The House That Dragons Built (2022) s01e08 Episode Script

It is very impressive.
The detail was amazing.
It was just like hours and hours
of nerding out.
The prosthetic is gorgeous,
but awful.
If you get this wrong,
the whole thing is really done for.
I'd have had his head as well.
We all had chills.
This is gonna be pretty epic.
It really takes on
a life of its own.
We wanted Daemon
to have a hobby on Dragonstone,
where he was collecting dragon's eggs
for this incubator he's building
for what he sees as the coming conflict.
Dragonmont is the volcanic mountain
on the island of Dragonstone.
And it's where the dragon's eggs
are incubated.
The challenge there
was to keep it mysterious enough.
It's just meant to hint at
the larger mythology around
where dragons lay their eggs.
Jim basically took an old set of a tunnel
and started working with Angus
and Visual Effects.
And that's all a very small set
that was brought to life
to look much
more epic than it was.
It's quite a small set,
but it's very tall, and it's outside.
And it's got to have action on
it all the way up,
so it's quite a dramatic cliff.
And I have climbed up it.
It's great fun to climb up it.
We didn't want to copy
the Game of Thrones dragon egg.
But we came up with a new version,
which is a lot sharper,
slightly bigger,
and very vibrant colors.
We've made about 20 of them in the end,
and each on was slightly different.
Some of them
are quite lightweight.
But some of them, especially in the egg
kiln, they have to be on fire.
So we had to make them
out of solid plaster.
The idea was that they incubate in warm,
hot, volcanic mountains.
So Props and Special Effects worked on
this goo that the eggs are incubating in.
Really, most of our work is augmenting
the fact
that this is a hot,
steamy environment.
And making the crevice
that we shot in bigger.
We're adding a lot of steam,
a lot of dust,
and just trying
to make it feel hot and muggy.
When Katie and I talked about it,
we first looked at Alien
because we both are fans.
But we wanted to find
something of our own.
It's gonna be very Alien-like,
where
It'll make that noise
as it pops out to reveal itself.
Miguel and Ryan wanted it to look like
it was spewed out from the dragon.
They wanted it to be
very organic looking and very messy.
We worked a lot
with the props building team.
And we came up with this idea of an egg
sack that would harden on the outside.
And when you break it open, steam comes
out and the eggs are covered in goo.
They went through
so many tests of that thing.
It was a real delight to see it get made,
and then put into action.
When we looked at the final prototype,
we opened it, and the steam came out,
and the goo was all perfect.
And I sent it to Miguel and Ryan,
and we were all just like,
"Whoa, this is it!
This is how eggs come to be."
When Rhaenyra and Daemon return
to King's Landing for the first time,
there were no words that were
gonna describe the difference.
But we needed to feel the difference.
Geeta and Katie did a really fantastic
job of showing a much more sparse,
austere King's Landing and Red Keep.
Based on the note that,
"As the years have gone by,
Alicent has found religion."
I would say it's nice to be home,
but I scarcely recognize it.
Episode eight is six years later
than the previous episode.
We wanted to see it through
Rhaenyra's point of view
for the first time coming back.
And so, we start with the Steadicam
shot that leads her into the space.
And then you open up to reveal
how empty it feels now,
how much colder and darker
than when we last saw it.
Speaking with Ryan, Miguel,
and Geeta, we wanted to pare it down.
This was going to have the influence
of Alicent when she's in her ascendency.
And it was a sense of her stripping back
the decadence
and taking on the influence
of the Grand Sept.
And we've introduced these huge, stone,
carved, seven-pointed star elements,
which hang in the grand staircase.
Rhaenyra sees a giant,
seven-pointed star in the main hallway.
Gaudy, if you ask me.
Beyond episode eight, we're into
a more austere, religious Red Keep.
The fun and games
has gone out of the castle life.
So, for us, it was
really a case of just stripping back.
So we took all the artwork out,
we put in religious symbols,
and made it a lot harder place to be.
Toning everything down a bit
from those early episodes
where it's looking really flamboyant.
And really, those rich times of like,
"This is the Targaryens."
Now, to the slightly colder feeling
now Alicent's taken over the place.
It was just getting that feeling across
and making it look more simple.
I actually like the look,
you know, the new rooms.
I kind of like that they're a little bit
sparser and it's gone a bit religious,
more so due to Alicent's influence.
It feels like a house where somebody
is dying, in which case is very true.
But Alicent's converted it
into a place of piety and religion.
It has a feeling of kind of piousness
about it,
and a sort of erasure
of Targaryen history.
The Valyrian model,
that was interesting because we've done
architectural models in the past.
