S08.00: The Last Watch

[raven]

HBO blurb:

Quote

An up-close and personal report from the trenches of production that reveals the tears and triumphs of the cast and crew involved in the challenge of bringing the fantasy world of Westeros to life.

Airdate 2019.05.26

This is the place to discuss the episode without book references.  If you want to discuss this episode WITH book references,  your topic is here.

[Leroux]

What an emotional recount from the cast. 

Loved the background and especially how involved the unknown soldier became.  

Even though he bent the knee, he still talks about Jon like his king. Love that part. 

[bijoux]

The opening credits with the tapestry and the new verion of the opening theme were wonderful. Good call on making the Stark bannerman extra sort of an emotional center of the doc, he was just so into this whole thing.

I would have appreciated some more focus on the whole cast though. Best moments from the table reads: Conleth Hill just throwing his script after Varys’ last line, and Emilia’s reaction to Kit’s horror. Yeah, dude, we’re really doing that. Did he always read the script at the table reads for the first time?

Also, cool shots of the first table read. Did not recognize blond Benjen.

[bmoore4026]

OK, what was the song that was playing during the filming of the pyre scene?  I'm going to lose my mind because I can't remember it.

[kendi]

8 minutes ago, bmoore4026 said:

OK, what was the song that was playing during the filming of the pyre scene?  I'm going to lose my mind because I can't remember it.

"Could It Be Magic" by Barry Manilow. 

[bmoore4026]

2 minutes ago, kendi said:

"Could It Be Magic" by Barry Manilow. 

Thank you!

[catrice2]

I love that song, and thankfully did not fast forward through it, however, when I heard parts of it I had to rewind to make sure it was real.  Seemed so out of place....which really made sense as so many things seemed out of place this season... 

I know I didn't really "watch" it, but it seemed like a wast of time. 

[scottiB]

19 minutes ago, kendi said:

"Could It Be Magic" by Barry Manilow. 

Which was so comical that it took me out of whatever pathos filming that scene intended. They used that because Nutter made an offhand remark that he wanted to be the next Barry Manilow?

On the flip side, the acoustic version of Sisters of Mercy’s “This Corrosion” was so sneakily inserted that I didn’t recognize it until it was almost over. Well done.

I liked over the closing credits it showed the devoted Stark extra was a bus tour guide for filming locations. 

ETA: that version of “This Corrosion” is by Lambchop. 

Edited May 27, 2019 by scottiB

[TaurusRose]

Ah Keet!  You will always be my favorite along with Emilia Clarke. I love how both of them were so into their characters. The Stark extra was a solid addition and the Night King actor was kind of funny and has an interesting face. I did enjoy the table read and seeing some of the previous actors like Ja’quar and the waif. Maisie sure looked foxy at one of the premieres and Sophie really turned on the tears during the funeral scene. Ian Glenn looked fabulous in his kilt. I'm amazed how some of the actors are practically unrecognizable out of wardrobe and makeup.  LOL

Edited May 29, 2019 by taurusrose

[Ladyrain]

I knew that tons of work went on behind the scenes to put on a production like GOT, but I had no idea just how much!   Given what I learned from this, it's a miracle that they put out a season in just one year for seven years in a row.  Well done, set designers, carpentry, hair and makeup, wardrobe, lighting, sound, special effects......just everyone!

[Lillith]

I also didn't recognize "This Corrosion" right away, the lyrics sounded familiar but it wasn't clicking for me. I loved following the extra. The directors are certainly characters aren't they? I would have liked more from the cast but it was nice to give the people behind the scenes their time to shine. There was a lot to complain about as far as writing and charachter arcs, but every body else, actors, crew, artisans have really given their all and it should be commended. I get why a lot of them are offended by the "redo" petition. 

[BitterApple]

Watching now and damn, Conleth chucking his script was everything.

[bijoux]

I was surprised to see Sophie Ellis-Bextor on set, but I thought I simply missed her in the melee. Turns out she was cut from the broadcast version. But it seems she had a ball going from the pics in the article.

