http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/dv/feature/game-thrones-reality-production-hbo%E2%80%99s-fantasy-series/62434
'Game of Thrones:' The Reality of Production on HBO’s Fantasy Series
The television phenomenon that is HBO’s Game of Thrones
premiered in April 2011 and enjoyed immediate critical and fan praise.
Filmed in exotic locales in Northern Ireland, Malta, Croatia, Iceland,
Morocco and elsewhere, Game of Thrones features compelling
characters, bravura production design and the feature-quality
cinematography viewers have come to expect from HBO productions.
Medieval fantasy never looked so good on television.
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Robb Stark (Richard Madden). Photo by Helen Sloan |
Among the series’ many accolades are two Emmy nominations for
Outstanding Drama Series, among more than two dozen nods from the
Television Academy in its first two seasons.
The show looms large in the
vibrant fantasy subculture, but has crossed over into mainstream
success—through season two, it is considered the third most-watched show
in HBO’s illustrious, awards-strewn history.
With the launch of season three in March 2013, the contributions of
three new cinematographers will hit TV screens: Anette Haellmigk, Robert
McLachlan, ASC/CSC, and Chris Seager, BSC.
They paid fealty to the
cinematic look in earlier episodes created by cinematographers Jonathan
Freeman, ASC, and Kramer Morgenthau, ASC (Morgenthau earned an ASC Award
for his work), but inevitably added their own personal touches through
their visual strategies and decisions, made in light of the new scripts
and situations. Other cinematographers who have contributed in previous
seasons include Alik Sakharov, ASC, Marco Pontecorvo, AIC, Sam McCurdy,
BSC, P.J. Dillon and the late Martin Kenzie, BSC.
The production is scheduled in an unusual way. At the start of prep,
at least ten scripts were ready to shoot. Actors are apt to stay with
certain locations, while cinematographer-director teams work
concurrently and fly between the various far-flung locales. At any given
time, as many as five teams are prepping, shooting or rehearsing.
A
“decent” amount of prep time helps, as does two weeks, roughly, of shoot
time per episode. Occasionally a shot made by one team will show up in
an episode credited to a different cinematographer, but the resulting
efficiency is “miraculous,” according to McLachlan and Haellmigk.
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| Melisandre (Carice van Houten). Photo by Helen Sloan |
“Christopher Newman came up with this remarkable schedule,” says
McLachlan.
“It’s absolutely genius. You’ve got five episodes shooting
concurrently. You bounce around a lot, and your 16 days per episode are
spread over four months. It’s very impressive.”
To maintain a degree of consistency, producer Greg Spence distributed Apple iPads
loaded with frame grabs from seasons one and two.
As the season
progressed, images from season three were added. The basic style of the
show had been established, with naturalistic lighting, a
sometimes-palpable atmosphere with shafts of daylight, and lots of
firelight as a primary source.
Anette Haellmigk (Bunheads, State of Mind, The West Wing, The Nine) says that she was working on Big Love when she first saw Game of Thrones.
She responded to the material and immediately wanted to work on it. “It
touched me,” she says.
“In a weird way, I know what to do with this. I
was very familiar with mythical sagas. I thought that the look
established over the first two seasons was very befitting of the show,
and rather than change things, I wanted to enhance. Kramer’s episodes
were the most inspirational to me.”
Haellmigk describes the look as naturalistic, but with a bit more
romance or harshness, depending on the needs of the scene. For the
former, she emulates the warmth of Caravaggio, and for the northern,
colder world, she tries to shoot in overcast conditions or block the sun
out.
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| Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer, center). Photo by Keith Bernstein |
Both cinematographers praise the production design and art direction.
“When I first walked on, what impressed me were the sets,” she says.
“The way they were built, and the way the textures and colors worked.
I’ve never seen anything like it, not even on big feature films. It was
just so tasteful, and the detail was amazing.”
Haellmigk came onto Game of Thrones with director Alex
Graves, with whom she has a long professional history. She also had a
working relationship with producer Bernadette Caulfield dating to Big Love.
“The camera style of the show, especially in interiors, includes more tableau shots,” she says.
“It’s not like The West Wing,
where you do it with long walk-and-talks. The tableau approach is good
because, while you give up some movement, you gain a lot of ability to
make beautiful compositions and create beautiful lighting. For some
action scenes we went more handheld, and exteriors in general gave us
opportunities for more camera movement.”
Haellmigk says her episodes played more with shards of light angled
through scenes and sometimes bounced onto actors. These shards worked
well with the established smoky atmosphere justified by the many flame
and fire sources. The show often mixes cooler daylight and warmer
tungsten or firelight.
“I love to do that anyway, and I think that gives
it a realistic look,” she says. “Even though we might not be aware of
it in our world, that is the reality. I don’t like it when all the
lights are the same color.”
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| Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane) in Dragonstone map room. Photo by Helen Sloan |
The cameras were ARRI Alexas. In season one, Game of Thrones
became the first hour-long HBO series to be shot digitally.
For season
three, the images were recorded using Codex Digital recorders via fiber
optic cable. The ARRIRAW file format was deemed too data-intensive given
the large number of units working.
Simultaneously, the images are
recorded to the camera’s onboard SxS cards as a backup. Standard LUTs
are used for basic situations, but the cinematographers are free to
adapt them to the particular needs of a given scene.
