Inside HBO's Game of Thrones

by C. A. Taylor

  The show films in multiple locations across Northern Ireland, often in extremely remote locations with difficult logistics.

  — writing the theme —

  interview with ramin djawadi

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  Game of Thrones composer Ramin Djawadi studied film music at the Berkley College of Music in Boston before moving to Los Angeles to work with Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer at Remote Control Productions. He became involved with Game of Thrones after being approached by David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who showed him the first two episodes and a rough cut of the title sequence. Ramin has been working on the music of the show since the pilot.

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  C. A. TAYLOR: How did it all begin for you?

  RAMIN DJAWADI (COMPOSER): The guys were incredibly smart—they sent me over to watch this rough cut of the titles and showed me what they had been working on. I was so inspired by the strength of the visuals I started working on it straight away.

  CT: When it comes to composing a soundtrack or theme, is the story more important or the visuals?

  RD: To be honest, it’s a combination of the two. I always find it amazing: when I read the script or hear the story, I have certain expectations, and then when you see the acting and the sets, it can alter that. Even when I am not writing specifically to a scene, I tend to have the visuals on in the background to help immerse myself in the world.

  CT: Costume designer Michele Clapton says she often thinks of characters as certain colors when she is designing their costumes. Are there instruments that represent people to you?

  RD: Definitely. Part of the way I see notes is in color, so if there is a particular visual that is red or yellow, certain keys or notes come out. This show is quite challenging. One of the first things David, Dan, and I talked about was how complex and layered the story was and how the characters were organized. How could we best lay these themes out? I like to use Daenerys as an example—when the story first started out, you had no idea how powerful she was going to become. It was very important to create a theme for a certain character or houses that could be turned into something powerful, dark, or sad. The theme had to have those elements implanted early without necessarily hearing them all immediately. “The Rains of Castamere” is another good example—from the beginning you knew it was being set up to be the big Red Wedding piece. It was both fun and challenging, and we watched it evolve to get to that place.

  CT: Looking back, are there any particular pieces or character themes that stand out as favorites?

  RD: One of the ones I have recently finished, “Mhysa,” remains a favorite. Again, it is a wonderful Daenerys moment. That track has a female choir, a male choir, and even a children’s choir all singing these lyrics—a very powerful track.

  Also, the love theme for Jon Snow and Ygritte when they finally make it up and over the Wall—I thought that was quite a powerful piece, and I was very happy with the way it turned out. Sometimes it’s the case of blending two individual themes, but we don’t always have single themes—sometimes there is a theme for a particular storyline or location, or a character only gets a theme depending on how prevalent the story is. Theon was like that—he only got a theme in season two.

  CT: When you go to the studio, do you always work with live musicians?

  RD: Live musicians provide a character and depth that I feel can’t really be replicated with a computer. If I have any choice, it’s always my preference to work with them. It raises the quality of the work. Having said that, there are moments where I have used synthesizers layered into the sound because in those instances they fit into Game of Thrones.

  CT: Do the different worlds add to the challenge or the fun of Game of Thrones? The contrast of the hot and sultry Essos to the ethereal wasteland North of the Wall, for example.

  RD: Definitely the fun of it. Taking Daenerys: We do have more Eastern influences with her, like the bedug [an Indonesian hanging drum], whereas North of the Wall I use glass bowls to create the feeling of iciness. Again, this is where the visuals are so important. You see Daenerys surrounded by desert or the Night’s Watch in a landscape of empty color—it’s a lot of fun to paint that with music. We hear about the White Walkers before we ever really see them, but underneath there is still a mild echo giving the scene a depth and resonance that should make you a little afraid.

  Sheet music for the title music of Game of Thrones.

  CT: How do you approach a visceral scene like the Red Wedding, and a song like “The Rains of Castamere,” which are so pivotal for the show?

  RD: The season before, we’d started to discuss what this scene needed to be: beautiful, haunting, and so on. I’d already been leading up to it with the Lannisters in season two. In a way, by the time we got to the wedding, there was a sense of what was to come when the music began. I think that’s why perhaps it had the effect it did, subconsciously.

  CT: Do you look at particular historical references when composing, such as for a bawdy house song like “The Bear and the Maiden Fair”?

  RD: I try not to. I try to just go for it because of the beauty and scope of the fantasy world we are in. It isn’t a historical piece, so I don’t have to think in terms of baroque or Renaissance influences. But instead: How far can I take something without it being totally out of place? I’d argue you could play “The Bear” on the acoustic guitar, if you wanted to.

  CT: The Game of Thrones title sequence is arguably one of the most identifiable themes of recent years. How do you feel about the reaction to it?

  RD: Somehow everything seems to work. There was a definite connection between the visuals and the music. I remember the day after it first aired, David and Dan sent me a link to a YouTube video of someone playing the music on a different instrument. Then all the different videos started rolling in, and I was just blown away. It was amazing to see people playing their own versions on accordions, recorders, flute, and electric guitars. One video that impressed me the most was someone who had hooked up all these electronic hard drives and had them playing the theme. I don’t even know how they did that! It was incredible.