[Constantinople]

Too bad the snow guy's name wasn't Jon

[Richness]

That table read was everything. I think I was more moved by that than the actual episodes. Everyone's reaction to Arya slaying the Night King was cool, especially Rory McCann(?) doing the fist pumps. His on screen adopted murder daughter did him proud. And you could see Keet, erm.. Kit reading ahead, and the emotion crossing his face at what they had to film. Just moving.

I was intrigued by the Stark extra at the beginning, but got a little fed up with his over enthusiasm half way through. I was then back on his side once the emotions got to him at the end, and his closing credits humor. Unfortunately, I had to watch most of the show with captions to understand most of what was said.

[MrWhyt]

12 minutes ago, Richness said:

That table read was everything. I think I was more moved by that than the actual episodes. Everyone's reaction to Arya slaying the Night King was cool, especially Rory McCann(?) doing the fist pumps. His on screen adopted murder daughter did him proud. And you could see Keet, erm.. Kit reading ahead, and the emotion crossing his face at what they had to film. Just moving.

I was intrigued by the Stark extra at the beginning, but got a little fed up with his over enthusiasm half way through. I was then back on his side once the emotions got to him at the end, and his closing credits humor. Unfortunately, I had to watch most of the show with captions to understand most of what was said.

yeah i thought he got a little too over the top and into his role but at the same time I can't say i wouldn't be the same way if  was in his position.

[bijoux]

It seems like a lot of the people working on the show in smaller roles were thrilled with it. Like the security guard angling to get on screen. I know nuthin’.

[BitterApple]

41 minutes ago, MrWhyt said:

yeah i thought he got a little too over the top and into his role but at the same time I can't say i wouldn't be the same way if  was in his position.

I thought it was so sweet that Kit tried to pay him for the extras jacket. 

[Constantinople]

The Stark tour guide seemed OK with slaughtering everything Lannister

Take that goody goodies

[Umbelina]

I think I would have rather had the regular HBO after videos, Inside the Episode and whatever the other one released weekly is called.

[bijoux]

4 minutes ago, Umbelina said:

I think I would have rather had the regular HBO after videos, Inside the Episode and whatever the other one released weekly is called.

Game Revealed. Yeah, I hoped this would substitute the regular videos and I liked that the people behind the scenes were highlighted, but I wish for the normal post-episode takes as well. If only to scoff at what they wanted to portray and what I actually saw happening on screen.

[operakatz]

2 hours ago, Ladyrain said:

I knew that tons of work went on behind the scenes to put on a production like GOT, but I had no idea just how much!   Given what I learned from this, it's a miracle that they put out a season in just one year for seven years in a row.  Well done, set designers, carpentry, hair and makeup, wardrobe, lighting, sound, special effects......just everyone!

It made me angry, watching how damned hard these people worked, doing incredible work...that D&D shortchanged the ending of this show the way they did by rushing through such important events/character evolutions. Such a shame as the production values were really mindblowing.

[theschnauzers]

What surprised e during that table read was that apparently in that table read script, the last scene was to be Dany’s death at the hands of Jon Snow! Obviously that changed by the time the last half of episode 6 aired, but that was a surprise! And that the final scene shot was Jon and Greyworm.

And who knew that they built a massive King’s Landing set as well as Winterfell, and Mother Nature provided a lot of snow that season. It was interesting, but there are other things as well. I also enjoyed the Stark Solider, even as a stand in for all the extras who recurred throughout the entire series.

[millennium]

I didn't watch.   The final episodes seriously impaired my once-effortless ability to suspend disbelief in this show.   Watching a behind-the-scenes tell-all would doubtless render any remaining magic inert.

I ran across a photo earlier in the day of Sophie Turner in full Sansa regalia, in her council seat in the Dragon Pits, sucking on a vape pen.   Wish I hadn't.

[VCRTracking]

[Diana Berry]

Was Bronn at the table read?

3 hours ago, VCRTracking said:

I think Theon looks a little sad.  "Why not me?"

[loki567]

Just now, Diana Berry said:

Was Bronn at the table read?

