The House That Dragons Built (2022) s01e02 Episode Script

It looks like something out of NASA.
I said, "Big."
I don't know if I meant that big.
You couldn't tell that you weren't
walking around an actual medieval castle.
You just don't wanna get hit by that.
The dragons are visually very different.
My dragon's the best.
The Red Keep concept was
the jewel of the whole piece for me,
because that's where the bulk of the
action is taking place in this season.
The Targaryens are a very powerful
dynasty, so it's all about show.
It's all about, "Look how powerful
I am. Look what castle I've got.
Look what artifacts I've got."
That's the driving force
in all of the designs, I think.
Over a weekend, Jim pretty much
just cracked out a design
for the whole Red Keep.
And on the Monday morning, we're looking
at this thing thinking, "Blimey hell!"
I remember going there
for the first time and walking in,
and my jaw dropping to the floor,
and just thinking,
"Oh, I said, 'Big.' I don't know
if I meant that big."
That Red Keep set
absolutely blows my mind.
I was telling our mentees, "Go, really
walk that set and fully appreciate it,
because you really won't see anything
that big, that spectacular,
except for a few times in your career."
Jim Clay and his team built
a really completely-realized world,
almost 360 degrees.
So, really, until you
looked directly up and saw the
You know, saw the rack lighting,
you couldn't tell that you weren't
walking around an actual medieval castle.
They really went to town
and made it a universe.
And I think one of the principles behind
Thrones has always been,
particularly with sets is,
I need to be able to shoot
in every direction without it
becoming a visual effect.
And you can certainly
do that on the Red Keep.
There was me designing
this enormous set,
which was going to take months and months
to work, and we had a schedule.
And there was a point where the guy said
to me, "This isn't going to be possible."
Our most challenging element, with
regard to the set, really, was the time.
We had 16 weeks to build this, which by
anybody's stretch, is some goal, really.
So, as a team, we got together.
Miguel and Ryan were hugely supportive.
They wanted to keep that set
and realize it as we designed it.
And so, they shifted the schedule around
endlessly and we achieved it that way.
But, you know, God bless the guys,
because they stood behind it,
and we got it built
as we had conceived.
The remarkable achievement from the
construction department, and, you know,
props as well, and set dec, to pull that
enormous, sprawling set together.
It's roughly about 62 meters long.
It's 39 meters wide.
And at it's highest point,
it's about 13 and a half meters.
We used 3,692 sheets of 8x4, 3/4 ply.
We used 52,038 meters
of 3x1 timber.
And we used 49,248 meters
of 4x2 timber.
And we also used gallons
of blood, sweat, and tears
The stage is a composite set,
which means, rather than build individual
rooms for individual scenes,
this is a set where all the rooms are
combined into one massive space
that is the interior of the castle.
I think the thing that threw me
is that it's all to scale.
You know, like, it's like,
you actually walk up in there,
and then you can go into my room.
You can go into the small council
chamber and into Paddy's room.
It's all, like, built-in.
It's not on separate stages,
which was really fun to play with.
And it made the world,
like, a lot more immersive.
It's like a little town
they built, essentially.
And it's weird,
'cause you walk through it
and you keep finding different elements
to it that you've never filmed on.
-Brother.
-Daemon.
Cool. It's cool. It's, you know
I like being on there.
The composite also allows
lots of positions to watch, to observe.
To understand the little pockets
of conversations that are going on.
To add to the, the intrigue,
and the conspiracy that must go on
all the time in those places.
Well, I went home to my wife and I said,
"We could live there, move-in there."
I feel like I do live there.
My father, the king.
It is incredible.
I mean it's a castle in a stage.
I've never been
on a set like the Red Keep.
We're establishing this weird,
twisted pirate called Craghas Drahar,
but nicknamed the Crabfeeder.
Stepstones is the stronghold
of The Crabfeeder.
And we filmed that down in Cornwall.
And this is a tidal beach,
so the logistics of working there
were pretty
challenging and restrictive.
Well, there's a reason that a lot
of films don't take place
right on the coast,
and that's because of tides.
There's probably, like,
150, 300 meters out, the beach goes.
You're like, "Oh, this is gonna be great.
No problem.
We'll just move up to here
when the water gets there."
