The weather was very rainy. Then very sunny. The ground was very muddy, then not muddy enough. Then came Wasps like HBO Knight of the Seven Kingdoms He was filming the climactic first season’s dueling sequence over two weeks in Belfast in 2024. The fake blood syrup smeared on the actors and performers fighting in the mud attracted a swarm of nervous insects, stinging the actors’ faces while they were already exhausted and fighting the elements and each other.
“By the end of it, they’d all been stung a few times, but they were like, ‘Let’s just get on with it,’” director Owen Harris recalls.
When the team first approached the adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s style game of thrones previous novel, Hedge knighta particular challenge arose, especially since the show’s budget would be very modest by franchise standards. The story follows an inexperienced knight named Dunk (Peter Claffey), who teams up with a young sidekick, Egg (Dexter Saul Ansel), to enter a jousting competition. But not only does the six-episode season require numerous dueling scenes, the season concludes with the “Trial of the Seven” – two teams of seven rivals competing simultaneously in a contest to determine the fate of Dunk.
“Your brain definitely explodes when you’re trying to piece it together,” says Harris, whose credits include the Emmy Award-winning episode “San Junipero.” Black mirror. “Even when you then decide what the main fight is going to be, what it’s going to look like, you still have six other fights going around that also have to work with whatever angle you’re shooting at. They’re levels of complexity. You go through them, little by little, and unlearn them and figure them out.”
The production enlisted the help of 20-year veteran second unit director and stunt coordinator Rob Inch, who not only helped create the duel sequences in Ridley Scott’s film. The last duelbut they worked in medieval amusement parks in the format of duels. Showrunner Ira Parker had early authorization for Inch, Harris, and the rest of the team.
“We weren’t just trying to put on the best and coolest duels — because everyone always wants to have the best stunts on every show — it was important to feel that through Donk’s eyes,” Parker says. “It’s Dunk’s dream to get on the roster and become a Knight. It’s like a 12-year-old kid who wants to play in the NBA, and then he walks into Madison Square Garden for the first time and realizes, ‘These guys are playing for real.’ We had to be on the journey with him.”
Inch began testing ways to realize Parker’s vision a year before filming began. He had deliberately not watched the dueling scenes in the original Thrones or other introduction, Dragon Housepreferred to Knight “I live and breathe it as it is and follow my tone,” he says.
“When you look at fencing, it’s very one-dimensional – it’s just horses crossing,” Inch explains. “We wanted to find a way to get into the action with a camera. We came up with a new wire camera rig that we could hang from a pole — so if the camera accidentally touches the riders, it won’t be a fatal hit when they’re riding at a combined speed of 60 mph.”
The camera rig allows shots to fly across the field to the character’s point of view. “We went around discovering these kinds of cool shots that had never been captured before, and a lot of that remained in the show,” Inch says.
One of Harris’ favorite moments is one that is similar to the scene where a car driver suddenly crashes into another car, except on a horse.
“We wanted to create that moment where you’re wearing the helmet below you and the other horse is on top of you before you even have a chance to realize where you are,” says Harris.
“The stunt team gave us some things I had never seen before,” Parker adds, praising the execution.
A layer of fog was added to the atmosphere – both machine-generated and digitally generated, which helped compensate for Belfast’s ever-changing weather – adding to the claustrophobia. “Instead of having these big open valleys, everything curls into place [Dunk] Harris explains.
Hornet stings aside, Inch proudly points out that the sequence was captured without any serious injuries. However, the threat lingered over the production and resulted in Parker and Harris having to make some difficult decisions.
“I remember sitting on set, and I wanted to take another take, and… [the stunt team] He said, ‘Look, we can do this, but this stuff is really, really dangerous,'” Parker recalls. “It becomes one of those points where you can’t keep rolling until you get it exactly the way you want it. But it benefits us in a certain way because we’re egotistical, and the enemy of perfection is good for us.”
As such, unintentional shots became part of the production process, with Inch photographing seemingly ordinary moments, such as returning horses to the starting lines. “Because horses are so unpredictable, every now and then, something wonderful and unusual might happen, and that’s when you get golden things — happy accidents, as I call them,” he says.
Of course, the animals were not harmed during filming. In fact, many of the stunning moments use mechanical horses — which may be surprising, as many viewers likely assumed some of these shots were CG.
“Any time you see horses hitting a fence, flipping over, or getting dismounted by their riders, it’s done with mechanical horses,” Inch explains.
Production is now working on season two after having to temporarily halt filming in Spain in late March due to flooding caused by Storm Therese.
“We’re trying again to focus on what we love most about this show, which is the relationship between… [Egg and Dunk]“We still haven’t hit the wall in terms of the body of work as the original pieces,” Parker says game of thrones. If anything, Season 2 will probably feel smaller and more intimate than Season 1.
Looking back, Parker’s favorite shot of the duel scene wasn’t the one where the spears clash on the field, but when Dunk dismounts from his horse, takes off his helm, and finally gains the upper hand over Prince Iron (Finn Bennett), beating him into submission.
“I was jumping up and down to see how good it was,” Parker says. “I couldn’t believe the ferocity with which Peter went to do it. You could hear the sound of him hitting the armor of the Aeiron actor, Zack Roberts. That’s when I realized this sequence was going to work very well for us.”
This story first appeared in the June standalone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To obtain the magazine, click here to subscribe.