Never at this scale.
I mean, this model is huge.
Eight meters long.
That's a massive model to make.
I think we could've gone a bit bigger,
to be honest.
What happens is, if you're a showrunner
on a show, you say,
"Wouldn't it be interesting if there
was a model of Valyria."
And then you show up on set
and it's a city of its own right.
Viserys is not into dragon riding.
He takes up a more intellectual pursuit.
The idea is that he's gone back
to all the old texts
and maps and has
painstakingly recreated it.
It is truly wonderous
what you've built.
It's sort of like Viserys' train set.
It's his little hobby
that he has, that he escapes to.
The King's model of Old Valyria
was a huge exercise, in itself.
It starts small, and it gradually gets
bigger and bigger
and takes over the apartment.
We were trying to decide
what he would have made it out of.
So, what are his tools, what is he
making it with, and what scale is it?
Because ancient Valyria is a dragon town,
so everything is big.
And I brought a pumice stone from
my bathroom. That was my reference!
And just the pigmentation in that,
and the darkness, the different texture,
and depth you could get from that.
So then, we latched onto pumice stone,
which is a much softer,
more volcanic stone.
And it ties into Dragonstone
and Dragonmont
and the volcanic nature
of that island.
I only pour over the histories
and provide the plans.
The stone masons
built the structures.
The whole thing was drawn up
by our concept artist,
and put into workable files, so that
they could just print out the blocks.
And then, some of it they sculpted
freehand as well. So, it was a mixture.
It had to look handmade.
But obviously, we couldn't
make anything to model out of pumice.
So we had to come up
with a technique of making it quickly,
but also give the finish of pumice.
The 3D printers were
our little soldiers in the background,
working for about two months 24-7,
printing out hundreds of buildings.
A lot of the buildings were so large,
it had to made in small components,
so we had to glue 'em
back together again.
All the main buildings,
they're sort of 3D printed.
Take about 24, 48 hours
for that one building to be done.
We've done it all in PLA plastic
on these machines.
so the beauty is with the machine,
you do get a hard edge finish.
But then, we can go over it with
textures and finishes and paint effect
to make it look like pumice stone.
We 3D printed about three or four
layers of plaster over it.
So we had to soften up all the edges,
window frames,
all that sort of stuff,
just so it looks more hand-carved.
It just grows and grows and grows,
it gets bigger in each episode.
There's over 200 hundred pieces.
I think I'm the only one
who knows where they go.
It was made in five stages.
Each stage had A, B, C, D and E.
And then, we made it so it's
joined together without any seamline.
It was an amazing piece that became
five separate units
that we could put together,
but also take apart.
It was always
in about six or eight pieces.
But then, schedules change,
and that piece is in, that one's out.
It's all gonna be rolled up and all come
together and look like one piece as well.
As the king's getting older,
can't spend as much time,
but he wants to finish it,
so it becomes a bit more blocky.
Right near the end of the season,
he hasn't touched it.
So, it's got cobwebs
that are quite heavy over here,
just to give it a bit of age to it.
It's only when we finally got it all on
set and all dressed in
that you really stand back
and see the work we've done.
And that's very, very rewarding.
It's an integral part of our story,
which is, although Viserys
is very much an aggressive Targaryen,
he yearns for the Valyria of old.
Looking, in some way, to understand
something that he can never quite grasp.
Nearly 20 years ago in this throne
One of my favorite scenes we did was when
Paddy did the long walk to this throne.
It's quite an empty set,
but it really worked.
Paddy's entrance
in that scene is really huge.
Nobody's expecting
the king to come, and then he arrives,
and he's this little person who
can barely walk to the throne.
So, it was really exciting
shooting that entrance.
What was so shocking was
that he had lost so much weight.
And we want it to feel
emotional and real.
It was about a man, a father.
It wasn't about this fool.
For Paddy, just the physical
way that he performed the role.
I really commend him.
It was a real undertaking as an artist.
She's fabulous.
She's serving Targaryen real.
One of the first things I talked to
Miguel and Ryan
about was the king's cane.
This is a dragon, which is 3D printed.
We know that the king has a reverence
for dragons, respects them,
but does not want to wield
their power himself.
So he holds it backwards,
because this is a family heirloom that
he has started to use as he ages.
First he gets the cane,
then he gets the mask.
And the two together are
sort of symbols of opulence
that he pulls towards himself
to not lose his power.
I must admit my confusion.
I do not understand why petitions are
being heard over a settled succession.
The king's mask, which I've been
working on with Peter very closely.
It's 3D printed and then plated.
The mask covers half his face
as closely to the look
that he had when he was strong.
