(WARRIORS ROARING)
-WARRIOR: Ahh!
-(BLADES RESONATE)
♪ (ENTICING MUSIC) ♪
(WARRIORS YELLING)
(STRIKING)
(CRASHES)
As soon as we wrote up
episode nine,
we knew that it was gonna have
to operate on a scale
 that we never operated before.
DAVID: We had a number
 of night time battles,
we had a number of sieges
but this is the first
pitched battle, or at least the
first large pitched battle.
 And so, something different
 for us.
All of it is action with almost
no dialogue and lots of horses
 and many extras
 and the giants...
The amount of supporting artists
and the size of the crew,
how many cameras they got going.
IWAN: The magnitude of all
 the sets and everything,
 it's unbelievable.
It was hard,
it was a long, long slog.
DAVID: Luckily we got
 Miguel Sapochnik back
 who is our meister from
 Heart home in Season five.
That was basically a massacre.
D.B: This is a battle,
 this is the story of a battle.
 We never done that before.
They really wanted to kind of
get into the mindset of what
it would be like to be in
a battle like that.
KIT: It was fluid all the way
through.
It morphed, it changed
 but the most important thing
 all the way through is...
 it can't just be a battle.
 If it's just a battle...
 the audience don't
 have stakes in it, you know?
KIT: You have to be
 following someone
 so we decide to follow to Jon.
♪ (ENTICING MUSIC) ♪
Ramsay...
weapon all the way through
is antagonizing people.
-(BLADE RESONATES)
-KIT: Drawing them into a trap,
and Jon completely falls for it.
D.B: He doesn't account
 for Ramsay's...
...gift sets-- psychological
manipulation,
which Sansa warns him about!
He's kind of thought, ah,
this guy gonna do some
stupid and honorable...
because he's not gonna be able
 to control himself,
 so I'll shoot his brother with
 a bow and arrow.
KIT: There's no way
 he can't gallop towards
 his brother, who is--
 been shot up with arrows
 and try and save him.
So he falls into that trap.
But he's--
waited until Jon Snow...
 ...is within archers range.
So that they can start shooting
 him immediately.
KIT: He seen his brother
 been killed,
 so he falls into the next trap
 galloping towards Ramsay.
Yah! Yah!
Every step of the way he does
exactly what he wants him to do.
Yah!
-(HORSE TRIPS)
-(NEIGHING)
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC) ♪
Probably one of my favorite
shot of the whole season is...
DAVID: when we're behind
 Jon Snow and he sees that...
 Calvary wall galloping towards
 him,
and part of the reason
it's such a great shot,
is that it's all real.
(BLADE RESONATES)
DAVID: That's 40 horses charging
 full speed at Kit Harington.
Until the last minute, I stood
there facing off against this
Calvary charge, which is really
 scary.
KIT: We're a bit annoyed
 cause we think everyone
 is gonna think it was CGI...
 ...and it wasn't.
Camilla, our horse mistress
kept asking every year,
DAVID: she say,
"Give me some more stuff to do.
 Like, this year was boring
 it's just people trotting
 from here to there
 on their horses."
So finally we gave her enough
to do.
I remember the outline, I went,
"Wow, ok, this is adventurous,
how are we gonna deal
with this?"
MAN: (YELLS) Charge!
(INDISTINT CHATTER)
CAMILLA: It's the biggest amount
 of horse requirement,
I ever had on Games of Thrones.
 We flew over in May to kind of
 start discussing
How are we gonna prep it,
CAMILLA: well, how many horses
 we're gonna use.
(WARRIORS YELLING)
CAMILLA:
 We decided on 80 in the end.
So when we first see both armies
 we'll use 80 on the Stark side
and let me see,
80 on the Boltons,
so we're using the maximum.
CAMILLA: Then when we start
 the clash,
 we'll split it in half.
KIT: When we had horses charging
 pass me,
those were all real horses.
CAMILLA: I obviously worked
 really closely with Rowley
 putting it all together.
 And we make channels,
 so it looks like
they're clashing but they're not
 the horses are actually
just passing through,
you know...
...like two foot channels
so that they could clear out.
ROWLEY: We are gonna to make
 that look as close as possible
to a collision without actually
colliding the horses.
ROWLEY: So in very tight
 formation
 we'll have those guys cross
 and they'll pull the horses
 as they cross through.
We're falling them onto a very
thick falling bed,
 so we don't injure the horses
 or injure the guys.
Um, but we're gonna try to make
 that something
that's not really been done
before.
-DIRECTOR: (YELLS) Action!
-(WARRIORS YELLING)
ROWLEY: You want it
 to feel crowded
and mayhem and like, you know...
 anything can happen any time.
But I really don't want anything
 to happen any time,
I want what we planned
to happened,
and it looked really cool
and let's not hurt anybody.
-(HORSEMEN YELLING)
-(BLADES RESONATING)
-(WARRIORS SCREAMING)
-(YELLING)
To get across the field
and follow the horses,
 the speed at which the moving
 horses,
 move really, really fast.
MIGUEL: You need a special rig
 and the rushing arm is such
a fun machine...
...to work with cause its gives
 you such dynamic shots.
(TRAVELLING)
FABIAN: Especially,
a camera tracking vehicle,
it's a remote control arm.
FABIAN: That sits on
 a Land Rover in our case.
