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  ===Filming===
  "Dragonstone" was directed by Jeremy Podeswa. He joined the series as a director in the fifth season, his first episode being "Kill the Boy", which was followed by "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken", for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series. He further directed two more episodes in the series' sixth season, and also directed the seventh season's finale episode. In an interview with ''The Hollywood Reporter'' following the airing of "Dragonstone", Podeswa discussed his experience with directing Ed Sheeran's cameo appearance, stating "He was lovely to work with. He was lovely on the show. I think he fit right into that world." He continued by noting that Sheeran requested to change the key of the song that he performs in the scene during the episode's filming.
  Gaztelugatxe in Spain was used for portions of the scene set on Dragonstone.
  Podeswa also discussed his direction for the cold open, saying he wanted to "honor the great writing", and praised Maisie Williams and David Bradley's performance as Arya Stark and Walder Frey respectively, stating "As we got more into it, you knew the audience would have questions coming right into the scene, knowing Walder Frey is dead. So, what is this? Is it a flashback? Is there something else going on here? It's about playing that line of audience surprise and curiosity and how they read the scene. David's performance is so fantastic where there's a moment you can almost feel Arya inside of him. It's even before the dialogue betrays who he is." The scene was not written as a cold open; Benioff and Weiss made that decision on the strength of Bradley's work. Following the cold open, Podeswa also spoke about directing the opening scene following the title sequence, revealing "We knew it would be one shot. Nothing fancy in terms of camerawork. But it's a shot that very slowly reveals itself over time, and we take that time. Then it was a matter of me conceptualizing it with the storyboard artists and visual effects department." Podeswa also stated that the scene ending on the eye of the giant wight was not originally in the script, but came from working with the art department for the series.
  Benioff and Weiss praised Rory McCann's acting in showing the torment and guilt experienced by Sandor Clegane; Weiss identified Clegane's discovery of the farm family's unpleasant deaths as a favorite scene in the episode.
  In discussing the montage of Samwell Tarly at the Citadel, Podeswa noted that his past experience with directing a montage sequence of Arya while she is washing bodies at the House of Black and White may have been the reason for the showrunners to have included it in the episode, saying "In David and Dan's minds, they made a connection between me and montages, even though tonally these two are very different." He also divulged that the original version of the montage was "about seven or eight minutes" due to the amount of material that Podeswa had directed, and that the final version was edited down significantly.
  For the closing scene of Daenerys Targaryen arriving at Dragonstone, Podeswa noted that very little of the scene was shot on a sound stage, but rather on location, saying "The only thing shot on stage were the gates at the top of the stairs that leads to the long winding pathway up to the castle. Everything else was shot on location, in a number of different locations: Zumaia Beach in Spain is where she lands and walks up the stairs and gets to where the gates are. Another place — San Juan — is the place where that amazing staircase that doesn't look real and looks like a CG creation, but it's not, that's a spectacular location going up to Dragonstone castle." The interiors of Dragonstone, however, were all shot on a sound stage, with set designer Deb Riley creating the throne room, and redesigning the map room for the episode.