The Cinematography of "Game of Thrones"

On average it takes me at least 3 years to jump on a TV bandwagon that everyone else has been buzzing about forever - and the vast, twisty Game of Thrones is my latest (6-years-delayed) entertainment binge.

I love the look of it, which is clearly informed by the design of epics like The Lord of the Rings, as well as various adaptations of Arthurian myth. But beneath the GoT visuals runs an undercurrent of fear and pain and tension, and the effect is like an arrow to the heart.

Much of the GoT style is understated and hard to pick up on in part because the show doesn't really hit its stride stylistically until about season 3. At that point, signature characteristics begin to leap out.

For starters - and this is probably my favorite quality - warm light and dust combine beautifully. The glare of the sun is diffused softly and naturally to great effect, never washed out or jaundiced. (And for some reason, Jorah in particular is lucky enough to be frequently and flatteringly silhouetted against it.)

Relatedly, GoT, for the most part, is masterfully color balanced. Most shows and films of its genre are either orange'd out or bathed in an unholy greenish or bluish cast (please see: early LotR especially), but this series is naturally colored and lit. Even scenes that take place in the icy north avoid the sickly look that seems to be a common side effect of editing to communicate coldness and low light.

I remain - as I was with NBC's Hannibal - a steadfast fan of evocative medium shots to highlight critical character turning points and formative moments. Especially of Jon Snow, whose journey to leadership is a developmental centerpiece, and whose expression always begs sympathy of the "poor, tragic frozen baby" brand. Bonus points if the camera tracks towards the subject.

These are similar to what I like to think of as "leader" shots - shots that frame someone close to dead center & visually sets them apart. The framing is cold, striking and lonely for some (Jon Snow), eerie and white savior-y for others (Daenerys), and sets the tone for the character of their leadership.

There is a fascinating visual contrast here that mirrors the differences in Jon Snow's and Daenerys Targaryen's styles of command. While Jon's backing characters are usually clearly visible as distinguishable figures, Daenerys stands out as a single pale speck in a sea of vague, depersonalized brown blobs. Given the contrast, I think there's an argument to be made re: Daenerys being a troublingly dismissive, aloof leader who establishes a cult of personality and who rises to power on the backs of people she remains willfully disengaged from, both personally and culturally.

Even so, GoT doesn't aggressively ask us to reject Daenerys - in fact, she is positioned as a complex, developing ruler who, despite a tyrannical streak, still has a "good heart." GoT doesn't often tell us exactly what to think of its people or events; it drops little visual cues here and there and leaves us to form our ambivalent assessments.

In that spirit, GoT employs what I would call a "reticent" camera. Many films and shows with an element of intrigue make heavy use of dramatic irony, inviting the audience to be privy to information that the characters have yet to learn. The eye of the camera in GoT, however, steadfastly refuses to let us "in" on alliances, deceptions, and other information that characters have not yet discovered. We generally know and see as much as the central characters do (Sansa, Jon, Arya, Daenerys, Cersei, Tyrion), and no more. (e.g., Ned Stark's beheading is treated respectfully, with a discreet cut to flying birds, and at the Red Wedding, we have no clue that a bloodbath is imminent until Catelyn discovers the man she's been conversing with is wearing protective chainmail under his clothes.) Often, characters don't even say that much to each other that is meaningful, and when they do: they lie, they lie, they lie.

So where does the emotional honesty in GoT come from? Its reticence means the show relies frequently on cinematography in order to convey emotional information that - in a normal series - we would normally get from a character's words. Sometimes framing drops hints about characters: even before we get to know him, Tywin Lannister threateningly butchers an animal just offscreen while he and son Jamie discuss political strategy. And sometimes framing drops hints about how we should feel about a situation, or how a character is feeling in the scene.

Above: we have these great upward-shot angles, which are usually visual indicators of alienation, apprehension or mystery. There are a lot of these in the show - more than we usually see on TV. Probably because everyone in this series is scared or confused (or both, if you're Sansa Stark).

We're also shown a lot of thin, vertical lines for a sense of severity, scale and dread, whether using trees or palace pillars or even bedroom curtains. Notably that dread knows no boundaries - it follows us indoors as well as out.