We had to get the king's head
as a 3D image, and we created a mask
that had to hide his disease.
And we had to make it match
his crown as well, that he was wearing.
It had to have that sort of brassy,
gold look to it,
so we ended up plating it in brass,
and it's got that expensive look to it.
Many fittings we had for that mask,
but it was worth it. I quite like it.
There's a sort of
Phantom of the Opera element to it.
It's a great visual, and I'm sure
the reveal will be shocking for people.
The gold mask took many,
many months of development.
The mask, in the end, represents the
teamwork that we all had in making it.
The combination of various prosthetic
makeup, the VFX that Angus and his team
are planning to do, Paddy's performance,
and then this gold mask, I think,
makes it such an iconic character.
Allow it.
Do not forget yourself, Vaemond.
Vaemond's petition of the king in
the episode is a bit of a kangaroo court.
But when Viserys shows up
and says, "I'll sit the throne today,"
you know that things are turning
around in Rhaenyra's direction.
Our children are bastards!
Wil, who plays Vaemond,
very beautiful in that scene.
It's exciting when character's
who bite their tongue finally just say
what has been eating them.
Daemon wants to cause chaos, because
he can and that's his attitude to things.
He's got a very quite clear moral
compass, and you're either in it,
or you're out of it.
Daemon never forgets a slight and I think
he's been waiting years to take it out.
I love that moment when Daemon
just melts out of the background
until Vaemond's head disappears.
He can keep his tongue.
He lops his head off,
that was pretty shocking.
In the end, Wil did just about
everything for that stunt.
And Ryan and Miguel wanted Vaemond
to be completely taken by surprise.
And so, those are things
that drove how we shot that scene.
It was a really fun scene to shoot.
And the beheading is a great
collaboration between VFX,
prosthetics,
special effects and stunts.
We just try to give
him a sort of signature kind of
something dynamic,
and it comes out of nowhere.
We'll put Wil there to get him to do his
fall, and he'll drop down to his knees.
And then we'll put a C stand
there with a tennis ball on it,
for Matt to come up and
just miss.
And then we comp the two together
so it will look like he's cutting
his head in half.
Daemon slices through
his head just above his jaw,
and we have a practical body dropped
into frame in camera,
and the top section of the head,
which lies to the side of it.
We had a generic body mold,
which was the same size as Wil.
And we got a side scan
of Wil in the desired expression.
And we got a print of the head, created
a plasticine head, cut it in half,
and we sculpted it all the mouth
and teeth.
It's the bottom of the top of the head,
had to sculpt a separate tongue.
I had to go into this booth,
which has like about 300 cameras.
And then I had to stand in different
poses, so that they can do all the
And then, at the end of this,
"Could you do some dead faces?"
I'm like
"What's a dead face?"
Like you sort of Like I just kept
cracking up. I couldn't stop laughing.
Okay, and that was lovely.
Still running.
The decapitation itself is VFX-heavy.
There are various clean plates
that Angus and his team
will be shooting
with Wil in camera.
So we're creating the post effect,
basically, the body down on the floor.
The prosthetic that we have
for it is awful. Gorgeous, but awful.
Which includes his tongue
and his entire bottom jaw.
So, we're just making
that slightly more gruesome.
It's already incredibly gruesome.
The work was unbelievable.
If you look at the scene,
you think it's Will, and it's not.
The dummy was the most
life-like thing I've ever seen.
The teeth and tongue
All you wanted to do was just,
like, that there was someone
stood guarding it from us wanting
to play with it.
When I first saw me
It was just so bizarre, and so surreal.
'Cause it's like,
"How many times do you actually get
to be involved in one's own death?"
I think it's one of the great
Game of Thrones beheadings,
and a pleasure to be a part of it.
-Disarm him!
-No need.
When I first spoke with Miguel and Ryan
about the banquet scene in 108,
they talked about The Last Supper and how
they got so much inspiration from it.
So, Katie and I designed the table to be
setup like The Last Supper.
Final tribute.
It created a lot of challenges because
we had visual effects around Viserys,
but it also brought a specific
character to that scene.
The changes that happen over
the course of that episode,
happen around the pivot of Viserys.
The idea being that Viserys' physical
condition is marching in parallel
with the condition of his family
and his reign.
So, as one degrades, so does the other.
How good it is to see you all tonight.
The banquet scene
breaks down into sections.
We are shooting around the table.
There's a dance sequence
and a fight sequence.
Jace! That's enough!
We've had three or four
days to shoot that scene.
There's a lot of casting there,
and we've got four cameras in there.
