silent tableau of the final moments of Rickon's run. It's largely in camera. We re- moved a green hill on the right but the rest was there on the day. It played out pretty much as intended. The choice in the cut was to let Rickon (Art Parkinson) get hit from this angle and stay wide or cut in close for the money shot. The in- tellectual part of me wanted to stay wide and let us wish we could get close but the visceral part of me knew we needed to get in for the moment of impact when Rickon gets hit. The struggle between heart, brain and gut is pretty intense in editing and one of my favorite parts of filmmak- ing. The arrow is a plant-on and the VFX guys painted it out so it revealed itself in shot then added extra blood on top of the blood squib we had planted on the actor. My touchstone here was Gallipoli and the beauti- ful end shot that freezes at the moment of the main character's death. Certain films repeat their influence on my work again and again. Usually things I saw as a kid or teenager that shaped my thoughts about storytelling. Sometimes these comparisons are purposefully emulated, while other times they are completely unconscious and it's only afterwards I realize I was chasing a specific image that I already recognized from another moment in my life. This kind of high-compression hero shot is something I have tried a few times so far. I knew I wanted to do it but was surprised at how long it held up. I got a 600mm lens especially for it. We kept moving further and further up the field away from Kit to get the right amount of compression (I wanted a "wall of horses" charging him). We ended up at almost the opposite end of the field. Then we ran the horses 200 meters at full tilt until they would stop just two meters in front of him. We shot at 120fps. Every time they charged I would wonder if this was the time they were going to run right over him but Kit stood his ground and they stopped perfectly every time. I think we did about six takes. 3 4 5 6 3 4 5 6