But that tide comes in and
eats up the entirety of the beach.
Props, and set dec, and art department,
we just picked up shovels
and did what we had to do, I think,
to make it happen.
There was just absolute determination
from every single member of the crew.
Whenever he captures any
of the Velaryon sailors,
he stakes them to wreckage on the beach,
and feeds them to the crabs.
In the script, it's depicted as
a sort of swashbuckling character,
but Greg was keen to give him
a more monstrous feel.
So, rather than having a flashy sword,
he said, "I want him to have a hammer.
And I want him to use it as the thing
that nails the people to the stakes."
I designed something that has got that,
sort of, menacing feel to it,
and kind of fits-in with that character.
It's got two sides on it, a hammer side,
which everyone knows as the meat masher.
It's got those spikes,
and you just don't wanna get hit by that.
And then on the other side, it's got
a bladed section, which you know,
in a battle, it's just nasty.
It's nasty.
There's so much more
energy that has to go into it.
And they're so brutal,
and I think it just, you know,
it just adds to that character that he'll
wear his mentality and how violent he is.
We are creating makeup effects,
which relate to some things
that we did on Game of Thrones before,
such as the greyscale.
Stone Men!
Don't let them touch you!
Crabfeeder has greyscale,
which he's had for many years.
And the first time we see him, it's
fairly extensive. We see him topless.
He's not very happy.
He's got a really bad case of eczema.
You really want to pick it, though.
You really want to.
It's quite progressive
up the left-hand side of his body.
So, we had to really extend
the makeup on down,
which is probably about
a four-hour makeup.
Covering his left arm, going up onto the
side of his neck and into the, the scalp.
He wears a mask, which he's bashed
together from a Son of the Harpy mask,
and other bits and pieces he's found
in shipwrecks,
which covers the majority of his face.
So, we never really uncover and see
the extent of the disease on his head.
We had to make it look like
it was for a villain, basically.
You know, it had to look like somebody
would be scared by looking at the person.
We got a scan of the actor, and we
basically made the mask around his face.
We need to get a knife and just carve out
of it to look like it's been handmade.
Get sandpaper.
Just rub it down a little bit.
'Cause we don't want everything
to be sharp or perfect.
We actually made the costume
on him by adding lots of elements
that you could have find.
'Cause he's a pirate, so he find his
element and then he create himself,
his costume, by putting
those elements on top.
Very tall and thin, but wonderful.
He was causing havoc
in the waterways,
and this was kind
of the entrance to his lair.
You see though what he's
doing, staking sailors to the beach,
and the crabs come and feed
off the sailors.
Different elements of them
have been eaten away.
Hands, legs, arms, feet,
wherever they've been staked out,
the crabs are eating them.
Mary'll come and put on
these fabulous prosthetics,
but he always asks for orientation to
help it look like it should be lived in.
So, is it dirty? Is it sweaty?
Is it all of those elements?
We've got this stuff that we put on
to make you look
like you spent a day at sea,
and you get that, sort of, dry lip,
and little things like that.
As if I wasn't dead enough.
He was going to be
more of a a Boogeyman.
We wanted to create a silhouette,
a presence, a person.
The combination of the mask,
and the greyscale,
and his interesting gait and body,
all conspired to create
a memorable character who feeds
his enemies to the crabs.
When people ask me
about the show and they say
They just assume
I'm gonna be ridin' a dragon, and ask
And then they say,
"Oh, did you get to ride a dragon?"
And I go, "No."
They go,
"You're fightin' it, though?"
"No."
And then they say,
"What do you do?"
And I go
"I don't know Sittin' around
a council table all day."
Some of my favorite scenes
from the original series happen
in the small council chamber.
I love those palace-intrigue scenes,
and they're the most difficult to write.
But they're the most fun to write,
in a lot of ways,
where you're servicing all those voices
and everybody's kind of vying
for the king's attention.
The king is surrounded by a lot of people
with their own agendas,
whether that's saving money, or promoting
their own, their own family,
or doing the, you know,
the good work of the realm.
And it's on the king, just as it's on
the showrunner of the show,
to hear the voices
of the council around him
and try to make
the best decision possible.
I think we had something like 60 or 70
pages of scenes
in the small council chamber
throughout season one. It's a lot.