  — creating the title sequence —

  Concept art showing the detailing of the Astrolabe blades.

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  Each episode of Game of Thrones begins with the Emmy Award–winning title sequence, which has become such an instantly recognizable signature of the show. The brainchild of the creative team at Elastic in Los Angeles, the title sequence contains so many details that it is easy to miss them on first viewing—from the individual coats of arms alongside the producer credits to the sigils emblazoned on the Da Vinci–inspired models that unfurl from the map. Ultimately, the title sequence tells a story of its own that evolves along with the series.

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  ANGUS WALL (CREATIVE DIRECTOR): After the pilot was filmed, some people were confused by the geography, so we started playing with the idea of maps. Initially, the visuals were cut into the show between scenes, which was effective but really broke up the narrative. We were struggling with what the concept was to be and then we decided to create what you might find inside a fantasy book cover with maps and a key. Dan and David had written the title sequence as a crow’s flight from King’s Landing to Winterfell, but it seemed quite flat. We wanted to create a version of the world that was really easy to understand using 3-D models, and very quickly we realized that it made the most sense to put these models within a sphere, a closed environment, because you would be able to see what was coming. If you were on the outside of a sphere, these elements would be hidden behind the horizon. It was a huge leap forward to invert the world.

  One of the early type studies was titled Mad Monk, as we were using Ralph Steadman’s gestural type as a general inspiration. Somehow, the idea stuck and became this concept of these mad monks, somewhere in the world of the series, watching the events unfolding and perhaps even influencing them in some way.

  HAMEED SHAUKAT (PRODUCER): As the world changes, they update the map.
For instance, Harrenhal was once a mighty fortress that was then destroyed. In our map, Harrenhal is inert. It remains the only site that doesn’t animate, as it’s “broken.”

  KIRK SHINTANI (CG SUPERVISOR): The map is supposed to be a living version of the world, so when Winterfell burns, it is also laid waste on the map and appears destroyed.

  ANGUS WALL (CREATIVE DIRECTOR): Bringing in new cities definitely keeps it interesting. The title sequence is actually different depending on the episode, telling you each of the locations you will travel within the episode. Obviously, some episodes mimic the same path, but generally you have about three or four different sequences per season. By the end of season four, we will have completed fourteen different versions of the titles.

  ANGUS WALL (CREATIVE DIRECTOR): Our job is basically to play the part of the monks maintaining the map.

  Close up of the mechanical towers that grow into King’s Landing, designed by Elastic.

  HAMEED SHAUKAT (PRODUCER): There are no real hidden elements, but there is a lot of detail. When you pull back to bands on the astrolabe, you see these intricate motifs. If you know what you are looking for, you will see that they tell the story of the fall of the Targaryen Dynasty, starting in Valyria and ending with the rise of Robert Baratheon. Some people have found this, of course, but they aren’t spelled out for you. We have also tried to incorporate the sigils of the reigning families at each location, so the Baratheon sigil is in King’s Landing, the Starks were at Winterfell, and this season we have included the flayed man at the Dreadfort for the Boltons. We even had the Horse Gates at Vaes Dothrak. The only element that no one seems to have seen yet is that the Fist of the First Men is labeled and just barely visible on the map above the Wall.

  KIRK SHINTANI (CG SUPERVISOR): We went into season one with the idea that the gears and cogs would function together, to move up and down, to make the models behave correctly. This also goes back to an earlier idea that everything could be made with a hammer, saw, and chisel.

  ANGUS WALL (CREATIVE DIRECTOR): We start with the descriptions in the books, but we also bring in the concept art from the show. We have an incredibly talented artist, Rustam Hasanov, who spends a good deal of time looking at all the references in the books when he is putting together the concepts—is it a rich city, a poor one? Is it a trade city or a slave one?

  HAMEED SHAUKAT (PRODUCER): Sometimes the CG team takes creative license, but this can be necessary. Take Dragonstone: On the show you only ever see it from the beach. We needed a whole city with an aerial view, so knowing things like it needs to be in the shape of a dragon and that it was the Targaryen seat allows the CG team to take the creative licence it needs to make things wholly recognizable, yet allow for interpretation. In our sequence, the first angle you see of Dragonstone mimics what you see from the beach, so it doesn’t seem out of place to the viewer.

  HAMEED SHAUKAT (PRODUCER): When it came to the music, composer Ramin Djawadi came to see the sequence. He walked around the studio and saw all the concepts and the different elements, and then he went away to work on it. He came back around three days later with the finished theme. It was genuinely one of the most impressive turnarounds that I have experienced.

