'Game of Thrones' season 7: Behind the scene of Frozen Lake scene

The Frozen Lake scene in “Game of Thrones” season 7 was bigger than Hardhome with the former's involvement of many main characters and also dragons. A new behind-the-scenes video has been released online, showing how the team was able to pull off the incredible sequences. The following article contains spoilers from the episodes that have already aired.

The episode began to pick up pace with the arrival of a polar bear wight. In the video (see below), the producers revealed that they had been planning for a zombie polar bear for four seasons, but had to put it off because of budget constraints. They were finally able to overcome the limitation this year, and the result is for everyone to see.

For the main scene on the frozen lake, a lot of filming was done in Iceland, in locations where regular cars couldn’t be driven. The producers had a set built at Wolf Hill Quarry. Commenting on the size of the set, production designer Deborah Riley compared it to an airport. The team had to match the set to the filming location in Iceland, building an artificial frozen lake for the important scene.

The team did such a good job that cast member Kristofer Hivju (Tormund Giantsbane) thought it was a real lake. Rory McCann (Sandor Clegane) also complimented the team for creating such a realistic set. The cast members also had their own set of challenges filming in the harsh weather conditions, and Kit Harington (Jon Snow) in particular was not too happy about jumping into a tank of water.

Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) also had a tough job in this scene. She was expected to deliver intense emotions, but in a very artificial environment with green screens all around her.