Westeros

The intrepid silverjaime has shared a few photos she took when she decided to take a trip over to Ballycarry to see what the filming was like at the Redhall Estate.

According to her report, the locals provided some interesting information. Shooting there was scheduled to go on for 12-13 hours, and they’d be shooting tomorrow as well. A barn was a primary location, and Sean Bean was indeed on site. Monday will see a last day of filming on site, and then the Paint Hall seems to be due to see some more filming on Tuesday.

Via Winter is Coming, the role of Ser Ilyn Payne—the mute King’s Justice, headsman for King Robert—has been given to musician Wilko Johnson, once of the blues band Dr. Feelgood. Also, Bronson Webb is back on board as the ranger Will after scheduling conflicts put this in jeopardy; we’re glad to hear this in particular, having been told by sources involved in the production that he was absolutely terrific on and off set.

Finally, via Twitter, something we’ll classify as second-hand, the claim that author Steven Erikson (best known for the Malazan Book of the Fallen epic fantasy series) revealed at the Czech convention, Tricon that he would be riding a horse as an extra during Game of Thrones. From what the original reporter, webmaster of the Czech A Song of Ice and Fire fansite, says, he was told Erikson said this via a friend. We’re looking to see if we can get confirmation from Erikson himself.

Updated: As we guessed, this was a misunderstanding due to the second hand nature of the information. Over at Tor.com, Erikson posed that he had expressed interest in being an extra because he’s an equestrian, but it’s not the case that he is now one.

Below, we’ve embedded a video of Johnson performing in London three years ago:

And here’s a documentary in which Johnson was interviewed:

This is not an exhaustive rundown of everything that has been shot so far, but it’s a quick review of some of the highlights that we know of from the past month of shooting, and wrapping up with where we are today. We’ll update when and as we’re reminded of shooting details we’ve previously reported on.

• Filming began on July 24th. The rain mentioned there did soon lead to the production moving indoors into the Paint Hall studio. The first week saw a scene or scenes involving at least Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger), Sean Bean, and possibly Jamie Sives (Jory Cassel) or Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister)—possibly something to do with Ned’s arrival in King’s Landing? It also seems to have seen a training sequence or sequences involving Miltos Yerolemou (Syrio Forel) and Maisie Williams (Arya Stark).
• The second week featured location shoots. Among them, a Dothraki travel scene shot in Ballymoney, probably corresponding to Daenerys’s third chapter. Possibly other Dothraki scenes may well have been shot, but the bulk of that filming would take place in Malta.
• Castle Black footage shot at Magheramorne, probably corresponding to Jon Snow’s third chapter and/or leads us to speculate that some part of the Vale footage, such as the climb up the Giant’s Lance to the Eyrie, may also have been shot there.
• A major five day shoot for the Hand’s tourney, covering Sansa’s second chapter and Eddard Stark’s seventh chapter. This involved most of the primary cast based in King’s Landing. Most of the filming took place on the Shane’s Castle estate, although we’ve learned at least one scene was filmed elsewhere. It’s unclear to us if the feast scene after the first day of jousting has been filmed.

This takes us to the present. Earlier this week, footage seemed confined to the Paint Hall, with reports that some of these scenes involved Sean Bean and extras cast as guards. We also knew that late last week, some preparations were going on in an undisclosed location for Winterfell filming. We know Kristian Nairn (Hodor) was set to start filming around now (thanks to Nymeria_WiC for sorting me out on some details here). We’ve now learned via Northern Irish artist known as Anarkitty, that filming is going on in a field located somewhere between the towns of Carrickfergus and Larne, on the grounds of the Redhall Estate in Ballycarry. Given the image above, we believe this means today’s filming

.

Or is it? We’ve now been told that the scene being filmed there today (and possibly on Friday and Monday as well) correspond to Eddard’s third chapter, although with a change: instead of taking place at Darry, it’s now taking place at an inn. At a guess? The inn at the crossing of the Trident, run by Masha Heddle (a role recently cast), is going to appear rather earlier on the show than it did in the series. Previously, it was the setting of two significant scenes—now it’s gained a third. This is actually a very interesting change, allowing them to cut out a location barely touched upon again until the fourth novel and instead focusing on one that shows up more than once as is (and, in fact, shows up again in A Feast for Crow).

Fantasy Flight Games, who recently announced they’re reprinting the original The Art of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire with additional content, have
announced a second volume which will contain two hundred additional pages of art. FFG has a vast catalog of art assets due to their award-winning games such as the CCG, LCG, and board game. Some of the top Ice and Fire artists have produced work for the company, including Michael Komarck, Amok, Martina Pilcerova, Tomasz Jedruszek, and many more.

