Let's just set the mood...
(Hey, psst... If it's over here it's our picture... | ...and if it's over here, it's from the TV show.) |
Now just to add a little fire... | Mood set? Excellent. Game of Thrones is awesome. I was dragged into the fandom by friends who I owe a debt of gratitude to for not letting me not watch this show (and subsequently start reading the books). Rob and I on our travels through Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, had the chance to run across some of the filming locations for the show. Our first stop was a little spit of beach in Ireland. It isn't exactly the most iconic location, but it was neat to see. In the show, it's quite dark and a bit fiery. Stannis swore his allegiance to the Fire Lord here, and then a little ways off the beach Ser Davos awoke alive among the rocks. |
From there our journey took us to Lordsport, or rather, Ballintoy Harbor.
(Let the records show they MAY have been some CG added in post on the show... maybe.)
Finding the exact shot of where Theon Greyjoy was baptized proved difficult primarily because there was no 3g out in this little harbor area so we could do no googling. I suppose the one cafe and a guy painting with his basic set of acrylics just wasn't enough to ensure good cell coverage. But this is still the harbor. Honestly I was pretty accurate given the circumstances.
Next on the list was the King's Road. It's this crazy awesome road in Ireland known as the Dark Hedges, and honestly, they didn't need to do much to this place to make it look crazy cool and creepy. Just add a bit of dirt road in place of the asphalt and bam, you have a road fit for the medieval fantasy age. |
Castle Black is one of the few locations that was built out in the world for people to spy upon. The location is in an old, previously abandoned quarry. The sets for both Castle Black and Hardhome were built almost to their full extend here (meaning not many CG buildings were added in the end). Our pictures really don't look like much. We couldn't get close at all what with gates and security vehicles, but seeing it in person was awesome. If you want to see more behind the scenes pictures, check out this article. The title of it makes me snicker. The Wall in Game of Thrones was probably the "realest" thing we saw in this whole line (aside from the King's Road). |
While in the show they're quite close, geographically we had to take a few hops and skips to get ourselves over to Winterfell. Castle Ward was home to many locations for Game of Thrones, and it was the location that played it up the most as well. There were many markers to let you know just where you were and what was filmed there, which I found very helpful since once more, no 3g coverage could be found. |
I was told that this window is the one that Bran is pushed from, since the real tower that he's shown climbing (the same one that's in all the main shots above) has a window far too small for a child to fit in. Honestly I don't think these windows could look more different, but it's what I was told by a man wearing a cape so it MUST be true. |
From Winterfell, our sightseeing turns to the obscure. Though honestly, in a way, that made it even more interesting to me. I remember wondering while looking around at all these sights where the little things were filmed, specifically like where Brienne finds the hanged women. To my surprise, that passing thought received an answer! Fewer bodies in my version, but otherwise pretty spot on.
"Hey Steve, can you see a couple of people hanging dead off this tree?"
"Oh, yeah, totally."
"Oh, yeah, totally."
- Average conversation between two GoT location scouts.
Unless I was willing to walk aaaall the way around a lake, I couldn't get a shot of this tower like it's seen in the show. I wasn't willing to do that. These tower though is the base for the Twins.
And then, at the end of the article, while we're all having a little laugh and a jolly jape, in true Game of Thrones fashion... |
... Rob died.