Filming for season 3 of Game of Thrones has begun in Dubrovnik, and as usual with filming there, the local press gets quite a lot of scoops—it’s hard to hide what you’re doing in a small, busy city filled with historic sites. The Dubrovnik Times already reported on early filming involving boats and a special (expensive) camera rig for shots on the water.

More notably, however, have been our very first glimpses (English article hereof the lead actors in costume, as Aidan Gillen, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage, Jerome Flynn, and Daniel Portman were led through the streets and up hills to a filming location. Of particular note in the article’s accompanying photo gallery? Aidan Gillen’s costume looks much the same… but Peter Dinklage is sporting a prosthetic scar, and Lena Headey has a brand new dress (gorgeous fabrics) which may reflect Michelle Clapton’s remark in Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones that there’s a new trend-setter at court now in the form of Margaery Tyrell; the scoop top of the gown certainly reminds one of the more extreme dress last season.

A new and somewhat mysterious entry at the Making Game of Thrones production blog, as we get a random sampling of quotes overheard on the set. Doubtless as consolation for Game of Thrones scoring nil at the Prime Time Emmys (though, with 6 Creative Arts Awards, it turned out to be the drama with the most individual awards by the end of the show), but there’s some interesting bits.

The muddy sinkhole would almost surely be the quagmire that is the Maghermorne Quarry where scenes for Castle Black (and some other things) have been shot. And the cave built inside Paint Hall… well, there’s a couple of things that could be, if they’re sticking to the books. I’ll leave that up to you, though!

Hot on the heels of the Emmys Creative Arts Awards, where Game of Thrones took six awards, the VFX house responsible for one of those victories has made available its VFX breakdown video for the second season. Pixomondo, an international effects house with studios across the globe, really went to town with the visual effects for the series, as you’ll see in the breakdown below:

Pixomondo Breaks Down VFX for Game of Thrones Season 2

The Creative Arts Emmys always seemed the place where Game of Thrones was going to leave its mark. Last year, though, Boardwalk Empire was the juggernaut, winning seven total awards. But this year? Game of Thrones all the way, as the award took six of the nine nominated categories (not the most nominated show—far from it, in fact—but that 66% win rate was impressive!)  to be the winningest show this year.

Here’s the list of winners:

And now the trickle of information starts coming in from the set: the Making Game of Thrones blog has its first new post in quite awhile, featuring a description of an important scene and a behind-the-back shot of ... someone.

It’s all quite cryptic, of course, but we do know the Clandeboye estate has been used for several things… including, from photos we’ve seen, for regions beyond the Wall and also regions in the south. Not quite sure why there’s no snow, though, in this photo—it may well suggest it’s for something else entirely. I’ll take a completely random guess, based on the “unexpected pairing” implying it might not be anyone paired by the end of season 2…

While production has been carrying on at a good pace—I’ve heard everything’s pretty much proceeding to schedule—there has been little tidbits coming, here and there, from Northern Ireland locals who’ve spotted filming ... or, better yet, have managed to get a few photos in. The most interesting photos relate to a much-missed location from prior seasons of Game of Thrones: Riverrun, the seat of House Tully. Other than a very brief mention at the end of season 2, Riverrun has largely been out of the picture… but not this year, not with the casting of Edmure and Brynden Tully.

Northern Ireland Screen, the corporate body tasked with helping to encourage film and television production in Northern Ireland, has regular board meetings that occasionally reveal little tidbits about HBO’s Game of Thrones. There’s generally a three month lag, give or take, between these meetings and their minutes being posted, so the details of this March 13th (PDF file)  meeting are slightly out of date, with the CEO’s confidence that negotiations for season 3 will be successful—they were, with the production well under way in Northern Ireland—and so on.