Lena Headey and Jerome Flynn literally had it in their contracts that they'd never have to share a scene together due to a bad break-up. I'm guessing he skipped table reads. 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I never thought I’d have a Game of Thrones x Barry Manilow combination in my life, but there you have it. 

[Nashville]

14 minutes ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

I never thought I’d have a Game of Thrones x Barry Manilow combination in my life, but there you have it. 

Could’ve been worse.

Could’ve been Kajagoogoo.  😄

[chillenout]

What a complete waste of 2 hours. I swear the amount of time they wasted on intervening the extra,  the people behind the scenes, the lady serving lunch, and the foul mouthed lady whose every other word out of her mouth was f.ck  would have been better served talking to the actors. 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

17 minutes ago, Nashville said:

Could’ve been worse.

Could’ve been Kajagoogoo.  😄

(Too shy) Hush hush!

[PatsyandEddie]

As the mother of someone who works in the film industry, I was delighted at the highlighting of the people behind the cameras. We have no idea the amount of blood ( sometimes literally with injuries ) sweat and literal tears that goes into any production, let alone one of this monumental undertaking. I salute all of those involved. 

[bijoux]

4 hours ago, loki567 said:

Lena Headey and Jerome Flynn literally had it in their contracts that they'd never have to share a scene together due to a bad break-up. I'm guessing he skipped table reads. 

I’ve been curious about what went down with them to lead to that. The show alone has been in production for almost a decade, and who knows how long before it they had broken up. It just seems very extra.

[Nashville]

1 hour ago, bijoux said:

6 hours ago, loki567 said:

Lena Headey and Jerome Flynn literally had it in their contracts that they'd never have to share a scene together due to a bad break-up. I'm guessing he skipped table reads. 

I’ve been curious about what went down with them to lead to that. The show alone has been in production for almost a decade, and who knows how long before it they had broken up. It just seems very extra.

Not a clue what happened in the past - but so far as the present goes, to me it sounds unprofessional as hell.  Very few jobs in this world allow the caveat you have to like somebody in order to work with them - and if you can’t, then that’s on you.

Edited May 27, 2019 by Nashville
Typo

[MrWhyt]

8 hours ago, chillenout said:

What a complete waste of 2 hours. I swear the amount of time they wasted on intervening the extra,  the people behind the scenes, the lady serving lunch, and the foul mouthed lady whose every other word out of her mouth was f.ck  would have been better served talking to the actors. 

the actors gets lots of interviews and other screen time. Why not show some of the less famous people who produce the show.

Edited May 27, 2019 by MrWhyt

[TaurusRose]

8 hours ago, operakatz said:

It made me angry, watching how damned hard these people worked, doing incredible work...that D&D shortchanged the ending of this show the way they did by rushing through such important events/character evolutions. Such a shame as the production values were really mindblowing.

Yeah, I think we can all agree that D&D managed to take some monumental missteps, but I refuse to let that blind me to the amazing work ethic, amount of effort, skill and dedication of all those unnamed people behind the scenes who made Game of Thrones as epic as it was.  I admit I was bored by the husband/wife team and her sappy video call to her daughter, but it was nice that they got their moment in the spotlight regardless of what I thought.  I am going to miss the hell out of this show.  

Edited May 27, 2019 by taurusrose

[VCRTracking]

37 minutes ago, Nashville said:

Not a clue what happened in the past - but so far as the present goes, to me it sounds unprofessional as hell.  Very few jobs in this world allow the caveat you have to like somebody in order to work with them - and if you can’t, then that’s on you.

It didn't really hurt the show that much. It's not like Cersei and Bronn needed to have a lot of scenes together. It's nothing compared between Julianna Marguiles and Archie Panjabi on The Good Wife whose feud was so they couldn't even share a scene in the last few seasons before Panjabi left.

[Growsonwalls]

9 minutes ago, VCRTracking said:

It didn't really hurt the show that much. It's not like Cersei and Bronn needed to have a lot of scenes together. It's nothing compared between Julianna Marguiles and Archie Panjabi on The Good Wife whose feud was so they couldn't even share a scene in the last few seasons before Panjabi left.