I really thought that we needed
something that had more grandeur to it.
And also something that was,
for the crew, easier to work in.
We had this room built that was
designed around the idea
that we should be able to shoot
in any direction at any time.
Miguel and Ryan wanted
a different council chamber.
We wanted it to feel fortified,
so it has these huge columns.
And that was a bit more flexibility
to design something new.
Jim and I, we looked at different
finishes for the table itself.
And I had this really lovely round piece
of marble which had a hole in the middle.
And Jim picked up on that,
and said, "Well, actually"
And I had all these lovely stones
as well,
circular stones of various
different peaceful colors.
And he said, "Well, what about
if we put the bowl of stone into"
And then, I was like, "Yeah!"
It represented the council,
and them coming in and being
a part of the meeting.
Everybody essentially shows
up for work, and they punch in.
And I thought it
was really cool, and a
Just a way of visualizing the kind of set
formality of the small council chamber.
What would be quite nice
is somebody's talking.
And someone else takes their ball
out of their donut,
and they have to stop talking.
Dear me
It's enjoyable. We should have things
that we like in this world.
Why don't you take the princess
to see about the new Kingsguard
posting, Lord Commander?
This knight will protect you as well.
You should choose.
At the time that she chooses
the Kingsguard,
it's something that's not
quite an impulsive choice.
But it's her
first thing she's assigned to.
It's something that's done offhand
that does influence
the course of a lot of events.
In the original series, the heyday
of the Kingsguard had long passed.
But this is that heyday,
and you're trying to show that.
And show how important and how meticulous
they were over their decision-making.
So for these knights to come
all this way to King's Landing
to be even considered for the job
is a big deal.
So we wanted to put a bit of pomp
and circumstance around the selection.
That wonderful little chessboard
was a big piece of that.
Greg became obsessed
with this kind of chessboard of totems.
And he's like, "Well, what's that
gonna look like exactly?
And I said,
"I don't know. However you want."
And seven months later,
the most elaborate chessboard of totems
and sigils appeared on the set.
And they spent at least
three hours shooting just that.
It almost looked like a sundial,
and it evolved from different ideas.
So it was putting together all the
relevant ones for the different knights,
and who she was gonna choose.
Each one is a 3D representation
of the sigil,
as opposed to just
the sigil on a little pin.
When I pitched it to Greg, he liked that.
It made it more interactive for Rhaenyra.
All of these are 3D printed,
so there's no one that's
like more or less difficult.
It was all was very much like about
getting the design into ZBrush.
So Casey, the concept
artist, did all of that for us.
And then it goes out
to a 3D printing company.
And then it comes back to Ellie
the painter,
and she painted all of these
and references that I gave her.
How many of these knights
have combat experience?
This actually caused us
the most trouble,
because every time we made it,
it just looked a bit too phallic.
So we settled on this straight
little version you can't get lost in.
I choose Ser Criston Cole.
We have the biggest volume
set in the world, and it is spectacular.
It looks like something out of NASA.
It goes by many names.
Virtual studio, virtual set.
The new kid on the block at the moment.
What the volume provides
in its tool form is an alternative.
It's a way of bringing out
the action back home.
It has over 2000 LED screens,
it is completely enclosed,
it operates with the camera.
There are 92 motion capture cameras.
And what those do is solve the position
of where the principal camera is.
And that information gets passed into
Unreal Engine, which is a game engine.
It's the next evolution of the ability
to see your visual effects live in camera
while you're shooting.
Ultimately, on the set,
there was just this unadorned bridge.
Yeah, you've got
the castle behind the characters.
But then, above them,
still in the frame,
you've got this like smeared
castle across the ceiling tiles.
Which is correct in perspective
of the camera,
but to your eye, looks really,
really strange.
But then when you go over to the
director's monitor, the video village,
and just look at what's in the camera
You're transported to where
this scene is taking place,
and you're sort of brought
into the illusion.
It was so great to have something
the actors could react to in real time.
I mean, it's pretty surreal.
It's a lot easier,
'cause you're not imagining everything,
it's there in front of you.
Ser Criston, wasn't it?
Ser Criston Cole, my prince.
Ah, yes, apologies. I couldn't recall.
Perhaps my prince recalls
when I knocked him off his horse.
