ALEX GRAVES

My experience on 'The West Wing' was, I think, now rare in that I was pretty young, and I walked into this environment where Aaron Sorkin was giving me a script every week, and Thomas Schlamme and John Wells were keeping the studio off my back, at least as best as they could.

'Terra Nova,' more than anything I've ever done in my life, is for everybody.

Most TV shows are writing the next episode while you're directing the one you're doing, and they're trying to figure out what they're going to do, and they're putting it all together.

I was, and am, a frustrated filmmaker and film student, and my passion and love for movies was so broad that, in the earlier part of my career, I stumbled into doing 'Sports Night' and was a comedy director.

'Game of Thrones' is shot on a very similar kind of schedule to a TV show, but there's a lot more time and focus put into the script.

I was really, really stagnating and getting bored in the steady work of television and didn't really know what movies I would be making that Hollywood would be making, and then I went on to 'Game of Thrones,' and it was just like, everything I've been waiting to do was handed to me by really nice people.

I would do anything I could to try to make sure that Lena Headey wins an Emmy.

It's very unusual on 'Game of Thrones' for there to be a deleted scene because the scripts are pretty locked in. There's rarely a reason to say, 'Hey, we don't need this scene.'

Death is either an incredible ending to a story or, more often than not if you ask the right questions, it's the beginning of a story.

'Proof' is a really cool pilot that I was lucky enough to read by Rob Braggin for TNT that's about a surgeon who's an agnostic, tough, grounded, scientific mind and she's hired by a Steve Jobs-type who's just been diagnosed with cancer to focus on near death experiences and what happens when you die.

No director directs 'Game of Thrones' without reading all the episodes and knowing what's going on. All the episodes are written in advance, so you can do that, which is an important point.

Especially as a director on 'West Wing,' I directed a lot of different things in a lot of different ways and really stretched my wings.

I never seem to get past - I feel like a stupid guy from the Midwest.

For 'Game of Thrones,' I realized immediately that it was about the characters.

'Game of Thrones' is the broadest of narratives. I don't know if anyone in the U.S. has done a story on such a large scale before, both in terms of what George R.R. Martin wrote and what's on the show.

There's always the pressure on the director of how to transition from one scene to another, especially when it can really be oblique on 'Game of Thrones.'

The hardest part of 'Game of Thrones' is there is so much incredible talent bouncing off the walls that you'll actually miss some of them, and not getting it is very intimidating.

You pull anyone from an alien planet down to Earth, and you want to show them great work, show them Tywin Lannister on 'Game of Thrones.' I mean, it's just as good as it gets.

For someone making a pilot, assuming the talent is there and you can maneuver the system properly, it's just a matter of standing your ground and trying to make something great until you are making enough money for the studio that they let you keep making it.

It's funny because 'West Wing' is similar to 'Game of Thrones' in some ways, as it was very hard to pull off back then.

You can certainly shorten things and tighten things, we tightened up Jon's walk to Mance Rayder's tent. That was something that got tightened up a little bit because I had shot the hell out of that.

No, my favorite scene was Brienne finding Arya and The Hound. I thought that the writing and the dialogue and the confusion that spirals into the fight was such a cool scene. I knew I was gonna film it in Iceland and I did a lot of - I really scouted and climbed around Iceland to find those locations and I just couldn't wait to do that.

When you finish writing the scripts they have time to take a breath and think about everything. There's just a little more time to think. Network does not allow for that.

Obviously the highest pressure scene, I guess it might've been a tie - what was the bigger death, Tyrion with Shae, Tyrion wth Twyin, and then Joffrey were all scenes where I wanted to deliver what was in the script married to what fans will be expecting, and it was a lot of pressure and I'm really glad it's over.

The whole mythology of Westeros begins with the struggle between the Children of the Forest and different warring factions before the first men arrive.