However, it’s interesting to note this bit:

One of the things we’ve learned since the Emmy nominations were announced is that the drama series nomination has a particular process (see the last paragraph), namely that three pairs of episodes are selected, and these sets are randomly distributed among the voters. It left us pondering which pairs of episodes HBO had sent out…

The nominees for the Emmy Awards have been announced, and there’s a bit of Game of Thrones news to be had:

• Game of Thrones again scores a Best Drama Series nod, though the competition—Breaking Bad and Mad Men especially—pretty much insure that it won’t be scoring a win.
• Once again, Peter Dinklage’s portrayal of Tyrion Lannister earns him a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Although HBO could easily have placed him in the Best Actor category, they appear to have decided that as the show is such an ensemble, that it made most sense to keep all the nominations in the supporting categories.
• Gemma Jackson has been nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction.
• Nina Gold and Robert Sterne once again earn a nomination for Outstanding Casting in a Drama Series.
• As does Michele Clapton, Alexander Fordham, and Chloe Aubry for Oustanding Costume Design for the episode “The Prince of Winterfell.
• Kevin Alexander and team win a nomination for Outstanding Hairstyling.
• Paul Engelen and team win a nomination for Outstanding Makeup.
• Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup nomination for the episode “Valar Morghulis”.
• As I had hoped, a nomination for Outstanding Sound Editing for “Blackwater, thanks to Peter Brown and team.
• Also Outstanding Sound Mixing, for the same episode.
• Pixomondo’s work earned nomination for Oustanding Visual Effects for the episode “Valar Morghulis”. Somehow had expected that “Blackwater” and its wildfire would have been the nod.
• Plus what I think is a new one, Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media for the Season 2 Enhanced Digital Experience available via HBO Go.

All in all, a good tally; the show maintained its acting and drama nominations (though it did fail to get Outstanding Writing and Outstanding Direction nominations this year), and seems to have largely expanded its technical category nominations. The one difference is that it was not nominated for Main Title Design, but as it won that one last year and the design was only changed incrementally, that’s fair enough. The most notable absence for us? Yet again no nod to Ramin Djawadi for his main title theme, and personally Neil Marshall well-deserved a nomination for his work on Blackwater.

Here’s last year’s nominations for comparison purposes.

The full nominee list can be found via the official Emmys Site.

This is amusing: though we had heard that Elijah Wood (currently starring in the very strange, amusing Wilfred, and of course in The Lord of the Rings films) had visited the set in Belfast recently, he actually discusses it a bit with Conan O’Brien:

Some significant further reports have come out from the Northern Ireland press visit the other day.

First up, UTV has video as well as quotes from executive producer Frank Doelger regarding the shoot. He’s quoted as remarking on the difficulty the production has had with weather, not only in Northern Ireland, but in all their shooting locations. He also notes that a part of him hopes that they won’t have to fight other productions to use the location and crew resources they have available right now, but so far it seems like Game of Thrones has fairly free rein.

Game of Thrones filming continues apace in Northern Ireland for the forseeable future. Things have been low key in the run up to and following the big Comic-Con Panel, new cast announcement, and the premiere date being set as March 31, 2013. However, we do have some news about filming from both yesterday and torday. First, it seems that they had set up campe in Ballynure for filming in Straid:

One last tidbit from the Comic-Con panel: the official premiere date for Season 3 is March 31st. This is basically the same Sunday as Season 2’s April 1st premiere, so it’s not really much different… but still, good to have an actual date on hand for the premiere.

According to a tweet from the official twitter for Ballyscullion Park in Northern Ireland, it looks like the first day of filming took place on their grounds:

They later added that the filming was wrapping up right around now, so that’s the first day done. Nice to see a new location—the woodlands at the park seem to have been the focus—added to the mix….

But more importantly, it looks like we now know that returning Season 1 director Daniel Minahan is starting off the third season, because as @ballyscullionpark noted that it was episode 1 that was filming, Cat Taylor noted that “Dan M” was directing:

So, one day down… quite a lot more to go. We’re looking at filming going into November.

A report in the Irish Daily Mirror—the exact text which I’m not able to find, but it’s been reported at second hand by The Independent—claims that Liam Cunningham, who plays Ser Davos Seaworth, has signed on for another six seasons of HBO’s Game of Thrones. This isn’t unexpected news, as such, but it’s interesting as it suggests that Cunningham’s initial contract might have been shorter (which in itself is a bit unusual, since most contracts for long-term cast tend to have five or six year options) and now the production is on a footing where paying more to secure services of second season additions to the cast as far into the possible future as a seventh or even eighth season starts to make sense.