And that was also (I believe) caused by a breakup gone bad between Marguiles and Panjabi.

[BitterApple]

Emilia Clarke seems like a lovely woman, but there's something about Sophie Turner that is so off-putting. She just rubs me the wrong way.

[chillenout]

1 hour ago, MrWhyt said:

the actors gets lots of interviews and other screen time. Why not show some of the lesser famous people who produce the show.

1 hour ago, MrWhyt said:

the actors gets lots of interviews and other screen time. Why not show some of the lesser famous people who produce the show.

Ok, that’s fine, interview the behind the scenes people and the extra ....but not for 2 whole hours...IMO it was a boring wasted 2 hours I’ll never get back 

[Growsonwalls]

15 minutes ago, BitterApple said:

Emilia Clarke seems like a lovely woman, but there's something about Sophie Turner that is so off-putting. She just rubs me the wrong way.

I don't see it that way at all. I think Sophie Turner is just very gregarious and outgoing and different from Sansa. I think she's fun and funny.

[Nashville]

9 minutes ago, BitterApple said:

Emilia Clarke seems like a lovely woman,

Have you ever seen Emilia Clarke in interviews?  Where Daenerys Targaryen presents as a platinum blonde picture of understated classical grace, Emilia Clarke presents as a enthusiastic brunette geekgrrl - and between the two, I have to say I much prefer the latter.  Emilia seems very intelligent, and a lot of fun besides.

9 minutes ago, BitterApple said:

but there's something about Sophie Turner that is so off-putting. She just rubs me the wrong way.

I haven’t seen Sophie Turner in that much outside GoT (no, I’m not a Marvel maniac), but what I have seen hasn’t been negative.  Sophie seems on extremely good terms with the rest of the cast - and I guess I kinda figured having relationships THAT good after 8 years of working together spoke very well of her off-camera personality.  YMMV

[MadameKillerB]

I could have watched five or six more hours of this sort of background stuff. Wonder why they didn't make this a short series? It felt incomplete.

[Nashville]

Was there a link to the entire table read?  All I’ve seen was the snippet regarding the NK’s demise.

[WatchrTina]

25 minutes ago, MadameKillerB said:

I could have watched five or six more hours of this sort of background stuff. Wonder why they didn't make this a short series? It felt incomplete.

Yeah the Lord of the Rings DVDs have ruined me for this kind of thing.  Based on those DVDs I think I'm entitled to an entire hour on just the costumes and another hour on just the props and oh yeah the equestrian team -- they need an hour on the horses and . . . yeah LoTR ruined me for this kind of thing.  Still, I'm grateful for what we got. The few people they chose to focus on are clearly stand-ins for all the people they couldn't focus on.  

I liked the no-nonsense location coordinator who did a good job in a thankless role and I don't care that she said "fuck" every third word given that she spent a good part of her time shouting at Teamsters.  

I loved learning about that one guy who had one job -- to dress the grounds with fake snow.  He worked really hard and sometimes he had to move a ton of snow he had JUST laid down and that pissed him off and I could totally identify with his frustration.  (I was delighted he got to go to sunny Spain for that one sequence.)

I'm delighted the make-up artist got to have her daughter in the show's final scene since it seems pretty clear she and her husband had not really thought through the family ramifications of winning the bid for the season 8 White Walker / wight makeup.  (I think it's pretty clear they never really thought they WOULD win and I give them full marks for pulling it off.)  I do think it's a shame that so much of their work never made it on to the screen.  Think about all the work they did on the dead in the Winterfell crypt and in the end we barely saw them.

Edited May 27, 2019 by WatchrTina

[WatchrTina]

13 minutes ago, Nashville said:

Was there a link to the entire table read?  All I’ve seen was the snippet regarding the NK’s demise.

No there is no link to the entire table read but the "episode" this thread is about -- the 2-hour documentary "The Last Watch" -- contains more from that table-read than the few seconds shown in the clips above in this thread.

