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Tuesday, July 12, 2011

This Article Features Photo Zoom

If you took the epic scope and epic battles between good and evil of such fantasy-movie mega-hits as The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and then added the extra dimensions of explicit sex and ultraviolence, you'd have some idea of the challenges involved in mounting HBO's acclaimed new series Game of Thrones. Based on the best-selling fantasy-book series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, the initial 10-episode season (which launched in April) tells the story of two powerful families engaged in a deadly cat-and-mouse game for control of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.

Executive-produced and written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the show features an all-star cast that includes Sean Bean (The Lord of the Rings), Lena Headey (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Mark Addy and Peter Dinklage, and a creative team that includes such directors as Brian Kirk, Daniel Minahan, Alan Taylor and Tim Van Patten, production designer Gemma Jackson, and visual-effects supervisor Adam McIness.

The show also uses three directors of photography—Marco Pontecorvo, AIC, Alik Sakharov, ASC, and Matt Jensen (who took over for Pontecorvo when he left the series to direct a feature)—shooting with the ARRI ALEXA to capture all the action staged at the Paint Hall Studio in Belfast, Northern Ireland, as well as at various locations in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Malta. Camera equipment was supplied by ARRI Media in London, while the lighting package came from ARRI Lighting Rental.

Benioff, whose credits include The Kite Runner, Troy and Brothers, has had plenty of experience with epic subject matter and multiple story lines. "Fantasy is one of the most successful genres in the history of storytelling, but no one has ever done it the HBO way, where the focus is on character and psychology rather than spectacle," says Benioff. "Knowing the essential shape of the entire series from the beginning is an incredible luxury for us, as adapters of the material."

Benioff describes the biggest lure of the book series as "a story that's so rich and has so many characters, different viewpoints and narratives all woven together with incredible expertise. I think you admire it even more as a writer because you know how hard it is to do, and George R.R. Martin is a master at storytelling. It was such an intricate tapestry that we couldn't imagine mutilating it to make it into a feature script, which would involve cutting 90% of his characters and stories. The only way that we could see doing it was as a series and, really, the only place we could see doing it properly was HBO."

As far as the visual style of the series, Weiss explains, "The look has its underpinnings in medieval Europe because that's the foundation that the books are built on, but we wanted to bring in other influences, from as far as Japan and Sumeria to medieval painting to modern fashion. We were lucky enough to have the help of a gifted art department, led by the tremendously talented Gemma Jackson, and she ranged far and wide to give us an organic world that we haven't seen before."

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