Just a week before the Emmy Awards, HBO prevailed at the 2015 Creative Arts Emmy Awards with 29 wins, including eight for the drama series Game of Thrones. NBC was second with 11 honours, four of them for the special celebrating the 40th anniversary of its iconic sketch-comedy series Saturday Night Live.
The ceremony was held at the Microsoft Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.
Game of Thrones won for non-prosthetic makeup, production design, picture editing, sound editing, casting, sound mixing, special visual effects and stunt coordination.
Several other HBO productions won multiple Emmys as well. Bessie, the telefilm about legendary blues singer Bessie Smith, won four (cinematography, music composition, television movie, sound mixing), and the documentary Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief won three (outstanding documentary or nonfiction special, nonfiction writing, nonfiction directing).
Four other HBO programs won two Emmys: the drama series Boardwalk Empire (cinematography, production design), the nonfiction series Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways (sound editing, sound mixing) the nonfiction series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (picture editing, outstanding documentary or nonfiction series), the limited series Olive Kitteridge (picture editing, casting) and the comedy series Silicon Valley (production design, picture editing).