Chris Newman spends much of his time on set, overseeing filming and troubleshooting.
At the start of a new season, before the production staff have returned to the office, work has already begun trying to figure out how to coordinate filming in four countries with five directors, two units, and a cast and crew of over seven hundred people. The only way to produce ten episodes a season is with very careful planning. It is down to producer Chris Newman to fit the puzzle pieces together.
CHRIS NEWMAN (PRODUCER): During season one, we had no plan to have two units on the show. But it soon became clear that having a Malta unit working in parallel to the Belfast unit was the most efficient option. The main aim is to not have an asset—a director, director of photography, or cast member—spread over two locations at once. In the beginning the only way to make things work was to instigate an episode color-coding system, cut out scene strips, and move them around on a board like chess pieces. Anyone who works in the industry knows there is no such thing as a perfect schedule. It’s simply a series of distillations that you go through until you get to the one that you think is the best plan.
Generally speaking, I’ll get the outline about February, and I’ll spend about a month thinking about it. As a template, you try and work in episode order, but there may be a single scene in a later episode that requires a set you want to replace. You’ll move that forward, if you can. You don’t want to be in a situation where a director is in town for one scene and then nothing for a few weeks. We try and have a preliminary schedule early. If there are issues with build times or actor availability, the earlier we find out, the better chance we have to negotiate things like dates. Every so often you’ll have an incident that will throw things off—when Kit [Harington] broke his leg, we had to push the scenes with Jon Snow back so he was able to perform his stunts—though he probably would have done them anyway if we would have let him.
An excerpt of the real schedule from Season 3. Different colors show different episodes; the first column gives the scene, the last the cast numbers.