The original book also contained specially commissioned art by a number of artists. The press release does not suggest this will be the case for the second volume, but we are attempting to check with the company.

The company has set up a sub-site dedicated to their art books for the series.

Following Alfie Allen’s interview yesterday, Joe Dempsie (cast as Gendry) discusses his role with the Crosby Herald. He remarks on how he’s started hitting the gym more to better fit the role, though he admits his 5’8” height is something he won’t be able to fix for those expecting Gendry to be tall.

The reporter’s description of Gendry as someone who could “unite or destroy” the Seven Kingdoms should probably be taken with a grain of salt rather than as some indication of any greatly changed role for the character.

ITN has posted a brief video interview with Alfie Allen, the actor cast in the role of Theon Greyjoy (who can very briefly be glimpsed in HBO’s teaser). Alfie mentions that he’ll be playing Eddard Stark’s ward, and that part of his role involves learning an accent. When asked what sort of accent, he responds that he’s not allowed to say. Whether this accent is the same general accent chosen for Westeros, or is intended to represent something of his origins on the Iron Isles, is an interesting question.

The stills from it show that his hair is a good deal longer than it was when the pilot was shot.

Allen’s has recently completed filming on a film about the 1970’s Northern Soul music scene, SoulBoy.

If you’ll recall, a couple of weeks ago, Westeros.org put out the word that a focus group was in the offing related to the A Song of Ice and Fire series, having been selected by Schlessinger Associates—a leading market research company—as the best way to get the word out. What we couldn’t state publicly then, but we can now that it’s done, is that this was specifically commissioned by none other than HBO as part of their marketing research for Game of Thrones.

We’re still getting some reports in, but having now seen a very thorough post at “The Princess and the Warlock” blog, we thought we’d add some more details we’ve had. Among the questions asked of the men’s group was what would make a strong tag phrase for the series. “Winter is Coming” was agreed to be very strong, but a number of other iconic lines were mentioned, such as “The things I do for love,” “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die,” and the Targaryen motto, “Fire and Blood” (other mottos, such as “Hear Me Roar”, were not felt to be particularly useful from a marketing perspective).

The topic of magic also came up in the discussion. Although the reporter did not recall the details of whether it was brought up by the focus group leader or by the group themselves, it was discussed as being an important facet of the setting. It was also noted to be markedly different from magic in other adapted works, such as Harry Potter—more low-key, leaving the setting “more realistic”.

Among the things focus group participants were asked to provide were examples of any paraphenalia they had related to the series, including things like copies of fan fiction. It was noted to us, however, that more than one participant noted that there’s relatively little fan fiction out of respect for George R.R. Martin’s wishes on the matter.

The Princess and the Warlock note a number of interesting details, the most notable of which were that more topics were covered by the women’s group, which led to some questions the men did not get asked. The question as to who the heroes and villains were were noteworthy, but the question about the most romantic character might well leave HBO scratching their head. What are they to make of the fact that the most romantic male character is the dead Prince of Dragonstone, Rhaegar Targaryen? Perhaps this will improve the odds of fans getting a glimpse of Rhaegar, Lyanna, and other noteworthies from Robert’s Rebellion… Certainly, the topic of flashbacks came up.

Many thanks to all the great fans who answered our call and also provided these reports (particularly Brude, whose collage made us learn just what the Defenestration of Prague was), and for naming Westeros and our friends over at Winter is Coming as favorite sites to get all the news there is to have regarding the series and show. Also a hat tip to the Westeros Sorting community on LiveJournal for helping to spread the word and show that LJ had a vibrant fan community as well.

Wired’s Geekdad blog has posted an in-depth interview with David J. Peterson regarding his development of the Dothraki language for HBO’s Game of Thrones. Quite a lot of excellent details, including Peterson comparing the sound of Dothraki to ” Arabic plus Spanish divided by two … squared,” giving the latest count of the dictionary (2,356 words, conservatively), and a new phrase to practice. It’s another fascinating look into the development process.

Who’s Joe, you may ask? An American residing in Northern Ireland, Joseph Campo is an independent actor, writer, and director who has set his sights on landing a role in HBO’s Game of Thrones. To drum up support, he’s taken to Youtube, where he’s created a channel where he’s posted several videos making his case with a substantial helping of humor. But humor aside, Campo is quite serious, and has already done some legwork, such as verifying that he should be eligible to join British Equity due to his current acting associations.

