Even when the “skip intro” button looms in the bottom corner of your screen, chances are you aren’t going to press it while watching Game of Thrones.
Why?
Were your fingers chopped off by order of King Joffrey? Is a dragon holding you hostage? Why wouldn’t you skip over an intro you’ve seen probably hundreds of times by now?
Because it’s the intro to Game of freakin’ Thrones, that’s why.
The intro isn’t just the show’s herald, but a part of the grand tapestry—not being immersed in its details before each episode is like watching the Friends intro and not clapping four times.
So how did inspiration strike for the creators of the sequence? It all starts with some non-existent characters…
Mad Monks
The mad monks are not some crazed sect of the Faith Militant, but part of a backstory created by film editor Angus Wall, founder of the production company Rock Paper Scissors, who designed the GoT intro.
After being commissioned to create the title sequence for the series, Wall and his design team decided to invent a story for the map of Westeros and the surrounding continents featured in the sequence.
Wall stated:
“I always have to invent a story behind stuff. The story we talked about [for the intro] was this group of mad monks who built this model of the universe that was constantly updating, almost like a very elaborate Risk board game.”
In an interview with EW, the show’s producer, Greg Spence, also chimed in:
“Imagine that somewhere in Westeros, there’s a mad monk in a tower who actually has created a map of the world. He keeps track of where everything is happening and what’s going on on that map. We don’t know who or where this little odd person is who makes all these little automatons, but there’s a very Leonardo da Vinci thing to the original concept. It’s a weird little working machine.”
Working from this idea, the design team concluded that the monks would only be able to use materials available in their world to build the map. This is why the cities in the intro consist of cogs, wheels, gears, carved wood, and stone.
In addition, as pointed out in the EW article, the map’s “water” is supposed to be made of blue cloth. Notice the “The Narrow Sea” label on the ocean as it rises and falls, as if it’s “printed” on the water like words on a flag (1:19 mark).
Gregor Clegane doesn’t skip leg day, and these mad monks don’t skip the details.
Angus Wall’s production team consists of three branches:
Rock Paper Scissors handled the editing of the Game of Thrones titles.
a52 created the CGI for the sequence.
And Elastic was responsible for the design.
Wall assures that the design team didn’t just draw all this stuff out and throw it in the computer. Every moving part of the sequence was carefully designed to work like an actual mechanism before being CGI’d into the intro:
“I think the level of detail is quite exceptional. It’s not something that can be faked. You actually have to go in the computer and build these working mechanisms.”
Monks of the minor key
While all these mad monks are busy building miniature cities and tonsuring their heads, they’ve got to be rocking out to something other than a pious lute.
For the final piece of the title sequence puzzle, Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss reached out to composer Ramin Djawadi.
In need of a main theme that would sweep the Emmy’s as well as the map of the fictional world, the producers expressly asked the composer to steer clear of flutes and violins which they felt were “overused” in fantasy shows.
According to Djawadi, he had seen and begun scoring the first two episodes of the series when he was asked to create a theme to accompany the intro.
Djawadi and the creators then paid a visit to Rock Paper Scissors, where the composer was shown a preliminary version of the opening sequence.
Due to the many locations and characters that the series encompasses, Djawadi explains that the creators had a specific keyword that they wanted the music to evoke:
“The big keyword that they said to me was ‘make it feel like it’s a journey’.“
Since flutes and violins were axed like a rogue Night’s Watchman, Djawadi chose to use the cello as the star of his intro music. He explains this choice a bit in the video below.
The mechanical genius of a moving map overlayed with the sounds of adventure and betrayal on a cello—even Ramsay Bolton would freely admit the talent involved with these opening titles.
Feel free to skip video ads; skip the holidays; skip work for a day; “skip tutorial”; skip trace a fugitive; skip to my lou; or skip doing the dishes.
But think twice. before you skip. the intro. to Game of Thrones.
Watch your shows. Wear your shows.
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