And there are windows - so many windows. GoT features many scenes of characters in dangerous, lonely situations gazing out of windows or silhouetted against them. (I'm often reminded of birds in cages.) Though these windows let in stark beams of light, it's often very hard to see what's out of them - a physical rendering of political imprisonment.

Until...Tommen Baratheon steps out of a window and out of his life entirely, into the beyond.

Outdoors, characters are no less trapped. Even in wide overhead shots, we feel the helplessness and claustrophobia of large-scale violence. Below: armies in formation surround wearied opposing forces, eventually chasing them into a forest and wiping them out.

Noticeably absent are shots that invite close identification with characters, or that communicate genuine, positive intimacy, like POV shots, paired close-ups, etc. Even kissing shots and near-kiss shots are shadowy or cold-lit in a way to suggest manipulation and danger. This doesn't surprise me for a show that's wary of betrayal around every corner, and is ultimately more concerned with large-scale political relationships rather than romance or sex.

The closest we get to a sense of intimate identification with a character comes from angled, downward shots like this one of Theon Greyjoy, which evokes a kind of brokenness and meekness. (We are literally asked to look down upon him.) Interestingly, GoT does not invite intimacy like this with characters that haven't been through some serious shit.

IMO the series is at its most hair-raising when using a Stark direwolf as a flag for magic. The wolf is CGI, of course, and though there is a jarring falseness to the way it moves onscreen, its over-smoothness has the happy side-effect of giving its scenes a sense of the uncanny. In other words, the fake wolf doesn't take us out of the experience of GoT at all - instead, it feels a little weird and magical. When it appears, we know something eerie is afoot. Maybe we're meeting a warg, or maybe Jon Snow's dead body is about to come back to life.

I've touched upon several thematic dualities - inside/outside, imprisonment/freedom, real/magical and uncanny, leading/conquering - but there are so many others in GoT. There's the struggle between old and new, north and south, east and west, and stylistic borrowings from northern Europe vs. Asia Minor and North Africa. Of the less obvious dualities, my favorite is the tension between space and clutter - most salient in the abundance of misty negative space when we are in the quiet, brutal North (below left), vs. the noise, commotion and grime of scenes associated with those from the South (below right).

The tension between light and dark is always interesting, and doubly so in GoT. It is not quite clear to me just yet what light and fire mean in the show, or their meanings and associations are even all that stable. Often it seems that flame signals coming danger or dark magic, e.g., lanterns leading Sansa to her Bolton wedding, or Melisandre encouraging the wielding of torches to sacrifice victims to the Lord of Light. This is an interesting subversion of the more typical light-as-clarity-and-goodness trope, and I like it.

And what about the throne? For all the bloodshed over it in this universe, we see very little of the Iron Throne, and very few characters are depicted sitting on it. GoT cinematography treats it two ways: it is either a distant, unused prop informing political tension between characters (below left), or a presence that dominates the entire backdrop, suggesting power & singular obsession (below right).

Finally - and this is a setup I can't quite place yet - we have this rare shot type that just about breaks the fourth wall.

Its most striking use is late in season 6, when we cut directly from Lyanna Stark's illegitimate newborn to the face of a fully-grown Jon Snow, implying his true parentage. There's only one other character who gets the same treatment from the camera:

It's (the frankly terrifying and impassive) Bran Stark, who has taken six seasons to become a magical figure capable of transporting his consciousness into other living creatures or transporting his mind's eye back in time. The parallels between these shots are almost perfect: the coloring, the zoom and framing, the lighting (note the soft orange glow against the shadowed sides of both characters' faces)...even their dress and dead-ahead stares.

What are we being told here? Hell if I know. But I want to say it's something of a revelation shot - a signal to us that we have just been gifted an important piece of information about someone (in the case of Jon Snow), or a signal to us that a character is making use of knowledge and consciousness beyond regular bounds (in the case of Bran Stark).

I often get chills when GoT gives us shots like these. And with where the series is headed in seasons 7 and 8, I think we're gearing up for a few more powerful ones.