How to film a wight polar bear?

So in the leaks we heard that there will be a fight not only with lots of conventional wights north of the wall, but also with a wight polar bear - and that Thoros of Myr will be killed by this beast.

This promises stunning action scenes - but how in seven hells do you film such scenes? Basically, there are two possibilities:

• you either create that bear completely via CGI (like the dragons), or 
• you use a real animal and adapt its look in post production (like the direwolves).

While the first way is quite laborious and expensive, the second one seems to be completely impossible. Polar bears are extremely dangerous and fierce animals and surely can not be trained to act in front of a camera or even work with actors, can they?

Well, the first surprise when researching this topic was this: Remember that scene from season 3 where Brienne has to fight a bear? In fact this was filmed with a real bear, and Gwendoline Christie & the bear did film the scene closely together, only separated by a small electric fence!

So would this theoretically possible with a polar bear? As it seems there is at least one crazy animal trainer who lives and works very closely with his 800+ pound polar bear named Agee:

"Mark Dumas is the only man in the world who can chill out with a polar bear"

This guy not only wrestles and swims with his bear, but they also spend their time together "on the road working on TV and film sets". Agee even has her own IMDb entry, and according to this site she has lots of experience being filmed for movies or commercials.
 
 
To complete the picture: Now guess who worked with Agee in a Norwegian movie from 2014 called Operasjon Arktis? Good old Tormund Giantsbane - he even has a short fight with that bear:

Kristofer Hivju	Kristofer Hivju and Agee

So if D & D were thinking about how to shoot that polar bear scene, they only had to ask Kristofer Hivju about his experiences with Agee. And if they chose to book her, the scenes would probably have to be filmed either in British Columbia, Canada (where the bear lives) or at the west coast of the USA. Transporting the bear to Europe would be both very difficult and illegal, which was the reason why the scenes with Brienne and the bear had to be filmed in a Los Angeles studio.

I doubt we'll get any information on this topic before the season airs - but if Paul Kaye or other actors of the wight hunting team would be sighted in Canada or around LA, that could be a clue.

Until then, we simply have to imagine the head of Thoros of Myr in the picture to the right...

"The Big Tree"

TL;DR: New information seems to confirm that the title "The Big Tree" that we saw on a sheet back in September does not refer to a certain episode, but might be the project title for the upcoming season 7 of Game of Thrones as a whole.

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Back in September, in one of the pictures shot by paparazzo PAP4U at the Linen Mill Studios in Corbet we could see a sheet containing supposed information on the shooting:



The Big Tree - Director: Jeremy Podeswa - WOLF CREW
Episodes: 704/7xx or 701/7xx - Saturday, 24th September 

While the numbers of the episodes were hard to read and therefore disputed, most of the information was self-explaining: Director, shooting crew, date.

One thing though was not clear - the title "The Big Tree" at the top of the sheet. First idea was of course that this could be the name of the episode shot that day - but usually episode names are not chosen this early in production. So it might just have been some preliminary working title; but as there are clearly two episodes referenced on that sheet, that didn't sound too convincing neither.

Now, two pieces of information have shown up that might shed some light on "The Big Tree".

First, reddit user u/conordmcmahon posted a couple of answers he claims to have gotten from  reddit leaker u/awayforthelads a while ago. While we can not verify this at all, the information he presented is well aligned with the leaks u/awayforthelads gave us before. In fact, there's not even a lot of new information at all.

But one remark is very interesting because it directly adresses the title "The Big Tree" in said sheet:

"All of the scripts have The Big Tree written at the start. It's not an episode title, it's a project title for this season - think 'Blue Harvest' for Star Wars back in the day. Take it from that - the episodes don't actually have titles yet, Just episode numbers."

Does this make any sense at all? We haven't heard of any project titles or code names for complete GoT seasons before, and it's unclear what the advantage of talking about "The Big Tree" instead of GoT season 7 would be. One idea might be that sheets / scripts with the title "The Big Tree" instead of "Game of Thrones Season 7" on the first page would not attract so much interest from people accidentally seeing them. Other reasons? No idea.

On the other hand, there was an image posted by Twitter user ‏@IpsyGypsy a month ago that immediately came into my mind when reading u/conordmcmahon's post. It shows a name badge belonging to storyboard artist Jane Wu, and it goes very well along with the claim that "The Big Tree" is the project title for this season:


It could be pure coincidence that the picture of Bran arriving at the big weirwood tree in S04E10 was selected as background for the badge of season 7 crew members. But my guess is that this selection rather confirms that "The Big Tree" has importance as a symbol and / or project name for this season.