Throughout
"The Battle of the Bastards",
we had a number of tracking
vehicles, one of which was...
 ...the vampire bat
 with the rushing arm on it.
On a muddy slippery field
over about five or six hundred
 yards of very fast horses that
 was the vehicle to chase them
 properly, and get the results
 we wanted.
SEAN: It worked very well.
The results were amazing.
(INDISTINT DIALOGUE)
JON:
 Go! Go! Fellow your commander!
(WARRIORS YELLING AND SCREAMING)
You've got two giant armies that
are opposing one another.
STEVE: You know you're not
 gonna have more than
 a few hundred extras on
 one side or the other
so you got a lot
crowd replication.
JOE: We had a lot of Calvary,
 a lot of infantry.
Wun Wun, the giant is involved.
Most of it would be photographed
but it also needed a lot of
 digital enhancement.
STEVE: You've got things
 happening that you can't shoot
 in any real way.
 You got a giant punching out
 a horse.
We shot horses falling
and charging toward one another
that we can use as elements,
 but we start to get into
 complex areas that we haven't
 really broken ground
 with on the series before,
 where it's fun
 and exciting but also,
 very challenging.
(COMMANDS)
(WARRIORS GASP)
(HORSE NEIGHING)
(GRUNTS)
"The Battle of the Bastards"
becomes incredibly compact
all these combatants force into
 this incredibly tight space
 on the battlefield,
 partly crammed in by bodies.
You got horses, you got...
you know, men by either side
just piled up on this
massive hill.
 The body pile was absolutely
 enormous in terms of it's
scale and ambition.
DEBORAH: All of those
 prop bodies had to dressed
in the appropriate uniforms.
DEBORAH: We had to have
 the shields and the flags.
 You then need to dress
 the horses and their saddlery.
 You need to make sure
 that the correct sigil
 is on the horse.
 Even though I know that all of
 these bodies are fake.
DEBORAH: It was deeply moving.
It's pretty grim, it's very
brutalizing to look at.
DEAN: I never seen that
 before ever.
DAVID: It comes from reading
 real accounts of these
various battles both medieval--
 and even more modern ones.
DAVID: You read accounts
 of battles in the Civil War,
 where their bodies were piled,
 so they become an obstruction
 on the battlefield.
I think what I was finding
throughout filming this was
 moments of giving up.
KIT: And the first moment we
 found that was
 when the crush starts
happening and he just stops for
a moment.
KIT: And then he tries to fight
his way back but he gets
pushed over, he gets trampled.
-(JON GASPS)
-(WARRIORS ROARING)
Jon is almost literally
buried alive.
DAVID: Beneath the bodies.
KIT: He was being almost killed
 by his own men,
not on purpose
but just in this wave of fear
that kind of overcomes everyone
as they try to get out
of the way of his incoming wall
 of shields.
And then something drives him
to fight out,
 and in that moment where he
comes up and he goes for breath
he's reborn, again in a way.
-(BREATHES)
-(DISTANT HORNS)
-(WARRIORS CHARGING)
-(WARRIORS YELLING)
(CLASHING)
D.B.: Winterfell is a place
that really mean so much
 in the context of the show,
and the episode is really about
bringing things home.
(COLLISION)
D.B.: The final act takes place
 in the Winterfell courtyard
and it ultimately boils down
to Jon against Ramsay,
 and Sansa against Ramsay.
IWAN: Always wanted to do
 a scene with Jon Snow.
It's really nice to get to
sort of...
 ...have the two bastards there
 together facing off.
KIT: It's a horrible moment
 when you see your hero
go a bit too far.
ROWLEY: The only direction
 I gave to Kit was,
"He's not human anymore.
He doesn't feel any sympathy,
empathy for this guy."
-(YELLS)
-(GASPS)
(GRUNTS)
We actually spent an entire day,
 ten hours with Kit on top
 of Iwan
beating him. (CHUCKLES)
 I just shot it in every single
 angle I possibly could.
KIT: What we wanted
to try to get with that was--
 that he just needing bread,
 he's just flatting
 this person's face
and that's what changed in Jon
for me.
KIT: A monster has risen
 in him a bit, which
 I think should be unsettling
 for the viewers.
There's nothing he wants more
then to beat Ramsay to death
 with his own fists and then
 he sees his sister.
I think Jon then realizes,
you know, as he's about to
 kill him. He's on the verge
 of death.
SOPHIE: He realizes this is your
 fight this your guy to kill.
Because he understands
what she's been through.
Where is he?
IWAN: It's a very justified
 ending, so that Sansa has
the power in the end.
Your house will disappear,
your name will disappear,
all memory of you
will disappear.
It's such a strong moment for
her because all her life
she's been affected by these men
who have just done such terrible
things to her.
IWAN: It's nice to get to do
 a final scene with Sophie,
after last season.
And this is the first moment
that you actually hear her say,
 "This won't affect me
 and I'm stronger than that".
It's my favorite scene.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC) ♪
Her walk away, that final shot
was so crucial
and just to get that little hint
 of a smile just right
I think we ended up making poor
Sophie do it, you know,
12 or 13 times in the middle of
 the night.
DAVID: It's not a big smile,
 it's just a little hint
 of a smile.
(RAMSAY GASPING)
DAVID: Sophie doesn't day very
much, but I think it maybe
my favorite thing
she's ever done on this show.
♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC ENDS) ♪
