Production designer Deborah Riley on building Season 5

One of the most consistently outstanding aspects of Game of Thrones is the production design. In addition to filming in locales that help reflect the character of Westeros, a great deal of work goes into creating the sets on which George R.R. Martin’s fully-fleshed out characters play their titular game. Smithsonian Magazine has an interview with production designer Deborah Riley, who joined the show in Season 4. She discusses the hard work that goes into bringing the world of Ice and Fire to life.

Riley has quite the résumé; she trained at Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art, which also counts Cate Blanchett and Baz Luhrmann (whom she would later work with on Moulin Rouge!) among its alumni. She counts Luhrmann as one of her major influences, particularly in his belief of “real artificiality”: “The world might be artificial but you have to believe it’s real.” That’s pretty good advice to have for Game of Thrones, which features dragons, shadow assassins, and undead snow creatures in its cast.

Of course, some of the most impressive work is done for sets we barely get to see:

At the trial by combat of The Mountain and the Viper, a brilliant floor mosaic of the family crest was actually a painting: painstakingly crafted to look like it was composed of hundreds of small tiles. But, it was seen just briefly in the show.

But for Riley, her favorite sets to design have been in Braavos, saying that “establishing the aesthetic of the Iron Bank was just so different to anything else the show had previously seen.” That set was inspired by Third Reich architecture, which is an unusual and fascinating choice to represent a powerful organization such as a bank.

Riley also talks about the intense production schedule for the show, which is a yearlong production:

Riley says the show’s strenuous production schedule, which shoots for 200 days a year at multiple locations including Croatia, Iceland, Northern Ireland and Spain is akin to an “extreme sport—you just have to get up and go.” She notes that one of her producers has said, “It’s like working on five feature films at once.”

And Riley, like many of us, is excited about the prospects Season 5 will offer in terms of story:

…a lot of the characters are on the road and so you have characters who have never met one another before, crossing each other’s paths. And I just think that’s absolutely wonderful to see. Tyrion is outside of King’s Landing. Others are just making their way in the world. We get to follow them to somewhere new.

Sounds good to me! Check out the full interview for more, including a discussion on how digital technology has changed the way production designers operate (short answer: it enhances what we do”) and watch this awesome time-lapse video as the team pieces together a set for a scene at the Top of the Wall.

• Published on 04/12/2015 at 3:30 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 1:05 PM CDT