While filming the upcoming seventh season, HBO’s Game of Thrones broke some interesting records. At least they think they did.
Anyone who’s been watching the series knows there be dragons coming. And of course where there are dragons, there are things being set aflame. According to a new report, the show set a whole lot of people on fire for this season. More than any other entertainment production has before, in fact.
The only problem with these “records,” is that they’re not really official. One of the few things that the Guinness Book of World Records does not keep track of, is how many people an entertainment production sets on fire. Shame.
Still, the people behind the show are confident they broke records. Showrunner David Benioff told Entertainment Weekly:
“In one battle scene we set more stuntmen on fire than have ever been simultaneously set on fire. Our stunt coordinator really wanted to get in the Guinness Book of World Records for this.”
The stunt coordinator Benioff refers to is Rowley Irlam, who has worked on James Bond movies, Marvel movies, and Harry Potter movies among others. Of the mass human bonfire, Irlam said:
“One sequence has 73 fire burns and that itself is a record. No film or TV show has ever done that in a whole show, let alone in one sequence. We also set 20 people on fire at one time, which is also a record. I think in Saving Private Ryan they had 13 on a beach, and on Braveheart they had 18 partial burns. Because of the nature of our attacking animals, we had the liberty to expand on that.”
Irlam also talked about how incredibly dangerous it is for a single stuntman to be set on fire. In addition to being on fire they also cannot breathe in for any reason, and the danger continues for a while after being extinguished:
“It’s totally different from going underwater in your bathtub and counting the seconds in your head. If somebody bumps you and you breathe in by accident you will breathe in flame.
The most dangerous thing is re-ignition. There’s a good minute of everybody staying down afterward as you’re still very flammable at this point.”
But it’s not just about having someone running around on fire. Irlam says they take what’s happening to the character the stuntman is portraying seriously:
“We try to think about what this would actually feel like to make it real for the viewers. We do different performances so hopefully you look through the fire and see a human being in the final throes of life. We try very hard to make it really feel like a casualty of war.”
Game of Thrones season seven kicks off in just about six weeks on July 16th. Click right here for much more related to the show.
[Source: EW]
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