Neil Marshall had already made a name for himself long before he started working on Game of Thrones. The self-proclaimed action addict is the writer-director behind the hit cult classic The Descent and was well ahead of the curve when he put a shirtless Michael Fassbender in his sword-and-snow-boot epic, Centurion. But he’s earned attention from a whole new crowd as the big-battle specialist on Game of Thrones. During the show’s second season, Marshall was called in at the last minute to direct what many consider the most impressively cinematic episode of television: “Blackwater.”

His work this season on “The Watchers on the Wall,” the giant, bloody clash between the Night’s Watch and the threats from the North, has earned him his first nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award (the annual ceremony takes place on Monday). We spoke to Marshall about haggling for more mammoths, trying to fire off that giant bow, and his desire to be the one to unleash those dragons.

VF Hollywood: Did you see a big difference in what you were allowed to get away with this time, after your first episode, “Blackwater,” was so successful?

Neil Marshall: Certainly the budget will have gone up, but they don’t tell me what it is. They only tell me when I can’t do something. The only time that came into play was early on, in that the first draft of the script involved 12 mammoths and 12 giants. At some point that got downgraded to one mammoth and two giants.

Did you try to haggle for more mammoths?

No, there was no haggling for it. But we thought, O.K., if we have one mammoth, we better make it really impressive. It certainly saved us a huge amount of time and money not having as many giants. Just because the way we have to film them, it would have been ten times as much work. Other than that, there were no limitations, really.

Emotional deaths are a huge part of Game of Thrones. You didn’t have to kill off any major characters in “Blackwater,” and in this one you had three, with Pyp, Grenn, and Ygritte. What was that like?

Yeah, I know, I got the hat trick on that one. It’s a heck of a responsibility, really. These are people the fans have grown to love and the writers are very precious about—I take it very seriously. Pyp is killed almost accidentally. He’s played for laughs up until that point, and then all of a sudden he’s got this arrow through his neck and poor old Sam is holding him. I wanted it to play like something out of Saving Private Ryan. Graphic, but very emotional.

Same with Ygritte. I really wanted to get those moments, like when John turns around and sees her for the first time. His response isn’t to be afraid of her. It’s to smile, like, he’s actually pleased to see her even though the last time he saw her she was trying to kill him. He still loves her. It was tough and really emotional. I’m sure it was a lot worse for the rest of the crew than it was for me. I only worked with her on one episode, but they had worked with her for three years. It’s really tough when it’s their last day after several years of work.

Some eagle-eyed fans noticed that when Ygritte dies, she’s framed by fire on one side and ice on the other. Was that intentional or is that a case of the audience being a little overzealous?