The images are
finalized at Modern VideoFilm in Santa Monica with colorist Joe Finley.
“The ALEXA is an absolute workhorse,” says Haellmigk. “We took that
camera from Morocco to Iceland and shot in rain and sun and all types of
conditions. The cameras we had never failed us, ever. In terms of the
dynamic range, I was able to do everything that I wanted to. You still
have more dynamic range on film, but it’s getting really close now. You
see a very good image.
“You can judge your exposure on a monitor and that
allows you to paint a little more. Because of this format, I think I
have become more daring, because I know how far I can push it and still
get an acceptable image. You have to make sure that you make the post
department happy, and find a happy medium in terms of exposure. But I
was very happy with the camera.”
McLachlan (Human Target, Harper’s Island, The One, Final Destination 3) had worked with director David Nutter in the late 1990s on the visually innovative series Millennium. They reteamed for episodes nine and ten, the final installments of season three.
“The wonderful episodes that Jonathan and Kramer had done lingered
on elegantly composed and lit frames,” says McLachlan. “After looking at
the episodes David had done in season two, I realized quickly that his
style of shooting was much less static and much less ‘proscenium’ than Game of Thrones generally.”
That’s not to say that they weren’t careful about composition.
“David is much more about getting lots of pieces and telling the story
that way,” says McLachlan.
“Because we were doing the final episodes of
the season, we had comparatively massive scenes, including a wedding
that has oodles of extras, a lot of dialogue, and not much time to shoot
it.
“We had three cameras, and I had to light in way that worked from
any angle. Stylistically, it will look different.”
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| Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage), Bronn (Jerome Flynn) and Podrick Payne (Daniel Portman). Photo by Keith Bernstein |
McLachlan recalled a dungeon scene shot amid the ruins of an old
castle. “David’s feeling was that if it’s going to be completely dark,
why are we in this location?” says the cinematographer.
“You could do it
on stage with black duvetyn. So I pushed a little bit of extra light in
from a window at the end of a tunnel. It felt as if maybe it was
bouncing off the ocean in front, so we got a bit of texture in the
bricks, and added a couple of torches.
“We certainly didn’t bring in any
more electric lights. The wonder of the Alexa is that you can actually
do that. I just love that camera. You take it out of the box, turn it on
and it works perfectly—just like a film camera, and unlike some other
video cameras. We tried to shoot at 800 ASA as much as possible, but it
would depend on the situation.”
For most scenes, McLachlan took the edge off a bit with Schneider Optics Hollywood Black Magic filters,
which combine diffusion and softening effects. “I think they’re
terrific,” he says.
“They’re my favorite for shooting digital. I had
very, very light ones on most of the time, and occasionally I went a
tiny bit heavier if there were cosmetic issues.”
Each shooting unit is equipped with a full set of Cooke S4 prime
lenses and Optimo short, medium and long zooms. “Basically that’s what I
carry myself when given a choice,” says McLachlan.
“I’ve got some of
those same lenses in my own package, so I was very happy to work with
familiar tools. David wants the flexibility to adjust the focal length
between takes very quickly, so the Angenieux zooms were on a fair bit.”
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| Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke). Photo by Keith Bernstein |
One troublesome set was a council room carved into the rocks
overlooking the ocean far below.
The cave ceiling offers no opportunity
to hang lights. Torch and candlelight work for night scenes, but daytime
was another story. A sky/sea horizon backing didn’t work.
“When I had a
scene that took place at sunrise, I decided to make it look like a
J.M.W. Turner painting,” says McLachlan, who is the son of an artist.
“So I threw a bit of blue light on the backing and then stuck a 5K ARRI
Fresnel right smack in the shot, where it could light the whole
cavernous set.
We put a couple of Lee CTO gels on it and then added
enough smoke to hide the stand. The Alexa was able to give a clean image
without any more flaring than the filters and smoke created, and even
held detail in the area around the ‘sun.’ It was a last-ditch effort to
not repeat what we had all done and been vaguely unhappy with. It worked
perfectly for the scene, where a critical piece of information was
handed over and the situation was seen in a new light.”
In another scene that can’t be described in detail due to the tight
secrecy HBO maintains, McLachlan came up with a simple yet brilliant
lighting strategy to foreshadow a dramatic turn of events. The scene
begins with a relatively high-key interior, with twice as many
candelabras and torches as was customary. McLachlan says the extra light
coaxes the audience subconsciously to let their guard down.
At a
natural turning point, the cast picks up most of the light sources and
walks out, dropping the light level significantly, just in time for the
darker, dramatic story point.
“It worked really, really well,” he says. “I get goose bumps thinking
about it because it’s been a long time since I had a forum with drama
as good as this show, along with the terrific art direction, not to
mention adequate time to think about it and plan it.”
“The whole experience of working on Game of Thrones
reminded me of why I wanted to be a filmmaker,” says McLachlan.
“When we
got to Morocco, we were standing on locations where they shot Lawrence of Arabia and The Man Who Would Be King.
When I saw that film as a kid, it just swept me away. We were
absolutely transported. Just the thought of working on a project like
this was beyond my wildest dreams.” Labels: alexa, arri, cinematography, david nutter. film, digital, game of thrones, Haellmigk, hbo, mclachlan