  HAMEED SHAUKAT (PRODUCER): All credit has to go to the team we worked with in season one, in addition to us and [Art Director] Rob Feng we had a team of twenty-seven people working on this title sequence. That includes everyone from compositors to the CG team and if we have a streamlined process now, it’s only because of the foundations that were created then.

  — creating valyrian —

  Daenerys is one of the few living speakers of High Valyrian.

  * * *

  In the world of Game of Thrones, High Valyrian is an ancient language from the Valyrian Freehold. At one stage the Valyrians held an empire that encompassed massive swathes of land. As a result, a version of the language known as “Low” Valyrian is still spoken in the region and in the nine Free Cities to the West (though each has its own distinct dialect and linguistic evolutions). The use of High Valyrian is now mainly limited to the clergy and the gentry, making Daenerys’s fluency a surprising but useful strategic tool. Unlike Dothraki, the vocabulary created for the books was limited to a handful of words and phrases, making its realization an exciting challenge for linguist David J. Peterson.

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  GEORGE R. R. MARTIN (CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCER AND AUTHOR): I really have to give David Peterson 95 percent of the credit on the languages. Tolkien was a world-class linguist, and even before he was writing Lord of the Rings, he created not one but two elvish languages. He also created the language of the dwarves, Westernesse, and Númenor—he loved creating fantasy languages. His true heir, in that sense, is absolutely David Peterson.

  I’m not a linguist. I don’t speak Old Norse or Old English the way that Tolkien did. When my books go out internationally, I rely on translators. For me it’s like a conjurer’s trick—I create a few words and try and give it a particular flavor. Then I just write the line and add “Daenerys said in High Valyrian.” Of course, you can’t do that on a show. I used to get letters, before the show came out, from language enthusiasts who were asking about vocabulary and syntax for High Valyrian. I’d have to write back and say, “Sorry, fella, I’ve only invented seven words of it, and when I need an eighth, I’ll come up with that.”

  This is definitely a case of the show picking up the ball and running with it far further than I would have been able to go.

  DAVID J. PETERSON (LINGUIST): In much the same way as I began with the Dothraki language, my first step with Valyrian was to pull all the words George [R. R. Martin] had created from the texts. This took much less time than with Dothraki because, other than valar morghulis, valar dohaeris, and the words for “little brother,” there were really only a few stray ones. Anyone who has read the books knows how memorable and strong they are as phrases, so it didn’t take long to gather them. I didn’t want to start with valar morghulis, as that would take us into the complexities of all the grammar. I knew that George wanted High Valyrian to inhabit the same place in their society that Latin does in ours. Aside from that, I tried to collect all the names that were either definitely Valyrian or looked Valyrian in shape.

  The names proved to be quite useful. In fact, I started with the names, broke down all the common endings of each of them, and used them to work out all the noun classifications with a certain number of fixated endings. From that I was able to generate a gender system, but unlike Latin with just masculine, feminine, and neuter, I decided to do something a bit more fun. Based originally on an older split between animate and inanimate nouns, where both came in two varieties, I created a four-gender system, which became the solar, lunar, terrestrial, and aquatic genders. Certain characteristic nouns that fall into those classifications—like some of the more common irregular nouns, like in solar the word for sun and in lunar the word for moon—those became the paradigms for those genders. That starting point was definitely where the most help came from the books.

  In effect, there are actually two versions of High Valyrian. There are people who still speak it, like Daenerys, but she doesn’t quite pronounce it the way that they would have back when it was the actual language. In fact, it almost exists grammatically closer to the old language than it would have in the Valyrian Freehold before the destruction. Back then, they would have just been speaking the language, and it would have changed and evolved. The idea is that the Targaryen line wanted to keep the language pure, so they would have kept away from changes that other Valyrian lines would have been using so it’s not grammatically altered. At the same time it doesn’t reflect the reality of the language as it would have been. She’s effectively representing a snapshot of a destroyed empire.

  In contrast, the radical changes that you see in Low Valyrian in particular are the ones you hear spoken in and around Slaver’s Bay. They can all understand each other, though the language of Yunkai and Astapor are much closer to each other than
to the language of Meereen. The comparison would perhaps be the difference between someone speaking with a thick Scottish accent compared to someone from New England. For Daenerys, the language in Meereen would be near impenetrable; it’s just too different. I had a lot of fun creating both the original language and the descendant version, one that would be related in the same way that Latin would be to Spanish. It’s not something we’ve really ever had a chance to see before. If you look at Tolkien’s work, we never saw the most ancient versions of the language in the actual books, only the descendants.

  JACOB ANDERSON (GREY WORM): At the start it seemed almost impossible. I remember looking at the first email from David Peterson with MP3s, thinking, “How am I going to do this?” In the beginning I thought I could maybe just copy what he was saying, but I quickly realized that was not going to work. You have to know what he’s saying, and I wanted to know what he was saying. It’s another challenge again to work out what each word means, what the vowel sounds are, where the emphasis is. It’s the biggest challenge I’ve had, but it’s fun.