It is a challenging scene,
because all the characters are there,
and they all, sort of,
have to have their moment.
But Geeta and myself try to focus the
scene on the hero-triangle of characters,
Alicent, Viserys, and Rhaenyra,
and how they are trying to resolve
all the conflict that they've had up
until this episode.
A toast to our princess.
Eight is actually
one of my favorite episodes.
It's The Last Supper.
It's really Viserys' last stand.
It's the father and daughter story
finding some resolution and closure.
And unexpectedly,
there's a brief moment of,
"Oh, maybe things are going to be okay."
My own face,
is no longer a handsome one
if, indeed, it ever was.
I thought it would be interesting
that anybody who's cut
by the throne get's this disease.
It's a kind of leprosy, and it would be
interesting to see Viserys, over time,
slowly deteriorate and decay.
Viserys, I found to be a very tragic
figure in this state.
Paddy really brought
some real pathos to his portrayal.
It was six years after the last episode.
And Viserys, his health has
deteriorated significantly.
Miguel and Ryan were looking to settle
quite a passage of time
between episode seven and eight.
So, Viserys' change is quite extreme.
Father?
Who goes there?
From episode one to his demise in
episode eight is probably about six
or seven different
looks, which progress from something
very subtle to something quite
extensive in the end.
From subtle nuances to his wigs,
his hairline,
the actual thickness
of his hair to the pallor of his skin,
his skin tone,
ulcers and things on his body.
We started with younger Viserys,
had the fuller hair.
And as he deteriorates,
that's when his hair got thinner
and starts to recede slightly.
And we start using different wigs.
Then when we get to ep eight, it is
punctured hair in a bald cap,
which Barrie and his team made
and punched the hair in.
Once it's all on Paddy, then I would
slice all the hair up and make sure
we're matching it to some sort
of a length that it would have been.
He would then sort've tried
to hold on to the little bit he had,
and make it look like, "Oh, bless him.
He's lost his hair, but he's holding on."
Slowly, over a period of time,
you can see that the sore
is festering underneath the skin,
so that then we're not just jumping into
a great big ulcer that will appear.
There's a progression.
We just bring that sort of little,
extra bit of something to it,
like a bit of sweat, or started
to make his hair greasy.
Little things.
And it brings it to life.
Close your eyes
And give me your hand
It's approximately a four-hour process
that we do with Paddy,
with his head and shoulders make-up.
Some of it is painted in afterwards,
so not even I know what it's gonna look
like in the end.
We also have some augmentation
from VFX as well with, sort of,
cavities and various anatomy on his face
to help us along to do things
we can't do practically.
We're creating what's called
Lighting Stand-in of Viserys' head.
And it's to help VFX and their
department with the anatomy
and the internal cavities
of Viserys' face.
And we would shoot with Paddy.
He would have the prosthetics on.
You'd see it.
We'd have patches of green on his face
where we needed to replace things.
And then bring out this head.
You could bring those in,
in the lighting of the environment
that you were shooting in and see what
the reflections on the skin looks like,
and what the textures all look like under
the lighting on that day,
which gives you the perfect
thing to match to in CG.
We had to get a double in to be
the very thin version of Viserys.
My plan, originally, was that I'm gonna
go and lose a lot of weight.
But we jump around so much on this show
that I just thought,
"Stay as you are, you know.
We'll work it out another way."
We also have a double, Nick,
who we shoot on his body as well.
He's got a much skinnier type of frame,
and he's got an incredible rib cage that
we shade into with air brushes.
So, we shot those scenes,
both with Paddy, in make up,
and with a body double.
We have to combine
Paddy's performance
with the body-double's body,
which varies.
Sometimes it's very easy
'cause he's lying on the table.
Sometimes, he's actually doing physical
action. He's getting up.
We've got to synchronize those
two shots together.
Milk of the poppy.
He's in so much pain,
that he's on the old milk of the poppy.
I don't know why I find that so funny.
They're always on the old milk
of the poppy.
Katie and Geeta had an idea
on the king's death,
to put him on quite a wide lens.
And in order to do that, we had to get
our technocrane up to that height.
So there was this enormous scaffolding
rig built here on the ground floor.
We got the technocrane
up to the first floor level.
And yeah, it worked really, really well.
I walked into this courtyard on many
occasion, and would look up and think,
"What the fuck are they doing?"
And then all was revealed
on that particular day.
And actually,
it was genuinely touching.
When we see Viserys
for the first time in this episode,
he's surrounded by family.
As we ended the episode,
it's significant in that moment that
Viserys is dying,
knowing that all seven episodes before
this were the struggle between power
and family, here he is, dying, alone.