His latest video seems to hint that he’ll be preparing an audition video for the role of Mance Rayder, or perhaps some other wildling, but we’ll share his first video which brought him to the attention of Game of Thrones fanatics:

Continuing its streak, George R.R. Martin’s and Gardner Dozois’s anthology in tribute of Jack Vance, Songs of the Dying Earth, has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award. The anthology contains excellent short stories, novelettes, and novellas from the likes of GRRM, Neil Gaiman, Tanith Lee, Glen Cook, Robert Silverberg, and many more.

Congratulations to all the nominees, particularly artists Charles Vess and John Picacio; Vess illustrated Subterranean Press’s limited edition of A Storm of Swords, while Picacio is currently working on the A Song of Ice and Fire 2011 Calendar.

The awards will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention held in Columbus, Ohio in late October.

As has become tradition, the Brotherhood without Banners—George R.R. Martin’s unofficial fan club—are going to be throwing room parties at this year’s Worldcon in Melbourne, Australia. Precise details of time and date will be arriving soon, but flyers are being prepared (date and time to be confirmed). The fans are also organizing a book raffle at the site, filled with some notable prize packages, and George and Parris seem like they’ll be contributing some goodies to the prize pool.

If you’re thinking of attending this year’s Worldcon, drop by Westeros.org’s forum, where this and other fan gatherings are planned and discussed. As is also traditional, there’s a couple of threads where fans who aren’t attending are posting questions they’d like to see answered during George’s two Q&A sessions at his HBO panel and his ADwD reading; naturally, the So Spake Martin collection will become a repository for all the interesting reports and items that come out of the convention.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, HBO‘s president of programming Michael Lombardo discusses HBO’s past and present Emmy success, far and away the most nominated and award-winning cable network for the last number of years. In the course of the discussion, Lombardo brings up Game of Thrones, where he has the following to say:

“The fact that it was genre, i.e. a little bit of magic, in a world that is not in fact real was irrelevant to the storytelling. The human drama that I read in the page, the characters as scripted by David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss]—;I was hooked on the pilot after reading it, and I’ve done this enough now to know that doesn’t happen all the time and when it happens you need to pay attention to it. Because to have a great show, I got to tell you, what you have to start with is a great script. It was a great script.”

Thanks to Nymeria_WiC for bringing the interview to our attention.

Thanks to Zanthia2, we now have an image of the Castle Black film set at Magheramorne Quarry after filming has commenced there. As you can see, part of the quarry wall has been painted white, which fits reports we’ve had from extras. The picture was taken from a nearby island:

One detail that leaps to mind is the structure on the quarry tier immediately above the white-washed section of wall. It looks like an arch and a low wall around it. We’re not 100% sure, but we think this could explain word that actor Brendan McCormack was starting filming in the middle of this month. Could it be that McCormack, in the role of Ser Vardis Egan, will be shooting scenes set of the climb up to the Eyrie at the quarry? If so, that structure we see there could very well be one of the way castles, perhaps Snow or Sky.

Alternatively, the structure—if it does have anything at all to do with the production—might be used to show one of the gates and tunnels that lead through the Wall.

Thanks to Zanthia2for the photo, and Winter is Coming for the retweet.

Paul Goat Allen has written an insightful article at the Barnes & Noble book club blog, discussing the question of whether the Science Fiction genre is dying or not. A pair of noteworthy sections cite George R.R. Martin and his Wisconsin Public Radio interview from 2008 in which he puts forward his viewpoint as to the reasons for the decline of popularity of Science Fiction, and his personal feelings on what fantasy has to offer to readers. The interview contains Martin reading his brief essay on fantasy at around the 14:50 minute mark of the interview.

You can find much more from Martin by way of his correspondence with fans, on-line chats, and printed, audio, or video interviews at Westeros.org’s Citadel site, in the So Spake Martin collection.

George R.R. Martin has confirmed all four guesses that we’ve listed (with added Youtube videos featuring performances): Lalor Roddy as “Assassin”, Simon Lowe as “Wineseller”, Mark Lewis Jones as Shagga, and Clive Mantle as the Greatjon. He also adds a fifth name to the mix, Susie Kelley, cast in the role of innkeeper Masha Heddle.

He’s taking off for Australia and the Worldcon there on Monday, so does not expect he’ll be providing updates for when other roles—he lists Ser Ilyn Payne, Prince Tommen, Princess Myrcella, Rickon Stark, Mirri Maz Duur, “and more”—are cast and can be announced.