Game of Thrones director donates scripts, storyboards and more to TMU Library
Emilia Clarke (left) and TMU alumnus Jeremy Podeswa on the set of Game of Thrones. Podeswa’s donation to TMU includes scripts, storyboards, set design documents and more from his decades-long career as a filmmaker and television director. Photos supplied by Jeremy Podeswa.
For those who pay even passing attention to film and television credits, the name Jeremy Podeswa is a familiar one. With shows like Six Feet Under, True Blood, Queer as Folk, Carnivale, Boardwalk Empire and the cultural touchstone that is Game of Thrones on his résumé, TMU alumnus Podeswa (Image Arts ’84) has helped shape the phenomenon known as prestige television.
In a 2019 TMU podcast, Podeswa noted that “I usually get a lot of people asking me for advice who are recent graduates from here and from all over, and they want to know how to get from here to there.” At the time, Podeswa said he was happy to help these people however he could. Now, he’s taken it one giant step further.
Podeswa has gifted an archive of materials from his career to TMU. This includes items such as scripts, storyboards, photos, concept art pieces, architectural drawings, site plans, set drawings and — particularly revealing — notes, both handwritten and typed. The donation includes a wealth of varied materials across genres from drama to horror, from science fiction to fantasy, allowing insight into the creative process from beginning to end, from script to screen.
Included in the archive are scripts of television episodes and films, which Jeremy Podeswa has marked up with notes.
Jeremy Podeswa worked with professional artists to create storyboards, like this one from the Game of Thrones.
Podeswa remembers being inspired as a TMU (then, Ryerson Polytechnic) student when professional filmmakers would visit and talk about their work. “It was encouraging,” said Podeswa, “because they were out there making things — but they started out sitting where I was then.”
Podeswa is hopeful the archival materials will act as a kind of roadmap for young filmmakers wanting to learn about the process. “It shows you the steps to breaking a script down and piecing it back together as a full production. Evident here is my progression from a first and second film to Queer as Folk to Six Feet Under and onward. You can see the trajectory in the materials, and I hope that can be inspiring and instructive to someone who wants to shape a similar path.”
Mark Robertson, Dean of Libraries, TMU, said: “We are deeply grateful for Jeremy Podeswa’s donation of archival materials. It is so meaningful to have original work of such an illustrious alumnus represented in our Archives and Special Collections. This collection will be invaluable to students and researchers who want to explore and learn from Podeswa’s creative processes. This donation also complements other strengths of our collections in media and the creative industries.”
After the archive is catalogued it will be made available to students, researchers and the public by appointment at TMU’s Archives and Special Collections.
TV as cinematic
Jeremy Podeswa (bottom right) goes over notes with actors on the set of Boardwalk Empire. Photo supplied by Jeremy Podeswa.
Podeswa, a TMU Alumni Achievement Award recipient in 2019, is modest when he says that he was in the right place at the right time. The art and craft that Podeswa brought to that moment in time — evident in the donated materials — made more than a little difference to the outcome.
“I was involved in those first five or six years when things were really changing quickly,” remembers Podeswa. “It was very exciting. People were saying ‘let’s do TV more like cinema,’ more novelistic; we’ll do things that commercial TV can’t or won’t do. The content and tone was entirely new, and I was fortunate to be one of the first independent filmmakers to move into that world. It gave me the opportunity to stretch — to work on a huge canvas with major writers and increasingly complex and diverse material.”
Where it started
Podeswa’s third-year thesis film at TMU, David Roche Talks to You About Love, premiered at the 1983 Festival of Festivals (which would later become the Toronto International Film Festival) and won the Norman Jewison Award for best student film in the country. It also won the Audience Award for Best Short Film at the Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco.
“My success started with those two short films that I made at Ryerson,” said Podeswa. “The faculty and program really helped with every aspect of filmmaking, but I think the biggest thing I learned was an appreciation for film as an art form. It wasn’t an industry approach; it was about finding your voice as a filmmaker and that was really important for me. Figuring out who I was as a filmmaker and developing as a writer and director. That’s something that has really stuck with me from the very beginning: to not be a generic filmmaker but to be a really specific filmmaker, and to do things in your own unique way.”
Shortly after graduating from TMU, Jeremy Podeswa (left) worked on the 1990 film Bethune: The Making of a Hero with Donald Sutherland (right). Photo supplied by Jeremy Podeswa.
Podeswa notes that his time at TMU also turned out to be about community building. His classmates included Bruce MacDonald, Adrienne Mitchell and Peter Mettler, and their cohort roped in Atom Egoyan who was working over at the University of Toronto, Patricia Rozema and others. “We all helped each other — we were figuring it out. It had the feeling of a cooperative. It was incredibly supportive and encouraging. We looked at scripts together, rough cuts: we shared everything — crews, resources, opinions. There was a sense that something was happening in film in Toronto, and it felt like it was coming out of Ryerson and expanding into the world.”
Podeswa says he hopes that sense of community and common purpose is still alive and well in the film and media programs at TMU. Though he maintains he found his voice at TMU, his donation offers students and researchers the opportunity to personalize the echoes of that voice and follow its call.