It was spectacular to look
through the lens and see
Really see where
the show the show comes to life.
And to give it
a real look and texture.
The real Dragonstone Bridge is completely
impractical to shoot a scene on.
This is one of the bridges
that's been seen in Game of Thrones.
It's this fabulous zigzagging bridge that
connects the mainland to the monastery.
Because we were able to recreate it
from lidar scans from the actual set,
we were able to shoot in any direction.
You can shoot profiles, you can
shoot wides, you can be above.
In the center, there was like a pivot
they could turn and spin 360.
So, we'd shoot up the incline one day,
and then over night,
magically be shooting down
the incline the next day.
It can create a background
which is 10,000 feet up in the air
in the mountain.
And so, that gives them the opportunity
to be really visually creative.
What the volume gave us was
we could recreate the environment.
And control the lighting,
and have consistent lighting.
You can put the sun
anywhere you want, you can make
You can design
everything exactly how you like it.
But, you have to have a lot of restraint
working with the technology,
so it feels real.
I think the biggest challenge is always
trying to blend the elements
of the screen with the practical
elements on set.
And that's contrast, that's saturation,
that's the direction of light.
We're pushed to play with the fog.
This eerie strange light that goes
piercing through,
which I think helps to build
that atmosphere of tension
that is building around a scene.
That, obviously,
we couldn't have done in location.
It was the perfect technology,
and situation to try it.
What I will say about the volume is
it's amazing seeing all the wizardry
that goes on and that surrounds
that to sort of compose the shot.
We worked extensively with building
the environments
that you'd see on the screen.
The command center the brain bar.
And you see everybody working.
They're a very adept kind
of department on a show like this,
because so much of what we're trying
to achieve will come after in it.
Are you so desperate for the king's
attention that you resort
to just skulking about like
a common cutlass?
I'm simply keeping
with the traditions of my house,
the same as my brother did for his heir.
Matching the physical and the digital
is what this is all about.
There's a little bit
of trickery in design.
And so that was a real partnership
between the production designers
and the VFX crew to kind of figure out
how to do those little tricks.
Towards the end of the bridge,
where it has to join onto the wall.
We're extending that up, just 'cause
it you don't really get away with it.
And those are basically
seen directly from set to screen.
If you wish to be restored an heir,
you'll need to kill me.
I found the technology unbelievable.
My favorite part
of shooting dragons
You get a tennis ball, and you put it on
a fluorescent stick and you hold it up.
All the extras go bananas, 'cause they
know that that's meant to be a dragon.
So that part's fun.
-It's so silly.
-Pathetic.
I know.
There's probably about
17 dragons at the height of this story.
Knowing we were gonna get to do
so many different kinds of dragons
is just so, so fun.
At any time you're seeing a dragon
in shot, it's a big visual effects show.
Because we had so many
CG environments and CG creatures,
we were trying to find as many ways for
our directors to jump into post, really.
So you had to have something
like iPad with an AR function on it.
So he can see his actors
in the foreground, and he knows that,
"Oh, you know,
there's a giant castle there."
Or a dragon is gonna fly over
at some point,
and I need to be aware of
where that's gonna land.
The first dragon you meet is Syrax,
which is Rhaenyra's dragon.
She's built for speed,
she's very proud and honorable.
The next dragon you meet,
of course, is Caraxes.
My dragon's the best.
He's the gauntest. And he sort of lies,
and they call him the Blood Wyrm.
He's angry and snappy.
A bit like Daemon, to be honest.
He's a snake-necked dragon,
and he's also deformed.
But when he's in the air,
he's beautiful.
He flies beautifully, and he flies like
no other dragons that were built,
because of his shape.
He sometimes flies like sea snake,
almost, and sometimes, flies like a swan.
I think they're a bit like dogs,
they have their own personalities.
Give me your hand.
They are visually very different.
They have different color skin.
George R. R. Martin was very keen
he's always wanted the dragons
to be distinctive.
So we worked on their characters,
and we tried to, obviously,
do that through their design.
We're also trying to do that
through their animation.
We're trying to imbue
each one with particular quirks.
Their purpose in the story
is they're weapons of mass destruction.
These creatures
are not to be trifled with.
They were made out of magic,
they're extremely powerful.
And without them, we would not
be the house that we are.