Thanks to Adam a.k.a. Werthead, we have learnt about a feature report from the latest issue of the UK magazine SciFiNow detailing the Game of Thrones Season Two production after a set visit to the Paint Hall. Loads of exciting info on a certain big battle from episode 9, some interesting trivia, as well as plans and developments regarding the sets for the show, and rumours of future seasons.

Adam summarized it for us below, hidden after a break for spoilers.

Hear Me Roar: Let me just say it sounds amazing. My imagination is running wild from just reading these lines.

All of the major characters have two sets of each costume and piece of armour/weaponry. This is because they sometimes needed to fly actors from Dubrovnik back to Belfast to film at the Paint Hall and then rush them back again, and clearing costumes and weapons through customs is a nightmare. There is a set of ‘bone armour’ featuring in S2 which will make ‘readers of the books clap their hands in delight’. Cersei has a set of ornamental and elegant, ‘Valkyrie-like’ armour. HBO mocked up a section of King’s Landing wall for the Blackwater. The wall is 20 metres away from a stretch of water, allowing skiffs full of soldiers to disembark under heavy arrow, ballistae and boiling oil fire from the walls. The Blackwater battle will feature a very clever aquatic battering ram. Basically it’s on a boat with rib-like supports sticking out the top. When the boat beaches, the soldiers unpack the battering ram, spin the boat upside down, reconnect the ram and then run it up to the gates with the hull of the boat acting as cover from missile fire. It’s basically a medieval version of the landing craft from D-Day (my take, not the magazine’s). Season 2 is the ‘season of battles, especially episode nine’. The crew built another ship at the Linen Mill Studio in Bainbridge. This ship is 140 feet long, 35 feet tall and has a 3oo-foot greenscreen surrounding it. The ship has a modular deck, which they can use as the cargo scow that takes Theon home but they they can lift on a whole new top deck to turn it into Stannis’s flagship, including the addition of a 12-foot-tall stag’s head with antlers as a figurehead. The Eyrie set is still standing in the Paint Hall, despite not featuring at all for Season 2. It’s too intricate to dismantle and store and they will need it for future seasons, so it’s been left up. A second, ‘purpose-built’ studio is being built next to the Paint Hall to help accomodate the needs of the series going into future seasons. The reporter repeats the rumour that Seasons 3 and 4 will be greenlighted and shot back-to-back to cover A STORM OF SWORDS. One last bit of trivia: a musician in Kelly’s Cellar, a pub in Belfast, enthusiastically relates to the reporter how Jason Momoa would come in with his guitar and jam with local musicians during the filming of Season 1 :)

WiC UPDATE: This is probably a good place to note that we have received clarification about Vince Gerardis’ “Battle of Blackwater will be 16 minutes” comment, from both Vince and the interviewer himself. Apparently what Vince said was 60 minutes, not 16. This makes sense, as 16 and 60 sound a lot alike, especially to a non-native English speaker.

Here is his exact quote: “The Battle at Blackwater Rush, which is an episode in season two, I think it’s episode nine, it’s the script that George wrote, it’s going to be fantastic, but at the same time, only disappointing, because it’s only sixty minutes long.“