Plus, it gives me hope that Bran's storyline in S07 will be more important than we know right now... ;-)

Update on Trujillo Castle shooting

TL;DR: New photos show that director Jeremy Podeswa directed scenes with Bronn, Jaime and his new sword "Widow's Wail" on the walls of Trujillo Castle. Clues indicate they might have been filming Jaime leaving KL towards the North after his breakup with Cersei in episode 7.

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Yesterday both the Daily Mail and JustJared published new, unseen pictures from the shooting in Trujillo that took place one week ago.

Besides Jaime's new sword "Widow's Wail" (which was detected by Twitter user Adrián Alonso from Bilbao) there was another detail in those photographs worth reporting - in one of the pictures we can clearly see director Jeremy Podeswa together with Bronn on the walls of the castle:

(Photo by JustJared.com)

As Podeswa is known to direct episodes 1 and 7, this has direct implications for our understanding of the season 7 storyline. It means that at least some scenes with Jaime and Bronn have no connection to Highgarden (which will be focused in episodes 2-4), and probably also not to Casterly Rock (the rumours about CR and the leaks seem to imply it will not be focused in episodes 1 or 7).

So if we have to speculate, the most fitting location where we could find Jaime and Bronn in episode 1 or 7 would be King's Landing. We do not know at this moment if we see KL in episode 1, but in the last episode we will have the big meeting of main characters when Jon Snow and his allies bring the captured wight into the capital.

Unfortunately we have no context around these photos at all, so all we can do is speculating some more: These scenes could be Jaime and Bronn watching the delegations arrive at KL; or Jaime just before his departure towards the North after being informed about Cersei's planned treason.

Then, this is the first time we see Jaime with the Valyrian steel sword "Widow's Wail" - how and why did he get it? It was originally reforged from Ned Stark's sword Ice and given as a wedding gift to King Joffrey by his grandfather Tywin Lannister. After Joffrey's death it was last seen at his funeral in the Great Sept of Baelor.

A gift for King Joffrey (S04E02)	The dead king with his sword (S04E03)

We have no idea what happened with it afterwards. Jaime did not wear or use it up to now - he was always seen with a plain standard Lannister sword:

Jaime with his usual sword (S06E10)	Jaime with "Widow's Wail"

So this detail could have some importance. Maybe the reason for him wearing "Widow's Wail" is his imminent departure to the North, after having witnessed the wight at KL and having learned about the usefullness of Valyrian steel weapons against the Wight Walkers. Plus, he obviously takes a step away from Cersei after she tells him that she does not intend to keep the promise she made to Daenerys and Jon, and she will not send troops to fight the White Walkers.

And how will he get hold of "Widow's Wail"? Either Cersei gives it to him after the death of Tommen, in a symbolic gesture or in another attempt to tie him back to herself. Or Jaime goes Sam Tarly-style and simply snatches the sword from the Red Keep's wall before leaving KL.

But remember: most of this is speculation. Only thing we know for sure is that the Jaime / Bronn scene on the Trujillo castle walls was directed by Jeremy Podeswa and thus should appear in episode 1 or episode 7.

Jaime, Bronn and the Tarlys on the battlefield

Thanks to twitter user @RickZornow who spent his vacation in Spain visiting GoT locations and providing excellent pictures in PAP4U style, we have new photos from Los Barruecos showing some known characters for the first time on set!

First, there's obviously Jaime Lannister and Bronn:

Jaime and Bronn at Los Barruecos	Jaime and Bronn in season 6

By closely examining the other pictures, you can make out other interesting details.

There are some pictures with two riders - one of them is definitively Randyll Tarly, riding the dapple grey horse we've seen him on before. The second, bigger one might be his son Dickon, played by actor Tom Hopper in season 7:

Riders at Los Barruecos	James Faulkner taking riding lessons

And finally, we can make out a new flag besides the ubiquitous Lannister banner. It's hard to make out any details, but given the fact that it is green and we have Tarlys on location, it probably is their banner:

Green banners at Los Barruecos	Tarly soldiers and banners in season 6

You can check out many more pictures on Twitter - again, many thanks to @RickZornow for his great photos (and his talent evading the Guardia Civil ;-) )!

Almodovar: Highgarden, Casterly Rock or both?

Many theories were floating around about the identity of Almodovar Castle in GoT season 7, but finally we got some nice visual clues - just look at the banners:

Say hello to Highgarden, everyone!

Doesn't exclude the castle being also used for Casterly Rock, of course... ;-)