Difference between revisions of "Blackwater (TV)"

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(Production)
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==Production==
 
==Production==
"Blackwater" is to depict the series's first large-scale war sequence, the confrontation between the Baratheons and the Lannisters that the whole season builds towards. In the episode's first drafts, the battle took place offscreen for budgetary reasons, and viewers would have experienced it mostly through the eyes of [[Cersei Lannister]] and [[Sansa Stark]], ensconced in [[Red Keep#Maegor's Holdfast|Maegor's Holdfast]] while the battle rages outside. Eventually,  [[w:showrunner|showrunner]]s [[w:David Benioff|David Benioff]] and [[w:D. B. Weiss|D. B. Weiss]] convinced HBO to approve a "considerable" increase in the series's budget in order to stage the battle on screen.<ref name="EW.com 20 May 2012">{{cite news|last=Hibberd|first=James|title='Game of Thrones': Blackwater battle has 'dramatically exceeded our expectations'|url=http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/05/20/game-of-thrones-blackwater/|accessdate=21 May 2012|newspaper=[[w:EW.com|]]|date=20 May 2012}}</ref>
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"Blackwater" is to depict the series's first large-scale war sequence, the confrontation between the Baratheons and the Lannisters that the whole season builds towards. In the episode's first drafts, the battle took place offscreen for budgetary reasons, and viewers would have experienced it mostly through the eyes of [[Cersei Lannister]] and [[Sansa Stark]], ensconced in [[Red Keep#Maegor's Holdfast|Maegor's Holdfast]] while the battle rages outside. Eventually,  [[w:showrunner|showrunner]]s [[w:David Benioff|David Benioff]] and [[w:D. B. Weiss|D. B. Weiss]] convinced HBO to approve a "considerable" increase in the series's budget in order to stage the battle on screen.<ref name="EW.com 20 May 2012">{{cite news|last=Hibberd|first=James|title='Game of Thrones': Blackwater battle has 'dramatically exceeded our expectations'|url=http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/05/20/game-of-thrones-blackwater/|accessdate=21 May 2012|newspaper=[[w:EW.com|EW.com]]|date=20 May 2012}}</ref>
  
 
With their still limited resources, the show's producers nonetheless decided not to attempt recreating spectacular mass scenes similar to that of ''[[w:The Lord of the Rings|The Lord of the Rings]]''{{'}}s [[w:Battle of the Hornburg#Peter Jackson's "Battle of Helm's Deep"|Battle of Helm's Deep]], but rather to focus on the infantryman's perspective, hampered as he is by the [[w:fog of war|fog of war]]. They said that this also allows the series to draw on its viewers' empathy for the battle's participants, with whom viewers are already much more familiar than the audience of a typical two-hour movie. They nonetheless resisted pressure to stage the battle on land, which would have been much easier to shoot, because they considered the naval confrontation to be essential to the series's principal storyline.<ref name="EW.com 20 May 2012" />
 
With their still limited resources, the show's producers nonetheless decided not to attempt recreating spectacular mass scenes similar to that of ''[[w:The Lord of the Rings|The Lord of the Rings]]''{{'}}s [[w:Battle of the Hornburg#Peter Jackson's "Battle of Helm's Deep"|Battle of Helm's Deep]], but rather to focus on the infantryman's perspective, hampered as he is by the [[w:fog of war|fog of war]]. They said that this also allows the series to draw on its viewers' empathy for the battle's participants, with whom viewers are already much more familiar than the audience of a typical two-hour movie. They nonetheless resisted pressure to stage the battle on land, which would have been much easier to shoot, because they considered the naval confrontation to be essential to the series's principal storyline.<ref name="EW.com 20 May 2012" />

Revision as of 21:14, 21 May 2012

Blackwater
Game of Thrones
Episode # Season 2, Episode 9
Airdate 27 May, 2012
Director Neal Marshal
Episode chronology
← Previous Next →
"The Prince of Winterfell" "Valar Morghulis"
List of Game of Thrones episodes

"Blackwater" is the ninth episode of the second season of the HBO medieval fantasy television series Game of Thrones. The episode is significant in that it was written by George R. R. Martin, the author of the book series the tv show is based on.


Plot

The episode is to focus on the Battle of Blackwater Bay, Stannis Baratheon's naval assault on the realm's capital of King's Landing.

Production

"Blackwater" is to depict the series's first large-scale war sequence, the confrontation between the Baratheons and the Lannisters that the whole season builds towards. In the episode's first drafts, the battle took place offscreen for budgetary reasons, and viewers would have experienced it mostly through the eyes of Cersei Lannister and Sansa Stark, ensconced in Maegor's Holdfast while the battle rages outside. Eventually, showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss convinced HBO to approve a "considerable" increase in the series's budget in order to stage the battle on screen.[1]

With their still limited resources, the show's producers nonetheless decided not to attempt recreating spectacular mass scenes similar to that of The Lord of the Rings's Battle of Helm's Deep, but rather to focus on the infantryman's perspective, hampered as he is by the fog of war. They said that this also allows the series to draw on its viewers' empathy for the battle's participants, with whom viewers are already much more familiar than the audience of a typical two-hour movie. They nonetheless resisted pressure to stage the battle on land, which would have been much easier to shoot, because they considered the naval confrontation to be essential to the series's principal storyline.[1]

About a week before shooting was to start, the episode's director had to leave the production because of a personal emergency, and a replacement had to be found quickly. Benioff and Weiss settled on English director Neil Marshall (who hadn't seen the series before) on the basis of his work on Centurion and Dog Soldiers, where he created intensive action sequences on a limited budget.[1]

Benioff and Weiss described the episode's filming as "pretty much a month straight of night shoots". The cold and wet climate of Belfast taxed actors and extras so much, they said, that their battle-weariness was no act, and neither were weather machines required to simulate the wind and rain. The episode also has far more visual effects shots than any other.[1]

References

External links

Notes and References


This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Blackwater. The list of authors can be seen in the page history of Blackwater. As with A Wiki of Ice and Fire, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.