Edited May 27, 2019 by WatchrTina

[Twopper]

4 hours ago, PatsyandEddie said:

As the mother of someone who works in the film industry, I was delighted at the highlighting of the people behind the cameras. We have no idea the amount of blood ( sometimes literally with injuries ) sweat and literal tears that goes into any production, let alone one of this monumental undertaking. I salute all of those involved. 

Are you me?  My son and DIL both are in the industry, and I have had the opportunity to watch them at work from time to time.  I thought they spent a little too much time with the food lady, but I have also had long conversations with my DIL about catering for shoots and making sure cast and crew are very well fed.     And my husband and I have been in a lot of local theatre productions- both onstage and off.  I loved the snippet of the read-thru, but I got really tired of the lady who used "the F word" at least once in every sentence.   I think I have a small crush on the Night King, and I liked how Kit was called Keet in Spain and later by the whole cast and crew.   And I liked watching the little girl Lottie get a small role as an extra.  

I had just re-watched the final episode which I liked better the second go-round before watching this.  Overall, I liked it.  

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I love behind the scenes stuff so I really enjoyed this two hour special. Although I would have liked seeing some of the other cast members' final wraps, I didn't mind at all that the crew members were the focus of this. We have seen so many interviews with the cast members over the years (and there were TONS of cast interviews over the last two months) so I appreciated that they turned the camera on the people who create all of the other things we see on the show - the scenery, the makeup, the extras, and even the food that everyone eats (and I admit that I kind of wanted a wee tigere bread toastie after one of the food ladies told me what was in it!).

When we watch these episodes, we take for granted that everything besides the actors just magically appears but there is so much work that goes into creating the big stuff (like the sets and the special effects) down to the little things (like how much dirt or blood gets put on an extra's face). All of those things create a world that looks real.

Showing us what some of the crew go through gave us an idea of just how much work goes into that world building. They've had featurettes on creating weapons and costumes and sets before (although I'd gladly watch more of that every season!), so I liked that we got to see mundane things like how much time it takes to spread fake snow, only to have the poor guy be told to move it (and later dressing the King's Landing set with fake snow by crumbling a handful at a time).

And we often hear about how time consuming it is for the actors to do the show, but seeing the makeup couple talk about how the mom missed their daughter's mother's day and Easter bonnet presentations because they'd been working 18 hour days for three weeks straight was the kind of thing that logically we know happens, but the reality of seeing how that affects them, missing moments in their kid's life because they (understandably) can't rearrange the GoT shooting schedule for stuff like that just drives home the point that they have all made sacrifices to create what we see.

I love seeing the camaraderie on set and it's been discussed a lot with the main cast, but it was lovely to see the extras talk about how some of them are friends. They get no glory (I mean, look at how excited they are if their faces are on screen for more than two seconds), but many of them have been with the show for several years, running through mud in the background. It was funny to see how loyal they were to certain houses, and it was sweet to see how much they love the show too.

As for the lady who was swearing, I don't give a FUCK. When you have to work with truck driving teamsters, you can't be polite. There were lots of other people dropping F bombs during this special too so I didn't think she was any worse than other crew members who we saw swearing.

ETA: I loved when the cast and crew yelled, "KEET!" on Kit's wrap day.

I also enjoyed Vlad talking about the difference between choreographing stunts and being an actor. I hope he and Kit had a nice vacation in Spain when they were sent there as decoys.

Edited May 27, 2019 by ElectricBoogaloo

[meep.meep]

Loved the snow guy!  You just don't think about all the little details that go into making a huge show like this.

[WatchrTina]

1 hour ago, ElectricBoogaloo said:

I hope he [Vlad, the actor who played the Night King] and Kit had a nice vacation in Spain when they were sent there as decoys.

And the Waif and Jacquen Hagar!  They both got a free vacation in Spain as well. I LOVE that.  But the show-runners missed a major opportunity.  They should have had Syrio Forel turn up (Arya's sword master from season one.)  I still maintain that Syrio survived.  He didn't die on camera so therefore in my head canon he's still out there somewhere, kicking butt and taking names.

Edited May 27, 2019 by WatchrTina